The Trade Me Project: How a Bobby Pin Became a House

Can you turn a hairpin into a house?

This is the question Demi Skipper set out to answer in May 2020, when she posted an ordinary bobby pin to trade on Facebook Marketplace. She had two rules: no trading with anyone she knew, and no spending her own money on trades. Twenty months and 28 trades later, she completed the final trade and took possession of a house.

How did she do it? It wasn't luck. Hard work, ingenuity, and a talent for negotiation were essential to executing the series of trades that lead from the hairpin to the house. Along the way she sent around 300,000 messages, enlisted the help of strangers to drive vehicles across the country, and went deep into the world of "sneakerheads" in pursuit of the perfect trade, all while documenting her progress and amassing an audience of millions on TikTok.

From the crushing disappointments to the surprising successes, Demi shares the behind-the-scenes stories of her first successful trading project and the life lessons she's applying as she starts the process again. It's an engrossing story for anyone who wonders, How did she do that? Could I do it too?


About the Author
Demi Skipper is a TikTok influencer based in San Francisco, CA. In 2020, Demi started the Trade Me Project with the goal of trading a bobby pin for items of progressively greater value, concluding with the trade of a trailer for a house. Demi documented her journey on TikTok (@trademeproject), sharing the details of each trade as well as the scrappy hustle it takes to successfully make the exchanges happen. Over the course of 20 months, her project went viral and she amassed 5 million followers. In addition to trading, Demi has a background in tech and has worked for Apple and OpenTable. She is currently a project manager at Square focused on new feature ideation.