Why We Made Trusted Goods

Online product reviews are terrible. Full stop. Platforms like Amazon are inundated with bots and fake reviews. Retailers offer incentives—20% off, or a free product—in exchange for reviews. And most reviews are written the second after someone takes the product out of the box. How can anyone make an educated purchase with that? It has led to most products having 4 stars or higher, and the truth harder to find than ever.

That's why we created Trusted Goods. We wanted to provide a community for people to share authentic experiences of products they have used, good or bad.

Trusted Goods was started by me, Nate Mitka, and Brian Hafferkamp. I have experience in product reviews, product development, and product marketing. Brian's experience lies in software development.

At the start of my career, I worked at GearJunkie.com, an outdoor gear review website heralded as one of the most authentic and critical blogs on gear. I meticulously tested hundreds of products from the biggest brands and tiny start-ups you've never heard of. If you've ever searched for "Best Running Shoes" on Google, I was working on exactly those articles, not to mention in-depth single product reviews and brief "First Looks."

And yet, we still struggled to provide authentic reviews. If we had a big advertising deal from a brand whose products I was reviewing, it suddenly became a conflict of interest to write negatively of that brand. Or maybe we'd include them in a roundup they didn't deserve. And above all, we were competing with Google, trying to word-smith our articles to gain pole position on SEO. It wasn't a perfect blog, and this, unfortunately, is fairly common practice among most major product review outlets.

Later in my career, I worked in marketing for a consumer products brand, where I saw the other side firsthand. Brands get to control which reviews are published and which are hidden from the public eye. If a new puffy jacket has 2 reviews—one 1-star, one 5-star—that product suddenly looks unattractive with an average of 2.5 stars. So brands bury the negative ones. The power is entirely in their hands, not the consumer's.

The current state of online reviews has led to terrible shopping experiences: people ordering products that don't fit or don't work, and having to search endlessly to find authentic stories. Enter Trusted Goods.

We built Trusted Goods to place the power of reviews in your hands: the user, the tester, the community. There are no brand incentives here, no free products, no giveaways. We exist as a forum for people to share meaningful experiences of products that impact their lives—to help you make more informed purchasing decisions.

So go ahead, read some reviews, leave some comments, and tell us why a product is terrible or is the best thing on earth.

Nate and Brian.