My Aussie girlfriend used to haul back luggage literally filled with Tim Tams when she flew back from Australia, because those delicious chocolate-y treats were hard to find here in the U.S. (And we have needy friends.)
Thankfully for her and other travelers often saddled with overseas food or product requests, there is now Everyly.
Essentially, Everyly is a way to shop for your favorite, hard-to-find items from around the world without incurring exorbitant shipping costs. The app utilizes people who are already traveling to those places to fulfill the orders.
Here’s how it works: You post your order on the site, travellers on your route make offers for your order, and you chat within the app to reach an agreement on price. You’ll finish payment when the traveller arrives with your item in person.
“As a shopper, you can order your favorites not available in your country [or] something hard and expensive to ship,” explains Everyly CEO Mohamed Yunus. “As a traveler, you make some extra money as a reward for bringing it. The crux is, travelers get to choose how much they want to be paid online, so the remaining amount is collected by the travelers in local currency of the destination (which is very hard to get) upon delivery.” Yunus also explains that this service will cut down on fake products, which is a serious problem some places. As for limits on what can be purchased, Yunus told us that users can order “anything not available in [thei r]country, maybe Nokia phones available only in China, or that oil that cures PVD, available only in China. [It is] limitless.”
Finally, it pays to travel.
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