Platform

The DASH Platform integrates the main things collectors do, presents them in an easy-to-use format, exposing innovative advances in user experience and market opportunity. By fusing social and mobile capabilities, the DASH platform empowers communities of like-minded, passionate users.

Architected specifically for cross-category deployment, DASH enables different members of the collector eco-system to maximize their opportunties to serve this set of presently underserved users. As a platform, as new features are added driven by the specific needs of one category, these features naturally accrue to benefit other categories. And because of this multiple category approach, the level of refinement, scalability and experience is far higher compared to one-off solutions.

Core Features

All collectors search for answers to the following questions:

The DASH platform, with its unique integration of the wiki-enabled Catalog, Collection Management and Marketplace, provides the best answer for these core features.

DASH Catalog

The DASH platform manages a highly usable catalog of collectible items. The platform has a very flexible taxonomy definition system, as well as a configurable user role-based editing rights capability. Underpinned by a structured database model, creating the base DASH foundation catalog is straightforward working with existing content databases. Customization of the fields enabled in the catalog is possible as are the editing/viewing rights per field. As a community-maintained resource, DASH maintains an audit log of all edits and allows only registered users to edit the Catalog.

The taxonomy of the Catalog is flexible and dynamic, enabling a far better end user navigation experience. Not only does a deep taxonomy model help with the browse experience, it helps collectors refine relevant groups of items of interest. Additionally, a rich taxonomy model helps with smarter searches, enabling users to restrict searches to specific areas in the Catalog. Finally, if a user finds one item of interest, the DASH navigation model enables the quick viewing of all similar items. Specific attention is given in the DASH architecture for search engine optimization which results in strong organic search visitation.

Photos, videos and user reviews are a big part of a complete Catalog experience. As such, the DASH platform makes it simple for users tocontribute their own photos. The most popular formats are supported, and the DASH platform automatically processes all uploaded images, sampling for optimal viewing, performance and usability. All photos have the option for user attribution accelerating the motivation of the community to contribute. Adding videos to the Catalog is as simple as copying and pasting the YouTube embed link, and users can write their own rich-text reviews of individual Catalog items.

DASH Collection Management

By leveraging the power of the DASH Catalog, the most fundamental challenge of collection management is radically simpler. By simply finding the items the user has or wants, building their own inventory of items owned or wanted is simply a click. It is this radical simplicity that serves to establish the foundation of users' relationship with DASH - we manage their collection, the items they love.

Distinct from the Catalog, which is a universe of unique items that "exist," the My Collection tab in DASH is tailored for all of "your items."  For each item, the user can record specific details about their specific items. For example, if they have two items, one may be in mint condition in the original packaging while the other may be worn and no longer in the original packaging. The collector can easily edit this information for each item in his collection, uploading their own photos of each item. For every item, there are also "private" fields of information such as cost of acquisition, date of acquisition, location, etc that collectors need to record for insurance or tax purposes, but is strictly private.

Importantly, because of the web-based architecture of DASH, each collector's inventory is always available from any web-connected device. Their collection is private and is fully backed up as a standard practice of DASH operations. Users can view their collections and wanted lists anytime from their mobile devices, and they can use the DASH mobile apps to add/remove items to their collections.

DASH Marketplace

The act of collecting inherently includes buying and selling among community members. As such, DASH makes ecommerce simple, secure and efficient. One of the biggest challenges for sellers is the act of recording their inventory. Leveraging the power of the Catalog and the integration of Collection Management, DASH makes this often time-consuming process simple and fast. Consequently, the "listing process" for a seller is often simply deciding the listing price and clicking a button.

All sellers benefit from the SEO optimization of the DASH platform, and all sellers get their own basic "store."  This store shows only the items for sale by that seller, and it helps encourage multiple item purchases from the same seller. The DASH platform automatically calculates and adjusts final sales invoices to reflect savings offered by sellers for "combined sales" to buyers of multiple purchases reflecting reduced shipping charges. Fully integrated with PayPal, DASH takes advantage of the provided PayPal shipping labels and customs forms creation services as applicable. Buyers and sellers all agree to resolve disputes via the PayPal Dispute Resolution Center, can communicate with buyers about shipping notices via built-in tools in DASH, and can rate their experiences with the feedback system. Finally, DASH features a private messaging system ensuring that participants can communicate securely.

Conversely, the buying process on DASH is very simple too.  From browsing the familiar taxonomy of the Catalog, buyers can quickly navigate to see all the options for purchase of items of interest. Additionally, because DASH is a Catalog-based Marketplace, the chance of confusion on the identification of the items bought/sold is greatly reduced. Another important derived benefit from this approach is the automated wanted alerts sent when specific items in a user's Wanted List are listed for sale or reduced in price. Because these alerts are tied to the Catalog ID, not a particular seller's listing, the wanted alerts are persistent and seller-independent.

Integration

An obvious benefit of the DASH platform is the functional integration of the different parts of DASH.  For example, when an item is bought in the DASH Marketplace, it is automatically removed from the seller's collection and added to the buyer's collection. The date and cost of acquisition is automatically registered for the buyer, and the photos associated with that unit are also transferred.

The opportunity for smart trading is another innovative user experience benefit. Each collector can mark "Willing to Trade" for each item in his collection. As such, DASH will automatically show that user as appropriate for other DASH users on their Wanted List. That level of information is already useful, but DASH goes beyond that. Because each user also gets their own public "Showcase" web site, now potential trading partners can view the other items that potential trading partner has in their wanted list and collection.  In this way, trading partners can have an informed "negotiation" about achieving a smart trade to each enhance their collection.

The DASH Catalog also serves as the natural repository as a values guide. Today, DASH provides values for items in a defined condition, both as packaged and unpackaged. Later, this will be expanded to reflect condition.  Additionally, the values are automatically updated, based on historical sales in the DASH Marketplace, making DASH a dynamically updated values guide. The values are additionally integrated with a user's collection. When a collector generates a printed report of their collection, DASH will automatically estimate that collector's overall value of his collection.

These are just some of the points of integration currently exposed that make the user experience unique and very compelling for collectors.