Dianmarie De Jesus was one of about 10,000 students who received a mass email from a professor who appeared to be endorsing a new online shopping site for students called uVendors.
Little did she know, it was a concealed promotional strategy broadcast to her in a UF Sakai email by another student.
The 18-year-old co-founders, Dakota Woll and Sean Gura, were reported by their peers for soliciting via email through Sakai on Thursday night. No action has been taken against them.
“We might have taken a chance in sending the emails, but sometimes to make a start-up work, you have to take risks,” said Woll, an industrial and systems engineering freshman.
Woll and Gura said they felt their unconventional, risky tactic proved to be a success.
“It said that there’s this new site that’s safe and better than Craigslist. So I was like ‘oh, that’s a good idea.’ I hate posting on Craigslist because I feel like there’s always something that could go wrong,” said De Jesus, a 19-year-old exploratory sophomore.
Three days later, De Jesus used the site to post her Hewlett-Packard Pavilion G4 laptop for sale. She said she plans to use the site again for future listings.
“The easiest way to describe it is a mix between Craigslist and eBay,” Woll said. “It’s like a Facebook group, but it’s much more organized.”
The site prides itself on safety, simplicity and savings.
“I originally put [my posting] on the huge textbook exchange Facebook page, but it just got buried,” said 18-year-old mathematics and statistics freshman Kaleigh Harder.
Harder said the site’s search bar and categories, which include postings for tickets, housing, motor transportation and textbooks, are two features that the Facebook pages lack.
In addition to helping students find what they’re looking for at an affordable, student-determined price, the co-founders said safety is one of their main concerns.
“We’re trying to make it as safe for students as possible,” said Gura, a finance freshman. “When you go on the site, you have to register with your ufl.edu email. If you’re not a UF student, you can’t register, and you can’t see the contact information for products on the site.”
Gura said users can feel safe knowing that the uVendors’ community is all around them — in their classes, organizations and clubs.
Gura and Woll said they hope the site will eventually create a more unified campus.
