Nexus Trade began as a club on the campus of The College of New Jersey. It was started by Ravi Kaneriya, Omar Selim, and Matthew Civiletti around 2003. The goal of the club was to let students list their books for sale and then have other students buy those books from them. There was no shipping involved because everyone was on the same campus. Nexus Trade took the book's list prices and recommended a sale price that was lower than list but higher than what the college bookstore would give for used books (when they would take them, as they often didn't if they had enough of a certain book). The original Nexus Trade even handled the book and money transfer, taking a small fee in return for guiding the transaction from the seller to the buyer. In 2004 Jason Schramm met Ravi and Matt and joined Nexus Trade. Jason brought with him an idea of a site that would list all of the books students would need for their classes, enabling them to find those books cheaper at places other than their college bookstore. Many college bookstores keep their book lists secret don't give out ISBN numbers digitally. This idea would prove challenging and it would ultimately be shelved.
With Jason's added technical background, the Nexus Trade website was revamped from a simple excel spreadsheet listing books for sale to a php/mysql website that let users add and remove books for sale. Books that were sold went into a queue where a Nexus Trade staffer would find the information needed to contact the buyer and seller and organize the book and money transfer. They would contact the seller to make sure they still had the book and were closeby. They would then contact the buyer to arrange to get the money from them. Then they would bring the money, minus a small fee, to the seller. From there they brought the book to the buyer and completed the transaction. The website enabled all of this to be tracked through the major steps in the process.
Nexus Trade moved along at a slow pace and did help students save some money, but it was never marketed well and the students running it had less and less time for it. The Student Government Association worked with Nexus Trade to bring the service to students, and there was some positive local press, but there was never enough uptake from the student body beyond the initial Business Student interest to build momentum. It was also a system that required a lot of time and effort from the Nexus Trade staff. Often by the time sellers were contacted they had sold their book elsewhere or they couldn't be contacted when the buyer needed the book. On December 20, 2005 Nexus Trade the TCNJ club shut down. You can read Ravi's farewell email here. The Nexus Trade website was then merged into Jason Schramm's uBazaar.com venture that aimed to replicate the goals of Nexus Trade, and hopefully implement Jason's book list vision.
Stay tuned for the rest of the story. Coming up: fighting the bookstore, winning 2nd place in the business plan competition, and where it all went wrong.
Published January 2, 2010.
Links:
The Signal (TCNJ campus newspaper): Students save with Nexus Trade - March 31, 2004