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Brothers' DiggersList caters to building-materials marketJan 06, 2011 (The Arizona Daily Star - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Matt Knox remembers his little brother Johnnie Munger, 14 years his junior, watching his band practices in Pull-Ups training pants. Funny how baby brothers grow up. Now they're business partners. Knox, 40, and Munger, 26, are the co-founders of DiggersList, a Craigslist-style website dedicated exclusively to buying and selling home-improvement supplies. Munger, a local musician and web designer, handles the technical side of the site from his home in Tucson. Knox heads up the business end of DiggersList from Los Angeles. Both brothers grew up in Tucson. The site is a tool for contractors and other people doing home projects and repairs to post and sell surplus building materials and supplies instead of having to store or throw them away. Knox, a former insurance broker, got the idea after hearing his contractor clients repeatedly complain about having bricks, lumber and any number of other stuff left over from a job and nothing to do with it. Knox had the contacts and the business know-how, but he needed a Web-savvy partner to pull off his vision of an online home-improvement marketplace. That's when he decided to give his brother a call. "It's a good combination," Knox said. "His head and his generation are perfect for coding. My head and my generation are perfect for a lot of the strategic partnerships we work with." Munger said it was an easy decision to go into business with his big brother, whom he looked up to ever since Knox's days of playing Tucson venues with his band Doctor Strange. "I grew up kind of idolizing him. He got me into music and he got me into the Web. We've always had a really great connection with each other," said Munger. "Everything kind of stopped when I got the DiggersList call." So far the partnership has been successful. DiggersList has grown rapidly, expanding to have listings in 48 cities, including Tucson, since the site began in October 2009 with only five locations. Munger says the site, which is free to use, has several thousand regular users and a steady stream of new postings every day. "We're actually upgrading our servers," Munger said. "For the first time we're having technical stress, which is good. It's making my job interesting." Munger said he designed the website with lots of pictures and links to set it apart from its text-heavy Craigslist counterpart. "It's just a better user interface. Instead of clicking on blue links all day long, if you go to DiggersList, you'll get a lot of nice images. I think it actually gets stuff sold quicker for people," he said. Munger also said the site's niche quality makes it a better choice for selling home-improvement supplies. "Craigslist is very general," he said. "It's a great tool. We're just a better tool for improvement. We want a place you can go on and just find awesome home-improvement stuff and there should be lots of it." DiggersList also has a philanthropic side. Users who don't end up selling what they post can opt to donate it to their local Habitat for Humanity. Users can also skip the sale process and donate right away, if they choose. The site also has a dedicated DIY home improvement blog hosted by Knox's wife, Skaie, making DiggersList a true family affair. With the brothers in different time zones, they do most of their DiggersList business by video chat, with briefings every morning and chats throughout the day. "We're on video chat all day long," Munger said. "Even with all the stress, we really articulate well to each other. There's no ego, which is probably not usual for brothers." "He's the best business partner I've had in my life," Knox said. ONLINE www.diggerslist.com Contact reporter Alex Dalenberg at [email protected] or 807-8429. To see more of The Arizona Daily Star, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.azstarnet.com. Copyright (c) 2011, The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com. |