CampusExposure.com, Cornell University’s new online marketplace, has an estimated 150 products sold after launching on Aug. 21.
Founders Evan King ‘17, and Corey Dean ‘17, met freshman year and are now website developers and business partners.
CampusExposure is an alternative outlet to buy and sell personal items created solely for Cornell’s campus.
After negative experiences in the bookstore to sell back textbooks, King and Dean felt inclined to create a platform where students could receive back the amount of money they knowingly deserved.
“I had about 400 dollars worth of books, and all I got back was about 40 bucks and a candy bar,” King said.
First developing the site in December 2014, they strategized to create a simple and user-friendly site while balancing their class work and extracurricular activities.
“We started from scratch,” Dean said. “We read a lot of books, watched YouTube videos, and researched information online.”
Comparable to already existing sites such as Craigslist and eBay, King and Dean believe their outlet is simpler than their competitors.
“People in Ithaca are hesitant to use Craigslist because they associate the greater community as sketchy,” King said.
Devoted to the Cornell student body, anyone can view the site, but only Cornell students can participate in buying and selling items. The site requires each student to enter his or her Cornell email address to verify his or her attendance.
“People always think there’s a catch and ask what the incentive is, but there is none,” King said.
King and Dean receive zero compensation for sales or users. They aim to make their outlet searchable, and Cornell affiliated.
“It doesn’t matter to us if you use the website or not, it’s here for your benefit,” Dean said.
Brian Chantrupon, a freshman mechanical engineer major, first heard about CampusExposure through Cornell’s free and for sale Internet page. He came across the link and decided to click and view the new media outlet.
“This site markets out to Cornell students and devotes itself to the Cornell community,” he said.
Chantrupon explains his buying process on the site to be extremely easy. After browsing and finding the items he was interested in purchasing, a brief email exchange was done between himself and the seller. He then met with the seller, and the items were in his possession.
“This site emphasizes the universities community, making it safer and more comfortable to use,” Chantrupon said.
King and Dean track all the website’s traffic using Google Analytics. They monitor it on their phones daily and are able to see how many students are registered, the number of current viewers, and posts that have been created.
They can’t track if a sale occurs, but assume a purchase has been made once an advertisement has been taken down.
“We just provide the platform for sales to be made,” King said. “We know nothing about what happens after that. There’s no way of tracking if the sale happened.”
King and Dean are responsible for monitoring, managing, and marketing their outlet. They are not interested in formulating a team for more assistance.
With posters, stickers, flyers and t-shirts, they advertise their newly developed site everyday.
“It’s been huge chunk of our time, but it has been incredibly successful,” King said.
Dean explains that the two spend most of their days together.
“We meet up in the morning and figure out our marketing plan for the day,” Dean said. “We know people will use the site once they find out about it.”
Requests to expand CampusExposure have been made by students from nearby schools like Colgate University and Syracuse University.
“The end of the semester will be a good time to judge if we would like to expand to other institutions,” Dean said.
