ElectronicFrog begins buying used electronics from consumers
A consumer trade-in service launches, buying used phones, laptops and game consoles for cash with local drop-off or mail-in.
ElectronicFrog, also trading as eFrog, began buying used electronics directly from consumers in 2007. Customers could bring devices to an Asheville location or mail them in, and were paid in cash. Phones, laptops and game consoles made up the bulk of the intake.
The model was the mirror image of the wholesale liquidation business the group would later run. Where a liquidator buys pallets from a retailer and grades them afterwards, ElectronicFrog let the goods arrive one at a time from the people who owned them, which removed inventory purchasing from the equation altogether. Internal records from the period show the two operations sharing a single payroll sheet with a stated daily processing target, which indicates they were run as one floor rather than two companies. ElectronicFrog outlasted the liquidation business by a considerable margin, and the reason is visible in its structure: it needed no capital to acquire stock.