28 year-old Southeast Portland resident Mika Lepisto was frustrated after his recent search for a used bike. He scoured Craigslist and local newspaper classifieds to no avail,
“Everyone uses a different word to describe something, and it’s hard to find what you want. As an example, for a mountain bike, it’s either written out as “Mountain Bike”, “MTB” or “bike for sale.”
As an IT and web consultant he knew he could create a better system and his frustrating experience gave him the motivation. The result is BikeAds.org, a new used bicycle classified advertising service.
The new site allows users to create their own ads and upload photos all for free. Mike has also made the ads easy to search by breaking them into categories and designing a clutter-free, simple interface.
If you’re really on the hunt for a new bike, you can sign up for email alerts, or add new listings to your RSS feed reader.
BikeAds.org currently only lists bikes from the Portland area, but Mika hopes to eventually expand to other cities. He’s still tweaking things and working on improving the site, but I’d say he’s well on his way to success.