Business as Usual

I am sitting writing this now, in my twilight days as a first-year student, peering out of a window to a particularly run-down, desperate looking Cranbrook Avenue. This depressive landscape is the fault of the students. There are Televisions, books, and a paddling pool lying about, unwanted and dumped. These items are destined to help further damage our volatile planet, and will contribute to the inevitable destruction of Yorkshire. Yet I am smiling. Not because I have just nicked somebody’s perfectly good telly, and am sitting on their discarded sofa reading their copy of Robinson Crusoe, no, I am upbeat about how the Avenues will look in a year’s time. At the fresher’s fair you will find, sandwiched between that sports team you really should join and the incessant members of Hullfire encouraging you to pick up a pen, three young entrepreneurs advertising their incredibly simple yet useful project.

MyUniSwap.com is a website designed by students, fed up of watching their fellow loafers make waste of unwanted items, which could easily be used by someone else, or recycled. Once registered on the site, anyone, be it student or lecturer, can advertise their unwanted books, appliances, furniture or, well, anything. The site essentially brings the seller to the customer, which allows for negotiations over price to take place. Items can be swapped, bought and sold online, and there is no commission charge levied by the site’s caretakers. It is an endearing prospect that all the junk currently clogging my eyesight could be loaded onto freshers next year. It is perhaps more relevant, however, that come the first week of lectures in September, I can save some cash by buying or simply receiving books from students in the year above. As an incentive for using the site and recycling, a points table is in operation. If you give something away for free on the site, you gain 20 points, with 10 and 5 points respectively granted for selling and buying goods. Once you have gained enough points, prizes of an alcoholic or transport persuasion can be claimed.

The three students, Kola, Luke and Phill study courses under the umbrella of business. It is unsurprising, therefore, to find that the website is as professional and thorough as the business concept. These lads wish to create a strong user base in Hull, alerting students to the benefits of recycling and reusing seemingly defunct goods. From there, MyUniSwap.com plans to reach out to other UK universities, thus ensuring that students, as one of the largest population groups in the country, become more aware of what it means to be ‘green’ and hopefully take that knowledge away with their degrees. Irritatingly, that reads as a clichéd ideal, although it is undeniable that these environmental objectives have helped this business to bloom. The esteemed gents in charge of this business pitched the idea to UNLTD, a student enterprise funding agency, who subsequently provided MyUniSwap.com Ltd with £4460, to build and advertise their website. The University itself takes pride in its student business opportunities, with Xing Smoothies frequently taking up pages in your favourite magazine. The Enterprise Centre should be open by the time you read this, offering to help fund and advise student projects. Throughout the process in creating this particular business, the University has offered £1000 and endless advice. It is heartening to write that these businesses can only grow, and prove further the positive nature of the University’s business potential.

The largest difficulty the business faces is competition from worldwide rivals such as eBay, but Kola is certain that the personal aspect of the business will be enough to attract a sufficient audience. His confidence is based on the website’s face-to-face basis, and the opportunity to gain something for nothing. It is an ambitious endeavour, but one which seems destined for success. We have already seen how effective student business in Hull can be, and MyUniSwap.com’s environmental and social concerns have convinced me that we could be on the verge of a rather special local transformation. For now, though, that paddling pool looks awfully tempting.

Alex Johnston

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