Newcastle second year sets up his own site where you can trade stuff with people at uni

You can only register with your uni email


A Newcastle second-year has co-founded a site for people to buy and sell items and services between students at their university.

Andrea Cavallo, a 21-year-old Parisian, set up www.Fruks.com, which allows uni students to trade their clothes, textbooks and electronics with each other through the site for cash.

The site also allows you to sell services, such as private language, subject or music tuition.

He told The Tab: “Fruks.com is a student trading platform. It is commission free, built by students for students and so it always will be.”

The idea for the business began when Andrea and four other friends realised that selling things on Facebook “wasn’t organised enough”. Fruks, (an abbreviation of France-UK Students) was born, and the team of five still run the site.

The Business Management student kicked off the business in April 2015, and has already seen thousands getting involved on the site.

“We had a lot of success with the sale of textbooks at the beginning of the year. It seems that around exam time, the private tuition services appear to do well.

“Also, students obviously love the fact that they can make quick money. It takes 30 seconds max to list an item for sale.”

We asked Andrea why his site is unique compared to similar pages such as eBay or Gumtree.

“It’s different from Gumtree because it is more trustworthy. Students can only register with their validated university email address. Once they have signed up, they can directly message the seller if they are interested in an item, and meet up on campus for the exchange.”

“It creates a unique community of students within individual universities.”

Andrea also says that the Student Union is the main meeting point for most trades, which makes a meet “easy to rely on”.

The Frenchman also sees the business going even further, with a new branch of the site offering students a platform to apply for internships and, even better, jobs.

“Fruks Shop is the bit of the site where you can buy and sell your things. However, we’re developing Fruks Careers where students will be able to apply to top companies for internships, placements, graduate jobs. It should be getting going by April next year.”

“It can be quite challenging doing my degree and co-managing the business on the side – I definitely don’t attend all my lectures.”