The Collection Connection

Ryan Zintgraff, president of Klect Corp., displays his sister’s My Little Pony toys. It’s the kind of collection his company’s website can enable people to assemble.

Image: Nick Simonite/Austin Business Journal

Ryan Zintgraff, Ryan Hollister, and Michael Peter launched Klect Corp.—a business that operates a website to enable collectors of just about anything to list and trade their items online while forming virtual communities of like-minded collectors—in April and its website in July to take a three-pronged business approach.

First, it’s providing a free online inventory-management system for collectors. Such models are commonly called “freemium” services designed to introduce users to more sophisticated or robust services.

And, sure enough, Klect is also selling a more advanced inventory system for $8 per month, which is the second prong. The system includes an automated feature that flags items a collection is lacking and lists possible locations for the user to get them. The trade service, the third prong, collects a 40-cent fee for every transaction users complete.

To date, the company has been self-funded, but Zintgraff wants to attract venture capital or angel investors to fund a marketing campaign. He has a goal to raise $400,000 to $1.5 million from investors.

Such listing services have operated for at least a decade, but they haven’t generated widespread adoption, collecting experts said.

Klect’s competitors include Austin-based iTaggit Inc., which was founded by serial entrepreneur David Altounian. The company operates a website designed to enable users to list a description of a collectible or other possession and receive data such as the value range for the product. They can also choose to sell what they’ve valued via iTaggit’s integration with Craigslist and eBay. In 2006, iTaggit completed a $1 million Series A round of financing from a syndicate of angel investors.

In comic-book collecting, several companies and organizations operate online databases of varying levels of sophistication with no dominant player, said Mark Zaid, marketing director of the Comic Book Collecting Association. “There is more than enough [demand] for a company to come in and take the reins,” he said.

For more on Klect's bid for a piece of the collectors market, click here for the full story from the Austin Business Journal (subscription required).