Forget eBay; TechForward will Buyback your laptop

By Vivek | May 21st, 2007 at 04:31 pm ET         

Have you heard of TechForward? If not, you should better know ’cause this idea is going to be big. Manhattan Beach, CA based TechForward’s smart plan is a Guaranteed Product Buyback program through which you know the future trade-in values for the devices you are buying right now. I would say that’s a smart way to think from the product’s end life crisis perspective. As it seems, First Round Capital also thinks the same way about TechForward. Last month, the startup raised Series A funds, led by First Round Capital, to apply this buyback concept to the majority of the device market before another startup gets similar ideas.

TechForward is currently dealing in the laptop space at TechMyLife, with plans to get into cameras and additional device market pretty soon. The way things work at TechMyLife is that you choose the specs for your new or existing laptop at the site. Once you fill in those details, TechMyLife algorithm automatically calculates the value of your laptop for the next 2 years. A graph  shows the money you will get back when you return your laptop to TechMyLife within each of the 6 months periods for those 2 years. Catch is, to get into the TechMyLife program, you need to pay one time service fee that can be something like $30 or $50 or….. Basically service fee depends on the specs of your laptop. And so is the future value of the laptop that you will eventually get.

All the getting in talk and easy device swap aside, I think eventually everything depends on how much money you get for your laptop. I ran a quick “Buyback” check for a new Lenovo ThinkPad T60 Core2Duo with 1.83 Ghz processor, 2 GB RAM, 80GB Hard Drive, and DVR/RW. A new laptop with these specs from Lenovo comes for $1400. At TechMyLife, this laptop would get you $570 in 0-6 months, $440 in 6-12 months, $340 in 12-18 months, and $260 in 18-24 months. I think these numbers are way too low at least for a ThinkPad. And not to mention the additional service fee you need to pay to get into the program. Again, trying to be blue-book for laptops is not an easy task and TechForward is just starting at it. Couple of deals with big name device manufacturers would make sure that the startup has access to huge number of customers right at the point of entry.

Links:
TechForward