We got ghosted. So we built this.

We ordered a card in a WhatsApp group. We paid for it. It never arrived.

So we went back to the group to find the seller. We could not find him. Hundreds of messages had pushed his post off the screen. We messaged him directly instead. He read it. He never replied.

Here is the part most people skip.

He lost out too. He lost a repeat customer, because nothing was holding either side of that deal.

That is the whole problem in one sentence. Not a bad person. A bad system.

A group chat is not a shop

There are more than 3,000 people across South Africa's Pokémon groups. Around 835 of them actually trade. That is a real market, and it is running on a chat app.

Chat apps are good at chatting. They are bad at everything a shop needs:

• You cannot search them. A card is a photo with a caption, and it is gone in an hour.
• There is no record. No prices, no history, no way to tell a good seller from a new one.
• There is no recourse. If it goes wrong, you are arguing in front of 400 people.

Everyone in those groups has worked around this for years. We stopped working around it.

What we are building

One place to search every card seller in South Africa. Your money held until the card arrives and matches. Every parcel tracked to your door.

That is the buyer half. The seller half matters just as much to us.

We want to turn side hustles into businesses. Plenty of people here sell out of a shoebox at a tournament. They are good at it. What they do not have is stock control, a customer base, real prices, or a way to get paid without chasing anyone.

That is the thing worth building. Not another app. The floor under a small business that already exists.

Where we actually are

We would rather tell you this than have you find out.

• We are 20 sellers in, not 2,000. The catalogue has holes. It fills every week.
• We take no commission right now. Sellers keep the full sale. That will change one day, and we will say so clearly before it does.
• Sleevr Live is not built. No shows have run. When one has, you will hear about it.

Small is not something we are hiding. It is why you can message us and get a person.

Nobody gets ghosted

That is the line we hold ourselves to.

It covers buyers waiting on a card and sellers waiting on money. It is a standard we can fail at, which is the point of having one. If we ever do, tell us.