Northwestern’s newest online classifieds website, designed to revolutionize how things are bought and sold on campus, will premiere Monday, according to Hiro Kawashima, president of Dream Sure Group, LLC, the web development and marketing firm overseeing the site.
NUBodega.com was born out of necessity and frustration, said David Jin, one of the website’s founders.
After personally having trouble finding off-campus housing and selling back textbooks, Jin said he decided to start work on a Northwestern-specific alternative to large, online auction sites like eBay and Craigslist.
“We would love for this to be a place where the whole campus can exchange things,” the McCormick junior said.
Like Craigslist, NUBodega allows NU students to make contact with other buyers and sellers on the Internet first before they arrange for an in-person, cash transaction.
Users can list items in any of eight different categories, including textbooks to concert tickets.
In the past, the Associated Student Government and the online, student-founded NUlist.org tried to create similar online platforms for student buyers and sellers, but neither ended up being very user-friendly or generating significant buzz on campus, Kawashima said.
The demand for such a service is still evident, he said. NU students find themselves forced to either use larger sites like Craigslist or sell for lower prices in the bookstore at Norris University Center or at Beck’s bookstores.
“Our market research has shown that 37 percent of your money is lost when you do transactions through Norris or Beck’s,” the Weinberg junior said.
NUBodega started with a soft launch of the website in October, advertising the service to different student groups and organizations to test the site’s usability.
Since then 115 students have registered as NUBodega users, close to 100 items have been listed and the site has received more than 7,000 page views, Kawashima said.
But after Monday, they hope to bring in an additional 500 users and 1,200 listings, he said.
The group is primarily focusing its efforts on preparing for reading and finals weeks, because most students will be trying to get rid of their Fall Quarter textbooks. That’s when they expect to see a huge spike in user activity, Kawashima said.
Moving forward, they want to bring the concept of NUBodega to several other schools, including the University of Wisconsin, New York University and Brown University, said Weinberg Luke Lopatka, who runs NUBodega’s advertising.
Jin said they’ve strived to make students’ experience with NUBodega “friendly and fast.”
“We are especially proud of how simple it is: registration takes seconds, and you could have an item up in a few minutes,” Jin said.
Limited to a core group of six students, Jin said the site’s small size gives them the ability to make additions to the site almost instantly.
The website is for profit, making enough revenue through page advertisements to sustain itself, Lopatka said.
Otherwise, there is no cost for students to register and use the site. Kawashima said there is an option for users to pay $2 to upgrade their listings to featured status, giving it a place at the top of the page for a 60-day period.
As they start reaching out to more landlords and realtors in Evanston, he said they plan to also charge them small fines to display their properties on the website.
“We’re hoping that the external marketplace can fund a market for Northwestern students,” Kawashima said.
