Students looking to sell used items without having to rely on sketchy websites have a new option — Heel Exchange.
Heel Exchange was started by four freshmen in their entrepreneurship seminar, a class designed for students to implement start-up ideas. It went public about a week ago.
Their original idea was to help students sell furniture that would eventually be thrown out at the end of a semester, but now almost anything can be sold including books, school supplies or other dorm accessories.
“Eventually the idea morphed into what kind of mimics what Craigslist does, and then switched to a Facebook page and will hopefully morph into something else,” said freshman Tafadzwa Matika, one of the founders of Heel Exchange.
“Ideally we would like a website in the future,” said freshman Jake Barach, another founder. Barach is a staff writer for The Daily Tar Heel.
The main goal that the founders want to achieve is to make sure that it’s all primarily UNC students who use this page for sake of convenience.
“If I can see that there are people in Hinton James looking for things and they are next door to me, then I can just walk right next door — no delivery charge — and I’ve got money for the weekend,” Barach said.
When students want to post items that they’re trying to sell, there is a format on the page that guides them, requiring the item that’s being sold, a description of the item, dorm location and the price.
Or if students are looking to buy items, they simply post what they are looking for and their dorm location.
Members are trying to prevent the Heel Exchange page from turning into a page where strange items are being sold such as alcohol or other strange items.
“If it takes off, then we are kind of aware that one of the first issues we’ll run into is that it could become an alcoholics page or a bunch of things, or it can become serious Craigslist,” Barach said.
Annasa Harris, a student who has used Heel Exchange to sell clothes, said she thinks it’s very convenient.
“It was very successful for me, and I would recommend it to someone else because the feedback was incredible and very fast,” she said. “I like it way better than using Craigslist because it is more convenient and easy to use.”
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