This year has been unlike any other in the past.
The American identity is rooted in the concept of community, and prosperity for our buyers and sellers has always been at the core of our mission and vision.
So through all of the ups and downs of 2020, the surprises, the pain, the trials, the learnings, and the successes, I am filled with renewed energy for our vision — which is to help people connect and prosper. My positivity comes from the fact that our community’s success has showcased the value of local marketplaces and bolstered the promise of mobile connection, even during a time when everything seems to be upside down.
We combined the letgo marketplace with ours this year, and our nationwide community of buyers and sellers became much larger. We saw demand increase exponentially for popular at-home items like puzzles, stationary bikes, laptops, baseball cards, video games, and desks; we provided our buyers with better deals and our sellers with a more active buying audience. And our research found that this expansion was crucial in a time of need.
Our 2020 Recommerce Report found that today’s parents are under more financial stress than ever before. That said, 39% of parents donated a baby item to another parent, and 37% offered their time supporting others this year.
Equally, our annual Good Neighbor Day Report discovered that despite the pandemic’s hardships, OfferUp buyers and sellers turned to our marketplace to give back to their communities, and the number of items offered for free on our marketplace increased by 23% compared to last year.
If this year and the challenges we faced as a country taught us anything, it’s that we can’t do this alone. This year, we renewed our efforts to reach out and work with other organizations that share our ideals and values.
As a company that fosters local connections at a national scale, we are firm believers that an engaged community is a healthy community. In preparation for this year’s election, we joined the voting rights organization Civic Alliance and provided voter registration links in our app.
We value access and equality, so we debuted a $250,000 Tech Career Empowerment Scholarship with Ironhack to provide enterprising yet underrepresented candidates and women looking to enter the tech world with the opportunity to build valuable skills and experience for their careers.
We have offices in Washington and Florida and giving back to our local communities is something our employees are very passionate about. COVID-19 has made getting access to food difficult for many families, so our company raised and distributed more than $25,000 for
Northwest Harvest and Feeding South Florida.
And we built even more business partnerships with companies like Gubagoo to help our automotive dealer customers provide an even better experience for the millions of car buyers on OfferUp every year.
While we reached out to connect with our community, we also reached in and built connections, support networks, and new ways of working and supporting each other inside OfferUp. I saw the OfferUp team come together to help one another in ways large and small every day. Much of the work done to improve the OfferUp experience day-by-day is done by a dedicated team of customer service support technicians, developers, engineers, automotive account executives, HR wizzes, marketing and BizOps all-stars, communicators, investigators, researchers, and more.
I want to thank them all for their hard work. I’d also like to give extra thanks to this year’s Founder’s Award winners, Celia and Sean. They are the two standout OfferUp employees that we recognized this year for their success in “owning it” — a company operating principle that they exhibited in spades.
The ability to own it — to persevere, with courage, and find simple solutions to complex problems in times of crises, is something that I promise our company is consistently looking to do for you. We will continue to set high goals, meet and exceed and them, and I promise you, our community of buyers and sellers, that we will continue to grow our tools and features to make success easier for you.
Though 2021 will likely bring its unique challenges, I know that our continued focus on our community will help us surmount whatever comes our way. #pursueexcellencetogether, #customerobsession
I hope everyone has a prosperous New Year — we’ll be there with you in 2021.
Onward,
Nick