GTlist moves textbook exchanges online

What started as a quick online reference for the brothers at Pi Kappa Phi to buy and sell their textbooks among themselves has now grown into a campus-wide enterprise.

The site www.GTlist.net is an online forum for campus-based buyers and sellers to list and review each other's wares. Now clocking around 5000 hits a day, GTlist is a fast-growing service that seeks to fill a need currently underserved-the logistical coordination of on-campus buyers and sellers, particularly that of textbooks.

Andrew Talerico, a first-year Chemical Engineering major and the founder of GTlist, sees his venture as unique and best-suited to capture the attention of online traders at Tech.

"We are students for students. There's no shipping costs with our sales. Also, students can sell their books for more than the campus bookstore will buy them back for," Talerico said, comparing his effort to established competitors such as Amazon and eBay.

Having coordinated a pre-semester textbook exchange effort within his fraternity, Talerico said he saw the messiness of the entire approach and sought to create a method to the madness.

"I saw what happened when people bought and sold books to each other and said 'hey guys, let's have a better spot, let's exchange stuff online.' Then I took the success to other campus users [by starting GTlist] and it's been great ever since," Talerico said.

Talerico hopes that by enabling students to cut out the middleman and splitting the difference between buyer and seller, students ultimately benefit from lowered costs for college essentials, like textbooks.

It is not a concept that is new to anyone who has bought a book from another student, but an organized medium to sort the availability of general textbook stocks among sellers has been generally lacking.

By cataloging the types of products users sell on his site, Talerico hopes to make it easier for users to access exactly what they need without having to traverse through a list of unrelated posts, as one would have to do if buying from a newsgroup like git.ads.

The site offers a clean, simple user interface that is personalized to Tech users compared to the convoluted look of competing listing sites like www.craigslist.com and www.collegemedium.com.

It offers a more organized approach to coordinating multiple buyers and sellers of the same book than can be achieved through individual newsgroup postings.

Finally, GTlist has some advantage over big names like Amazon because all the participants are local and by avoiding shipping, they can execute transactions much faster and without the associated costs.

While there exists no data on the volume traded on a daily basis, Talerico estimated that the volume of traffic on his site implies a significant number of sales coordinated off his site.

What is more, a range of items from TV's to gaming consoles to motorcycles to cars have been put up for sale on GTlist.

"Books are about 60 percent of all our sales now, but I hope for that number to change," Talerico said.

GTlist has been designed as a free service to all students at Tech, and Talerico intends for it to remain that way.

Even though the site does not earn a profit by acting as a medium between campus buyers and sellers, it is incorporated as a company and has some aspiration to grow in volume.

"I have nine people working for me and I just hired one the other day. We're a growing company and I want people to be able to get practical experience by working here," Talerico said.

Pressed about future plans for his company, Talerico was coy and demurred over the question.

"I just want to grow [the company]. That's my intention. I plan to make this Tech's place for everything," Talerico said.