Toju Ogbeide: Socially Conscious, Ethical, and Transparent Online Marketplace That Allows Individuals to Shop and Sell With a Purpose

Goodszilla is a socially conscious, ethical, and transparent online marketplace that allows individuals to shop and sell with a purpose. Sellers can sell things they no longer need while directing a portion of the sale towards important causes, and buyers can make a strong social impact knowing a percentage of their purchase will go directly towards vital charities and non-profits

Goodszilla’s vision is to be the leading source of donations to charities through product sales.
Our mission is to make the world a better place by empowering individuals and organizations with the tools needed to fundraise for charities and non-profits

Tell us about yourself?

Canadian Nigerian, born in Nigeria, I immigrated to Canada to study for my Masters in Management at the University of Windsor, after completing a Bachelors degree in Computer science back home. Always wanted to engage in meaningful work and building a marketplace that gives back more than I can give as an individual is a win win. I’ve spent sometime volunteering at various nonprofits around the city and the feeling one gets from doing fulfilling work can’t be expressed with words.

If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?

Great question, I’d say maybe finding a co-founder on the onset. Building a startup can be a lonely journey, so you want someone invested as much as you to bounce ideas and share the burden of the rough times as it can be heavy for one person.

What problem does your business solve?

We help individuals and businesses easily give back when they sell products, be it secondhand items or on shopify stores using our newly developed donation shopify app called “Conscious Cart”

What is the inspiration behind your business?

When decluttering my condo, I had lots of gently used and new items I did not feel right discarding. so I left these items at the front of my door step for two weeks thinking of better ways to put this items to good use, I started thinking and analyzing different ways which already existed and the idea of a marketplace where items are easily sold for good, people get to make money, increase their social impact and receive tax receipts came to mind. Now charities who do not have the capacity to receive products from their donors to store, sort sell and fund their good work can now do so virtually using our online marketplace.

What is your magic sauce?

Once transactions are completed, we have made it easy to distribute donations to all Canadian charities through our donation processing partner Canadahelps who also incentivizes sellers with tax receipts

What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?

We want to be able expand into the states, also build more tools to enhance the Canadian giving experience through product sales

What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?

As every marketplace, solving the chicken and egg problem is a challenge that we constantly refining and improving. We are online platform with no warehouse, we do get asked if would have a warehouse location to store products to reduce time spent by sellers holding on to items, but not in the for seeable future as that takes us into a logistics space. We hope high liquidation on our marketplace will help reduce time sellers hold products

How do people get involved/buy into your vision?

We want individuals to leverage our charitable marketplace when selling gently used items and also calling on online stores to use our Conscious Cart donation app on shopify to increase giving and amplify their social impact. We also work with Charities partners to run live auctions