Move out of the way, eBay—DukeBid.com is sauntering into Duke’s e-commerce scene.
Conceived by Duke Student Government last semester and created over winter break, DukeBid.com provides the only online market specifically for Duke students and faculty. The Internet auction site, modeled after eBay, allows users to buy and sell items, including clothes, furniture, jewelry and textbooks. The site differs from eBay, however, because buyers and sellers have to meet to complete a transaction; no money is sent prior to receiving the item.
DukeBid.com is already beginning to claim a space on the “favorites” toolbar of many Duke community members.
“The site was so popular in the first day and got so many hits, that it is now shut down,” senior Aneil Lala, creator of DukeBid.com and DSG’s chief of staff, said earlier this week. “Approximately 250 students registered in the first eight hours of operation with more than 4,000 hits. We are now upgrading the server to handle more traffic, and it will hopefully be up later this week.”
Lala attributes much of the site’s popularity to the Duke community’s perceived need for it.
“We are hoping that DukeBid.com will—in good spirit—compete with the Duke stores for customers,” Lala said. “Right now, there is a large spread between how much the Duke stores will buy books and sell them [for], and we hope DukeBid.com will provide more competition and another venue for students to buy and sell... cheaply.”
Many students, like junior Paul Varnado, have gripes with Duke Stores’ prices and see DukeBid.com as a potential remedy for their money woes.
“The Duke textbook store has long lines and a huge price markup on everything in their stock,” Varnado said. “It surprises me that almost everyone continues to pay above retail price for books from Duke when it’s not really any less convenient to order online.... I think [DukeBid.com is] a great idea for Duke students to save some money, particularly on textbooks.”
Echoing Varnado, sophomore David Lefty praised DSG for taking the initiative to create the site.
“It’s a great system for arbitraging the huge difference between the price the book store charges and the price they pay during book buy back,” Lefty said. “I’ve actually been thinking for a long time about creating a similar system for buying and selling books... but I guess [DSG] beat me to it.”
Despite DukeBid.com’s recent success, however, many students are either unaware of the website or remain pessimistic about its future.
“It probably won’t work very well unless it receives more publicity than it has now,” sophomore Lauren Morse said. “The idea sounds promising, but if students don’t know much about it, they’ll be reluctant to use it.”
Morse noted that DukePass—a University-run pilot web portal for undergraduates—also has a message board where students can buy and sell books, but because it is not well-advertised, few students take advantage of it.
Still, Lala said, DSG believes that DukeBid.com “has a lot of potential to do a lot of business” and, based on initial user numbers, will become an increasingly popular market.
“The auction site will not only help students save money throughout their college career,” Lala said, “It will also provide an impetus for students to meet other members of the Duke community, including graduate students, faculty and anyone with an e-mail account.”
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