Simone WilsonNo, that is not the tour bus for Echo Park's ironic new K-pop girl band.
Somehow, it's even more perfect than that. The pink van driving around L.A. with the groovy font and the mustache — as of this morning! — is actually a delivery vehicle for HipSwap, the Santa Monica-based online marketplace that features such glamorous second-hand items as Real Housewife Kyle Richards' old Jimmy Choos and some random rich girl's $900 alligator boots.
So yeah, when we say “hipster,” we're talking more Zooey Deschanel than Lena Dunham. The HipSwap website is bold and BuzzFeed-looking, with little buttons beneath each Polaroid marketplace photo that let users vote “HIP” or “SKIP.”
Basically, if you just adore Pinterest, but it's kind of been burning a hole in your pocket, HipSwap is your answer — a cute consignment shopping spree with fashion pics for days.
And the big news, today, is that they deliver. Which to any stranded Santa Monican with the very real white-girl problem of being stuck an-hour-in-traffic from Melrose, is like heaven on wheels. Via press release:
“Instead of waiting for merchandise to ship or arranging to meet-up with the seller, shoppers on both coasts can now receive their items delivered in HipSwap's hard-to-miss mustached pink van.”
Sorry, East Los Angeles. Will not deliver.
And, perhaps to distance themselves from the snotty L.A. hipster vibe (or at least the snotty part), they're also adding charitable “HipSwap Saturdays” to the route, allowing shoppers to…
… request Saturday pickup and delivery of their items to Goodwill, free of charge.
Adorbs, right? Giving back and shit!
If the Westside is turning into Silicon Beach, HipSwap is so definitely the quirky “New Girl” on the block. For example, their second-hand collections include such alt-celebs as Merle Ginsberg, writer for the Hollywood Reporter, and a guy named Ivan who collects gorgeous mid-century furniture.
And the Zooey model's working out pretty well for them, says Forbes:
CEO Rob Kramer tells Forbes that since HipSwap's launch in March it continues to double its monthly user base and now has a million monthly unique visitors to the site eyeing the more than $21 million of merchandise listed.
… The Santa Monica, Calif. startup's chic solution also caught the eye of a number of notable investors including Founders Fund, Greycroft Partners, Mahalo president Jason Rapp and former Microsoft exec Hank Vigil (who was early to the Pinterest party) and raised $1.1 million in seed funding.
Forbes also says that the HipSwap is trying to “unseat Crigslist.” But uh, until they've got $50 amps and stolen iPads on there, we think both sides of the venn diagram should stay fat and happy.
Here are the idyllic HipSwap Inc. headquarters, located a couple blocks from the beach on 2nd Street:
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