Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Hi,

Me and a friend want to start a textbook rental business. We have been working with the idea for a few months now. Would like input from a few people about the idea. Let me know if you need more details and would be glad to provide them

Thanks,
A

Where are you located?

I am located in Farmington Hills, Michigan.

Great idea - I wish a service like that existed when I was in college!

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Oleg Issers | StartupNation.com Web Team

50% of computer programming is trial and error. The other 50% is copy and paste.

Why rental vs purchase used and then sell back?

(I`m just asking for the sake of you having to address this question in your business. )

"Why rental vs purchase used and then sell back?"

In my experience, even when purchasing used and selling back you still end up paying something like 75% of the book`s face value.  The price difference between a new and used textbook in a typical college book store is surprisingly small if the used book is in a decent shape.  And you don`t get a whole lot selling it back to the store.  So unless you are buying from and selling back to other students directly, renting would be a better value.

One possible problem I see with the rental business is how often textbooks are updated.  You may end up getting stuck with a lot of expensive paperweights when a new edition comes out, and all the proffesorss require that students have the "latest and greatest".

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Oleg Issers | StartupNation.com Web Team

50% of computer programming is trial and error. The other 50% is copy and paste.

Well when you rent them, you may end up paying that much as well.

I used Bigwords when they used to do the buying and selling ... now it`s just a price database. It worked out pretty well for me. I don`t know what the age comparison is here, but when I was in school ... it was the rise of Amazon and Bigwords, so there wasn`t much use in going to the campus bookstore.

I was just posing the question as a strategy issue ... the question is something this person will have to address in creating a marketing strategy!

You`re right, the rental price may need to be just as high to account for the short lifespan of each textbook - since you may only be able to rent it out for 2-4 semesters before the next edition comes out.  

Is it really strange that I buy everything and anything from Amazon on a regular basis, yet never once bought an actual book from them?  I don`t even remember the days when they were just a book store.

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Oleg Issers | StartupNation.com Web Team

50% of computer programming is trial and error. The other 50% is copy and paste.

When I was back at Cornell ... Amazon used to send me Christmas presents with little letters "signed" by Jeff Bezos.

Yeah, that`s totally where all my money went!

I still have a lot of the books I bought back then, speaking of outdated texts. Photoshop 5 Bible, Director 6, Administering IIS 4, or The Official Netscape JavaScript Book, anyone?

I happen to be lucky in that my major didn`t have a lot of texts to purchase - mostly just course packets, unless I was taking a class outside my major or thoe general ed/humanities stuff. I also happen to be lucky in that I dated someone who was a year ahead of me in my major. (I highly recommend it for anyone trying to save on textbook costs, hahahahahahahahahaha.)
So all of my spare cash got dumped into geeky books from Amazon.
And since it was the early days ... they sent me presents like book lights, bookmarks, travel mugs to thank me for my frequent purchases.

Hi,

Thanks for the feedback. Our pricing model on achieving profit in 3 turns. The first 2 would be recovering the costs incurred. While this may not beat all the prices available in the market, it takes away from the student, the liability and inconvenience.

What do you guys think? Also, what else should we consider or do to take the next step?

Thanks,

A