Contact

Our Story

SwapU began from a story I heard several years ago called “Stone Soup”.  

In this folk story that seems to come from China, France and Eastern Europe all at the same time, a boy teaches a town to share.  He is starving and the town is in famine but he shows them that by pooling what they have they can all feast.  At first he is denied some food but he doesn’t give up.  He knows he has to eat so he convinces the town to help him make stone soup.  He starts with a pot and a stone and before you know it he has a pot filled with delicious soup, because he has convinced each person in the town to share what they have and add an ingredient each to the soup.  Life is like this, we get more when we share and less when we keep our skills and possessions to ourselves.  

But how does this become SwapU?  

Well, I began to create a professional development project where I saw everyone as a recipe and each recipe (or person) needed new ingredients to grow.  I identified skills and named them and then asked each person to identify what they could share with others.  This was the first iteration of SwapU, a place where people could share skills.

But then I looked at things a little differently

I am not sure of the exact moment that I decided that sharing and swapping where similar.  I think I grew the idea from the thought of swapping skills and the extension of the idea that what we have we can share, even if it is a possession.  So sharing evolved in to swapping and that is core to our brand.  We want you to see swapping like sharing.  Sharing experiences that are usually locked behind a wall of cash.  When you swap you could swap one thing ten times and have ten different experiences because of that item that you now are using that someone else swapped with you. 

But what about ownership?

What is ownership?  It is purchasing something and using it and then throwing it away.  Do you still own it once it is in the bin?  Why throw away something that you have worked hard to buy?  It has value, just not the cash value that we have come to expect in regular transactions.  It might not have value to you but it could have value to someone else.  Instead of holding on to ownership until it is useless why not swap it for something that you can use.  

So I created SwapU to move unwanted items to where they are needed and to who needs them.  We have so much “Stuff” and we just throw it away when we have no more use for it.  Someone does so let’s swap what we have for what we want.  

My name is Nic and I am the founder of SwapU.  Please get in touch whenever you like.  I’d love a chat and for you to share with me your thoughts about swapping and maybe even some of your great swapping stories.  My email is nic@swapu.com.au. 

Nic- Founder of SwapU
[instagram-feed feed=1]
Scroll to Top