What if you could snap pictures of an old couch, last semester’s textbook and an extra yoga mat, name your price and then post them for sale in a few seconds, all from your smartphone? One University of Massachusetts graduate wants to make a mobile Craigslist for college students, starting with those getting their diplomas in Boston.
Classy drops in the App Store on Monday, just in time for students’ move-in day. The super slick and simple-to-use app allows students to safely spin a profit on their leftover stuff, from outgrown clothing to an old iPhone. It’s also the first of three fledgling companies within Paul English’s highly selective startup hatchery Blade to launch.
The idea for a students-only digital marketplace came to Founder Mike MacLean when he was finishing up college a few years ago. At the end of a semester, a professor asked MacLean and his peers to jot down their names and cell numbers on a piece of paper if they were interested in having their book be resold to the next class.
“The way people buy and sell textbooks between each other is a really antiquated system,” MacLean told BostInno. “There was no good solution for the peer-to-peer selling of textbooks.” He then got to building a digital solution to solve that problem called TextMarlin, which he piloted on his alma mater’s campus last December.
Since joining Blade this spring, MacLean and English expanded the categories and changed the name to Classy – a riff off of classifieds, actual college classes and generally being a classier and safer way to sell items, explained MacLean. The actual look and feel of the app, however, came from Brian Kalma, who headed up design at Zappos, Gilt Groupe and Ministry of Supply prior to becoming the in-house designer at Blade.
Here’s how it works: Users sign in using their “.edu” email address, which is then verified by their Facebook account. They can click on one of the initial categories of items – books, electronics, fashion or other – and scroll through tiled pictures of postings to see what’s for sale at a given school. To check out an item, users simply click on a photo and see the expanded listing, with price and description, and can then make a bid. To post an item for sale, users just snap a picture of the unwanted item, set the title and price tag, and it’s immediately available for sale. When a prospective buyer shows interest, both parties can decide where on campus they want to meet to exchange goods for cash.
There’s room in Classy to adapt to the way users find the app most helpful. “We’re carefully tracking how much is sold in each option,” added English. “If we see people listing a lot of furniture, your app automatically will get 'furniture' as a category.”
To begin, Classy will be available to students at Boston University, Babson College, Harvard University and Northeastern University. Over the next few weeks, the app will become available on more campuses in the area, said MacLean. The Blade team aims to push an Android version of Classy out by late September.
