Three St. Thomas entrepreneurship students recently created U-Exchange 13, an online business that allows students to sell gently used school apparel and various items to others on campus.

Junior Gretchen Hoffman and sophomores Paul Jacobs and Trevor Smith started the business two weeks ago in hopes of establishing a unique yet sensible way to make money and benefit students.

“It’s kind of like a Craigslist, except it’s unique to on campus. It’s kind of a convenient way for students to exchange items they would like to make money for,” Jacobs said.

The website primarily features St. Thomas apparel, but other types of clothing are available as well, such as sweatshirts and lounge pants. Hoffman said the group hopes to sell feature items, with Christmas sweaters as a potential for the holiday season.

Freshman Maddie Ley said re-sale websites like this are often beneficial for college students.

“We don’t necessarily have time to go out shopping, or we don’t have a car, so it’s more accessible to us,” Ley said.

To sell an item on U-Exchange 13, sellers take a picture of the item and email it to the team members, who then upload it to the website. The group has an “exchange-the-item” day where the seller meets the buyer at a neutral location to exchange the item, Jacobs said.

The group created the business in professor Alec John’s entrepreneurship class. They were assigned to develop a product or service and achieve a minimum revenue of $200.

Johnson said this business is unique compared to his previous classes.

“U-Exchange 13 is the first time this has come up,” Johnson said. “We have had similar attempts to solve, for example, buying and selling of textbooks and other campus and dorm items, but I like UE13 because of the focus. In many businesses, a simple offering is the best.”

Hoffman said the group suggests prices for the sellers based on research of current resale market items. She said most items sell at 50 percent of retail value.

Freshman Tristan Goblirsch said discounted prices like this are what draw him into resale sites.

“It’s easy to get products, and it’s easy to sell products that you don’t need or that you really need quickly and you don’t have the money to pay for,” Goblirsch said.

Jacobs said the group’s biggest obstacle has been gaining attention. He said people have given positive feedback after hearing about the site, but the sales do not match up with the interest so far.

“Our challenge lies within attracting students to use it at their disposal,” Jacobs said.

This is true of junior Rachel Weber, who said she mainly uses online re-sale sites to buy textbooks, but not for nonessential things like clothing.

“I don’t typically buy (other items) very frequently,” Weber said.

Hoffman said U-Exchange 13 hopes to branch out. Hoffman, Jacobs and Smith have been passing out fliers and business cards and plan to create a Facebook page and Twitter account soon. If the business gains popularity, it would like to broaden the amount and variety of items they host, Jacobs said.

The idea came up after a lot of brainstorming and thought as to what was possible for college students to create, Hoffman said.

“No one has really come up with this idea before, so it’s kind of something new to campus and a good way to get Tommie apparel,” Hoffman said.

Lauren Smith can be reached at smit7607@stthomas.edu.