Tradeversity is launching a new app for NC State this fall.

In order to make some spare change or get rid of old stuff, many college students try to sell used textbooks, furniture and appliances. Mike Meyers, co-founder and CEO of Tradeversity, realized this trend among students and created an online marketplace for students where they can buy and sell just about whatever they are looking for.

Tradeversity’s free mobile app is a safer, more localized marketplace exclusive to college students, according to Meyers. Tradeversity began as a website but has now grown to be a smartphone application as well. 

“It’s a place for students to find what they need for apartments or classes,” Meyers said. “Listing an item on Tradeversity is as easy as Instagramming your lunch for the day.” 

With Tradeversity, students can use their phones to snap a picture, give a 140-character description and categorize and price it, all on one screen, according to Meyers. 

“It’s not like an auctioning site,” said Lauren Harper, public relations and communications for Tradeversity. “It works like first come, first serve, but you can direct message students and bargain on prices.” 

Meyers launched Tradeversity after noticing a need for an online marketplace where students could easily buy and sell items while he was a student at the University of South Carolina. 

“If you look at every successful company, there’s a problem they tried to find a solution to,” Meyers said. “In school, fall September 2013, I was a student at USC just trying to sell items laying around, trying to make money to cover expenses.”

Meyers identified the three different outlets students mostly use to buy and sell items — eBay, Craigslist and Facebook — and he marked the flaws in each.

“There’s eBay, but the problem with that is that it’s an international site,” Meyers said. “There’s Craigslist, but you never know who you’re selling to. And then people also try to sell items on Facebook. The problem with [Facebook] is that it’s a social network. Every time you post something, it gets lost in the pages. So when I saw other USC students on Facebook who couldn’t sell their items, that’s why we created Tradeversity.”

Tradeversity started out as a simple platform where sellers listed their items, but has since grown.

“The app that we’re pushing now basically has all the features that our users from USC asked for, and we put it into an IOS iPhone app, Android app and then also a new website,” Meyers said.

In addition to NC State, Tradeversity is also launching at Virginia Tech, James Madison and, of course, the University of South Carolina.

In the future, Tradeversity plans to expand campus marketplaces to include other universities in close proximity, but for now, NC State students will only be able to buy and sell with other NC State students.

Tradeversity decided to launch a marketplace at NC State mainly because of the amount of students who reached out to the company. At Packapalooza, more than 400 NC State students signed up for information about the application, according to Meyers.

 “We had about 30 schools reach out to us,” Meyers said. “We chose NC State because it’s a large school; it’s a very good school. The quality of the students is very high, and we think we can make a good impact here.”

Mike and others on the team at Tradeversity said they felt they really connected to the students at NC State.

Harper agreed that NC State would be an ideal campus to launch Tradeversity.

“We know there’s always a need for it on campus, and we just figured NC State would be a great place to bring our service to,” Harper said.

Not only was the Tradeversity team encouraged to come to NC State to market the application, but it was also working to bring people to its team as brand ambassadors or other student jobs. 

“A big part of our company is creating jobs for students and encouraging student entrepreneurship,” Meyers said.

Tradeversity has been doing well in comparison to its competitors, Classy Mobile and CollegeCrap. Classy was Tradeversity’s biggest competitor, but the company recently went out of business, according to Meyers. However, Tradeversity is not much different from these apps. A buying-and-selling college student application is not a revolutionary idea. 

“Every student is trying to build something like this,” Meyers said. “Seeing all these competitors pop up is only validation that we’re doing the right thing. What makes us different is that the others are just websites, not apps. It’s like Craigslist — you list your item and hope it sells. We’re trying to build a community. We learn the behavior process of each user, so for example if a student is constantly looking for something, we’ll notify them if it’s listed. We want to be a service, rather than just, ‘hey you can list your item here.’”

Tradeversity tries to be as secure as possible for its users.

“Unfortunately, safety is something you can’t guarantee anywhere,” Meyers said. “We require all users to have email, so you’ll have an idea of who you’re dealing with like peers on campus.”

Students can upload profile photos, rate others and, most importantly, direct and private message other students.

“You’re not interacting with Raleigh locals or other universities,” Harper said. “It’s just other NC State users, so it makes it safer.”

Tradeversity will be launched and fully available in the App Store in two weeks.