After experiencing difficulties buying and selling textbooks at Cornell, Julian Koh ’20 and Jörg Doku ’17 developed a website called Doku Market, which they say allows students to buy and sell items at the click of a button.
Koh and Doku — who met in “Entrepreneur and Private Equity,” an entrepreneurship class that they are both taking this semester — said they found current options for exchanging textbooks between students unsatisfactory.
“[Doku] mentioned how sometimes it would take him weeks to schedule a mutual time to meet up with a seller/buyer,” Koh said, referring to his experiences using Facebook to find interested buyers.
Doku Market aims to streamline the buying and selling process by making the physical exchange of textbooks simpler, according to Koh.
“[Selling] is a simple two-step process where you upload an image and write a description of the item. If a buyer is interested in the item, he will click ‘Buy’ and pay us through Venmo,” Koh said. “We will then pick-up the item from the seller and deliver it to the buyer.”
There is currently no delivery fee associated with the program, in order to encourage students to use the service, according to Koh.
The founders said the website has been successful so far, receiving “thousands of views to the page” with “transactions every week.” Koh added that, since its inception during fall break, Doku Market has facilitated over 75 transactions.
Along with selling textbooks, the website also sells clothes, shoes, electronics and other miscellaneous items, according to Koh.
While the website currently operates solely at Cornell, Koh and Doku said they hope to grow the market to “surrounding schools and eventually to big cities” in the future. However, for the time being, they said they are focusing on expanding their services on campus.