Zaarly Anywhere: buy anything you see online, custom made for you

Zaarly, the online marketplace where users find and hire talented local builders and artisans, is announcing a new “Zaarly Anywhere” initiative that allows any site to enable offline commerce from online content.

This comes just a month after the local shopping startup integrated with The Fancy to enable social commerce on that Pinterest competitor.

Zaarly users have already requested $30 million in custom projects, such as building a custom treehouse or setting up Christmas lights. But the new initiative broadens the reach of Zaarly-style local commerce to every site on the internet, significantly extending the number of internet users who can participate and enabling publishers to monetize their content in new ways.

“For example,” Zaarly chief executive Bo Fishback told VentureBeat, “someone might see a recipe on the EveryDay Health website, which has millions of unique monthly visitors, and click the Zaarly button to get it made for them.”

Above: Zaarly on a recipe at Cookstr … right with the like and tweet buttons

Image Credit: Cookstr

When users see an interesting item on a participating website — perhaps a custom-made table, or an amazing cake — they can click the Zaarly button. That creates a request on Zaarly’s website that skilled local creators can bid on. When the potential buyer picks one of the bids, a deal will be consummated, and the original participating site gets a share of the revenue.

Early partners using the Zaarly API also include the LA Times, Cookstr, and IKEA Hackers. But Fishback told VentureBeat that it’s simple for any site to join.

“It’s as simple as putting a Facebook-like button up,” Fishback said. “You could literally put it up on your personal blog … and even match the colors of your site.”

Fishback has eaten his own dogfood … he used the service to get a raised garden built in his backyard. The expert who built it for him turned out to be a farmer for 30 years and an expert in raised gardens.

The service is designed for custom, personalized items and services, not products you can buy at Amazon.com.

“Sites like The Fancy have their own e-commerce for commercial items like a Rolex watch,” Fishback says. “But other things, such as home improvement projects … there’s nowhere to go for that.”

That’s exactly where Zaarly excels.

Zaarly was founded in 2011 and has investments from Kleiner Perkins as well as super-angels such as Ron Conway and Paul Buchheit. The company is based in San Francisco.

Image credit: PixelBliss/ShutterStock