Buying and selling textbooks can be an expensive hassle.
But electrical engineering junior Hans Weggeman is looking to remedy that by creating Stroupp.com, a website aimed to directly facilitate textbook sales and exchanges between students.
Weggeman sought to solve the problem of high textbook prices, which can top $200, and stores’ buy-back programs that offer significantly less than retail price in exchange.
Lauren Merrell, psychology sophomore, said she has had more than her fair share of trouble going through the usual textbook channels. Good deals are not always available online, where she checks first, but the bookstore remains a last resort.
“The bookstore is always so packed, and the books are a lot more expensive,” she said. “It’s just a pain.”
In the interest of relieving some of that pain, the site features listings of every class offered by the University. After creating an account with the site, students “register” for their enrolled classes and post classified ads specifying books they are looking to buy or sell.
Weggeman said he came up with the idea last semester after realizing many students want to sell old textbooks to other students but had no way of contacting would-be buyers. The problem, he said, was a lack of specialization.
“You have sites like Amazon or Craigslist where you can sell anything,” Weggeman said. “But when you want to sell one specific thing, whether it be textbooks or something else, there’s no medium for that. Students have been overlooked.”
Still in its early stages, Stroupp currently caters only to LSU students. Weggeman said he plans to use social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to establish a client base, but he does not currently intend to integrate the site with social networks.
For the moment, Weggeman said “it’s more about simplifying the process than making a profit. But then, so many sites are developed not for profit. I never would have thought that Twitter would take off. We’ll see how things go, but to expand is definitely possible.”
Weggeman also credits outside sources that helped establish the technical foundation of the site. Using open-source software available to anyone, he was able to create the site’s intuitive interface, which he admits he could not have done alone.
“[The creation of the site] has been a combination of creating and modifying to create a robust marketplace,” Weggeman said. “With open-source technology and a background in coding, there is a lot that’s possible.”
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Contact Gordon Brillon at [email protected]