RIP Defunkd Marketplace 2011-2018
Dearest Users of Defunkd;
Sadly, we’re closing the marketplace portion of our operation. There’s a combination of things that have led to this decision.
During the marketplace’s first few years inventory and sales continued to rise. The couple of years that followed the platform plateaued. And in recent years we’ve seen a gradual decline. The changing landscape of how items are sold online, the massive growth in the vintage inventory across the web, and fluctuations in search engine traffic have all had an impact on our little labor of love.
That coupled with the fact that our seven-year-old custom platform is now ancient web terms – it needs a massive overhaul to be updated for better search engine placement, better user performance and security.
To complicate matters even more, the last few years PayPal has been continually updating their payment process. We’ve had to spend a small fortune updating our platform to ensure there were no interruptions in our payment system. But they’ve recently announced a new round of changes that they are rolling out in the coming months. Some of these are essential and will likely cause our payment system to malfunction. Unfortunately we can’t keep financing these updates, which appear to be endless as the web evolves.
According to their announcement, at some point in June or July these essential updates will be rolled out. That’s lights out for our marketplace. I’m not exactly sure when this will transpire, as they haven’t given specific dates in those months. But I would estimate we’ve got about a solid month left.
We wanted to give you the heads up on this. Should you want to make a final purchase – and support the wonderful sellers who participated in this project.
Back in 2011 this Michael Jackson shirt was the first item sold via our marketplace for $1. What shirt will be our last?
Hey, we collectively gave it our best shot and we did a lot of good in the process. Most of the sales on the system resulted in a tree being planted. Buyers got genuine vintage tees from honest shop owners. And we took some commissions out of eBay’s pocket and saved you some loot along the way. We all made history with the world’s first multi-vendor marketplace for vintage t-shirts.
Thank you so much for your support over the years. It’s unfortunate that it didn’t work out the way we planned, but it was still a great experience and I’m proud to have been a part of it. And you should be too!
And worry not, Defunkd lives on. We’re just shutting down the eCommerce portion of our domain. Our content is forever! The wheels are already in (slow) motion to revamp our website. Plus, we’ll still be selling tees occasionally and making appearances on social media from time to time.
Sincerely,
Jimmy J