My name is Memo Torre, and I am a senior here at SMU. The idea surged in May 2010.
My semester was ending, and I was looking forward to getting rid of my textbooks. I knew that my only easy, quick option was the bookstore. So, I headed over to SMU’s Barnes and Noble. I handed my books to the sales person and received a meager $150. This came out to be 18.75 percent of the $800 I paid for the same textbooks at the beginning of the semester in January.
You don’t have to be a business major to realize this is one of the worst business deals. And yet, most of us passively engage in this unreasonable transaction every semester. My frustrations from this situation led me to think of an alternative. I was desperate for a better option.
I started brainstorming. I wrote down everything that came to my head about potential alternatives that would avoid financial intermediaries from reaping unfair gains and at the same time provide benefits to those buyers and sellers wishing to partake in this option.
I called Federico, my brother, updated him on my idea and agreed that the optimal solution to this alternative would be to create an internet website that provides an online marketplace with exclusivity to students within that campus. For example, registration on www.campustk.com/smu requires only an SMU e-mail address. All you need to do is register to post an item for sale and anyone can browse the listings posted by SMU users, even without registering.
This exclusive SMU online marketplace not only creates visibility of what is available by the SMU community for the SMU community, but it also offers a high degree of quality because you know and are guaranteed that these items are from within the SMU community.
With these positive characteristics in mind, by mid-June, Fede and I finally started to concretize our idea.
Due to some programming difficulties with the website, I was convinced I was going to have to hire a freelance website designer to create our website. Here is where my brother came to the rescue.
We made a formal contract and created a business partnership. This seemed like a strange and unnecessary step to take to work with my brother, but we decided that the more professional every aspect of our endeavor was, the better.
Federico applied himself, learned the computer languages necessary and created www.campustk.com/smu.
He met the deadline for the launch on August 23, 2010.
Keeping true to our original motives, CampusTK (Campus Trading Kit) is a non profit, exclusive online marketplace for the entire SMU community. It serves as a platform where students can buy, sell and trade. Its objective is to facilitate the transferring of resources from one student to another. Categories include apartments, academic services, appliances, babysitting, bicycles, computers, electronics, sporting equipment and textbooks.
Many students have already benefitted from this platform, and much appreciation has been shared. This is a testimonial from Lucie Wang: “My name is Lucie, and I’m a senior at SMU. I just wanted to take a minute and say thank you for finally having CampusTK.com happen at SMU. Ever since I transferred to SMU from Hawaii Pacific University last fall, I’ve been wondering why there’s no such an access at SMU. It doesn’t make any sense! My school HPU has a great and mature system, which definitely spoiled me. So, thank you! And moreover, I would love to help and contribute in any way. Thank you, pioneers!”
Be sure to help build this site by creating an account so that this can become a useful tool for the campus.
It is a necessary venture that serves to benefit every student on campus. There is no reason why other universities should have access to such resources, while SMU does not. No longer will that be the case.
On behalf of CampusTK.com, thank you. I hope you find this exclusive SMU online marketplace helpful.
Furthermore, if you would like to see any changes or any possible improvements to the website, please let me know. I hope this will be a useful service and alleviate the unnecessary cost that we, as students, have incurred in the past.
Guillermo Torre is a senior economics with financial applications major. He can be reached for comments and questions at [email protected]
