Here is the second installment from our student entrepreneurs:
After deciding on a name and color scheme for reverbmedia, we turned our attention to one of the most important aspects of any business?the equipment to run it. The kinds of equipment we would require could easily eat up our startup budget, so we began brainstorming ways to acquire it cheaper. We thought of contacting various warehouses and CD stores that had recently gone out of business, but pinpointing those proved to be harder than we expected. Several members suggested scouring the internet for equipment. One that was mentioned was E-bay.
A day or two later, I logged onto E-bay to just see what was available. I?ve never really been an E-bay fanatic, and in fact that was the first time I had ever seriously done any searching on the site (much to the disgrace of my internet-savvy generation, I?m sure). I was just doodling around on the site, looking at all sorts of music-related items, when I typed in ?music store?.
The first thing that appeared was the heading, ?Music Store in a Box.? I was amazed when I took a closer look at the offering. A music store had shut down in Colorado and the guy was selling all the equipment in his store. This included sixteen CD racks, a computer, bar code scanner, wall racks, DVD bins, music system, security system, numerous jewel cases?even price stickers! He offered pictures of each piece of equipment, and they seemed like they were in workable condition. Amazingly, no one had bid on it yet. The starting price was $500.
I immediately forwarded the link to Philip Reid, CIO (Chief Information Officer) and master of all that is e-mail, to see what he thought about it. After he gave it the go-ahead, I presented it to the rest of the group. Everyone was excited about this opportunity, but wanted to be sure that it was legit. So we checked the seller?s references and e-mailed him to inquire about the offer. After several rounds of e-mails to sort out shipping matters and to gain more detailed info about the equipment, we decided to bid on the gear. Every couple of days (and every day as the bid day got closer), we checked to see who had bid.
November 28th, 2002, at 10:30 am, we piled into Becky?s office to bid on the equipment. An ?E-bay Party,? we called it. We had doughnuts and candy to celebrate. The bidding would be over at 11:00am. We logged on and saw that by now, four or five bids had been made. The price was now a little over $1,000. We put in our highest bid and waited. As anticipation grew, we joked around and told stories. All the while, I obsessively pressed the refresh button to see if we had been outbid. At the one minute mark, everyone kind of went quiet, became serious. The price jumped a bit more, up to around $1500. We were still the high bidders. Thirty seconds on the clock. The refresh button gets hit nearly every second. Everyone is relieved each time the screen shows the big green checkmark that signals no one has outbid us. Ten seconds left, and the countdown begins. A few of us check our watches, and begin counting aloud.
?Bidding over. Highest bid: bluebu2001? the screen read. We?d won the bidding. The equipment was ours!
At only around $1800, this was a steal. Of course, with shipping the charges to us were greater, but even then, we racks alone were worth the price, not to mention everything else.
We went ahead and paid what we needed to and finished making shipping arrangements. The guy wanted a bit much for shipping, but things were finally worked out. The first hurdle was over. For a moment everyone could breathe a sigh of relief before heading out to Christmas break. But not to worry, there would be more to come. Everything would really begin when we came back.