We’ve seen many new marketplaces pop up over the years, most of which don’t have any hope of succeeding in terms of the size of eBay and Amazon. Those that do tend to be niche serving a particular niche or audience.
One such site is StudentClutter, launched by students at Aston University, a platform that allows students to independently buy and sell items on their university campus.
The founders, Abid Tejani and Neil Kumar, say that they found themselves like many other students, falling into the ‘first year trap’ of buying every single textbook for all the modules. Not only was this an unnecessary expense, but the majority of the books went untouched! A few months later the university campus overflowing with fliers from second and final year students trying to sell their clutter. This included textbooks, clothing and furniture, with students advertising textbooks for half the price!
They realized that there was no universal platform for students to buy and sell items on their university campus. This is how StudentClutter was born.
Students can post ads for free earning extra cash with very little effort and reply to ads without the need to create an account. All transactions are carried out locally on campus. This means no delivery charges or trips to the Post Office, no payment technology or chargebacks to worry about and the ability to buy and sell within minutes.
StudentClutter.com aims to monetise the site by selling student entrepreneurs advertising space on the website, giving them the first stepping-stone to getting their business off the ground. Of course it would be no surprise for outside businesses wanting to market to the student population were allowed to advertise on the site in the future.
The aim is to extend the site by adding in every University Campus in the country. This has a Facebook feel to me which also began at Universities. Harvard might be thousands of miles away from Aston, but students are a close knit community and StudentClutter has a reasonable chance of success.
7 Responses
Unlike facebook, I feel they’re going to get a lot of opposition from those universities. Good luck to them.
A friend of mine set up a ‘Student Swop Shop’ site in like 1998 and it did quite well in the Midlands but I do remember opposition from universities was the main block and NOT demand for service.
What a great idea – and good luck to them!
To be honest, I would think that apart from blocking the website on University servers, there’s very little that the Universities can do to oppose something like this.
Just set up a facebook group. My daughter buys/sells exchanges baby stuff everyday, locally, cash on collection. It works well. She has no use of the likes of ebay etc, too slow, too far, too much hassle and fees!
I suspect the advertising revenue will be a lot less than they think (especially if they go for “student entrepreneurs” rather than pizza shops).