By Jim Cavan

In less than a month, Seacoast businesses will find themselves featured on a brand new national classifieds site.

The site, DiggersList, is going local with the launch of a New Hampshire DiggersList, offering Seacoast residents a chance to buy and sell quality recycled building materials and supplies.

A California-based website launched last summer, DiggersList specializes in building materials, supplies, and services – all at cut rate cost, and all tailored to specific regions and cities. The website already houses individual sites for over a dozen cities across the country, and is currently gearing up to add a New Hampshire DiggersList in the coming weeks, partnering with Dover’s Habitat for Humanity ReStore and Green Alliance, a local green business union and discount co-op, to help bolster its inventory.

Aside from the familiar sounding name, the site looks and works much like craigslist; the main page is broken down into states, with cities and towns listed below. Once you click on a city, you get a lengthy list of projects, services, and materials – everything from fill dirt to fireplaces, cabinets to carpet, patios to paints and pools.

After years working as an insurance broker for contractors in Southern California, Diggerslist founder Matt Knox realized there really wasn’t an online outlet for excess materials and supplies from job sites. “When we started parsing out how we were going to do this, we realized craigslist wasn’t specific enough for what we wanted to do,” explains Knox. “Now that we’ve gone from a national site back to one focused more on communities and individual cities, it’s been really encouraging.”

The best part? It’s all free – free to join, free to use, and free to list, whether you’re a small business looking for another avenue to your customer or just someone who’s looking to get rid of an old wheelbarrow.

Tom Boisvert, Operations Manager at the Dover ReStore, is excited about the partnership and what it could do for local businesses. “This is a great way to increase our exposure, as well as the exposure of Diggerslist,” says Boisvert. “We feel by starting off with an extensive list of materials, we’ll help Digger’s list get off to a good start here on the Seacoast.”

The site includes a number of features which set it apart from craigslist, including promotional videos, a full-time blog, photo albums, a job listing where builders can bid on contracts and projects, and a “builder’s forum” where those in the industry can post their profiles and contact information. Thus far a number of local builders, contractors, and companies – including many represented in the Green Alliance – are slated to be featured on the New Hampshire Diggerslist site.

The result, according to GA Director Sarah Brown, is a New Hampshire DiggersList that is thoroughly green. “When you think about how much is going to be available and how close it will all be, it’s really remarkable,” says Brown. “Short of spending your money at a big box store, it’s hard to imagine a more convenient source for building supplies and materials – and you can feel a lot better about it knowing it’s recycled!”

In order for a region or city to be launched, 200 people have to register and recommend the portal. As of early this week New Hampshire Diggerslist only had 48 “votes” left to go before it can be made public.

The New Hampshire DiggersList already has a burgeoning inventory of products, services, contractors, and businesses including ReStore (Dover), Ultra Geothermal (Barrington), SEA Solar Store (Dover), Ridgeview Construction (Deerfield), Scarponi Electric (Rochester), ZESstudio (Lee), as well as the GA itself. Products range from countertops and windows to refrigerators and hot tubs.

The plan is for the New Hampshire portal to have as much inventory as possible when the site goes live in the coming weeks.

To learn more about DiggersList and to register for their New Hampshire site, go to www.diggerslist.com