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What's NoBagrets About??

Built by bag people, for bag people

A better home for your bag obsession.

We’re Dave and Alicia, the husband-and-wife team behind SoRetro Straps. After years running our buy/sell/trade community, we wanted an easier place to find great bags, talk to other members, and pass gear along.

So we’re building NoBagrets: a private marketplace for bags and accessories, shaped by the people who use it.

Alicia and Dave smiling together on the back of a blue pickup truck.

TL;DR (For Those Who Have Bags to Shop For)

We're Dave and Alicia, the husband-and-wife team behind SoRetro Straps and the SoRetro Owners’ Association and SoRetro Buy/Sell/Trade private Facebook groups.

After nearly six years of managing our BST community, we've learned two things: bag people are pretty awesome, and Facebook is a lousy place to buy and sell bags. We've also watched the big resale marketplaces charge some pretty ridiculous fees in a sea of clothes, shoes, and whatever else is listed.

So we decided to build something better.

Alicia brings years of experience running our BST group and understanding what this community actually needs. Dave brings a lifelong obsession with computers and almost three decades of building custom web applications.

Together, we're creating NoBagrets, a dedicated, low-cost marketplace for buying, selling, and trading bags and accessories, with better tools, a focus on trust, and a whole lot less Facebook nonsense.

Built by bag people, for bag people. No Bagrets.

Our story starts with SoRetro

We’ve been working together since shortly after we met. SoRetro brought us into a community of people who love collecting, selling, and trading bags - and we’ve been part of that community for nearly six years.

You're still here? Apparently you really do want to know who we are!

We've been working together, running businesses, and coming up with new ideas since about a month after we met. Apparently, we still haven't learned how to leave well enough alone.

If you're familiar with SoRetro, you probably already know us. If not, we're the two people behind the handmade straps and leather bags, and the SoRetro Owners’ Association and the SoRetro Buy/Sell/Trade (BST) Facebook groups.

We've been running these groups for almost six years, and in that time we've gotten to know a pretty amazing community of people who share a love for bags and straps, collecting them, selling them, and trading them.

Buying and selling shouldn’t be this hard

Social media brought us together, but it makes listings and conversations hard to keep track of. We wanted a dedicated home for the resale of bags and accessories, with useful tools and reasonable costs.

So Why NoBagrets?

After years of running our BST group, we've seen just about everything. We've seen what works, what doesn't, what drives members crazy, and what makes running one of these groups a giant pain in the ass.

And the one thing that keeps coming up?

Facebook.

Don't get us wrong. Facebook helped bring this community together, and we're grateful for the friendships and connections that came out of it.

But let's face it. Facebook wasn't built for this.

Finding old listings is a hassle. Keeping track of conversations can be confusing. Groups are scattered everywhere. And just when you finally figure out how something works, Facebook changes it, breaks it, or decides you didn't need that feature anyway.

Thanks, Zuck. 🙄

Worse, we have virtually no control over any of it. We're building and managing communities on somebody else's platform, subject to somebody else's rules, and hoping they don't screw up something important tomorrow.

Then there are the traditional resale marketplaces. Poshmark, Mercari, Vinted, and all the others. They serve a purpose, but they aren't exactly what we're looking for either.

Some charge fees that make you wonder if they're expecting a commission on your firstborn. And they're packed with everything from handbags to sneakers to somebody's old winter coat.

We wanted something different.

A dedicated place for people who love bags and accessories. Built around the way our community actually buys, sells, and trades.

No endless categories of random stuff. No fighting a social media algorithm just to find a bag. And no ridiculous marketplace fees eating up a big chunk of your sale.

Just bags, accessories, and the people who love them.

Dave builds the tools

A lifelong computer enthusiast, Dave started programming at five and began building web applications around 2001. NoBagrets is his answer to a familiar thought: “There’s gotta be a better way.”

Meet the Guy Who Decided to Build This Thing

That's me…Dave. Hi! 👋

I've been obsessed with computers for pretty much my entire life. I started programming when I was five years old on a Mattel Aquarius computer, using BASIC to write incredibly sophisticated programs like:

10 PRINT "What is your name?"
20 INPUT A$
30 PRINT "Your name is "; A$

Groundbreaking stuff, I know.

But that little computer started something that never really stopped.

Around 2001, I got into building web-based applications. Suddenly, websites could do more than display a few pictures and paragraphs. Connecting websites to databases meant you could build systems that actually did things.

And I was hooked.

Before long, I was building custom systems for some pretty large corporate clients. Back when companies were still faxing information back and forth, I was developing applications that let them exchange that same information almost instantly.

From there came e-commerce, business management systems, logistics applications, and more custom software projects than I could possibly remember.

I've spent most of my life figuring out how to make technology do useful things, usually because I looked at how something worked and thought, "There's gotta be a better way."

Which brings us to NoBagrets.

After nearly six years of dealing with Facebook BST groups, I finally decided that instead of complaining about everything Facebook doesn't do, maybe I should build something that actually does it.

Seemed like a perfectly reasonable idea at the time.

Alicia knows the community

Alicia started SoRetro and has handled much of the day-to-day work in the BST group. She brings firsthand knowledge of what members need - and helps keep the ideas grounded in real buying and selling.

And What About Alicia?

Well, if you've ever bought anything from SoRetro or spent time in our BST group, there's a good chance you already know her.

Alicia is the one who started SoRetro, and she's also been the one doing most of the day-to-day management of our BST group for the past six years.

In other words, she's the one who's actually had to deal with a lot of the nonsense we're trying to fix.

She's been instrumental in developing the overall concept for NoBagrets, figuring out what our community needs, and helping shape what this platform should become.

While I'm usually buried in the technical details, databases, servers, and figuring out how to make everything work, Alicia brings the perspective of someone who knows the community, understands the buying and selling experience, and isn't afraid to tell me when one of my brilliant ideas isn't actually all that brilliant.

She's also busy running SoRetro, so I've been handling most of the actual development of NoBagrets.

It's a pretty good arrangement, although I suspect she'd appreciate it if I occasionally stopped talking about programming, databases, and servers over dinner.

A community beyond one brand

NoBagrets starts with brands our community knows, but it isn’t a SoRetro-only marketplace. We want to bring bag enthusiasts together, help members build reputations, and make it easier to find the right gear.

More Than Just Another Marketplace

One of the biggest things we want to accomplish with NoBagrets is helping buyers and sellers feel more confident doing business with each other.

Anyone who's spent time in a BST group knows how much trust matters.

Is this seller legitimate? Have other people had good experiences with them? Is the listing accurate? Will the buyer actually follow through?

We want NoBagrets to make it easier for members to build reputations, communicate with each other, find what they're looking for, and make informed decisions about who they're doing business with.

We also want to bring together the many different bag communities that are currently scattered across Facebook.

We're starting with brands that we know and are familiar to our community, but this isn't intended to be a SoRetro-only marketplace. We want to welcome collectors and enthusiasts from a wide range of established bag and accessory brands, and let our members help guide which brands we add next.

For now, we're intentionally keeping the focus pretty narrow. We think there's something valuable about having a dedicated, more private community where everyone is there for the same general reason.

And unlike the giant resale marketplaces, we want to keep costs as low as we reasonably can.

We're not pretending a website runs on sunshine and good intentions. Servers, software, maintenance, and development all cost money. But we don't believe buying and selling a bag should require giving away a ridiculous percentage of the transaction.

Buy it. Sell it. Trade it. No Bagrets.

Find a bag you love. If it stops being your thing, pass it to someone who’ll love it next. That’s the spirit behind the name - and a big part of what makes this community fun.

So What's With the Name?

If you've been around the SoRetro community for a while, you've probably heard the phrase No Bagrets.

It's our slightly ridiculous take on "No Regrets," with some inspiration from a certain horribly misspelled tattoo.

The idea is pretty simple.

See a bag you love? Buy it.

Decide later it's not really your thing? Sell it to someone else who'll love it.

That's one of the things we enjoy most about the bag community. Bags get bought, sold, traded, collected, and passed along to new owners. Sometimes the fun is as much about finding the next bag as it is about owning it.

And if we can make that whole process easier, more enjoyable, and a little less risky, even better.

Built with you

We’re two people building something we’d want to use ourselves. We won’t get everything perfect at once, but we’ll listen, fix what doesn’t work, and keep making it better.

We're Just Getting Started

NoBagrets isn't being built by some giant tech company or a group of investors looking for the next billion-dollar startup.

It's us.

Two people who've spent years working together, running businesses, and being part of this community. One of us knows firsthand what it takes to manage a busy BST group, and the other has spent most of his life building software and is perhaps a little too enthusiastic about solving problems with technology.

We're putting a lot of thought, time, and effort into making NoBagrets something we'd actually want to use ourselves.

Will we get everything perfect right out of the gate?

Not a chance.

Will we listen to our members, fix things that don't work, and keep trying to make it better?

Absolutely.

We want this to become a place where people feel comfortable buying, selling, trading, discovering new brands, and connecting with others who share their enthusiasm for bags.

And most importantly, we want NoBagrets to be a place built for the community, shaped by the people who use it, and free from the whims of whatever Facebook decides to screw up next.