Send 'Em Packin'
Kids empty out their dorm rooms every year. Thanks to this guy, they have a place to keep their stuff.
What: Storage service for
students
Who: Arnaud Karsenti of
Collegeboxes Inc.
Where: Miami
When: Started in 1999
Rarely can you use an idea for a school project to make
millions. But as a junior at Duke University in Durham, North
Carolina, Arnaud Karsenti got a chance to do just that when he
wrote a business plan for his own student-run storage and shipping
company in an engineering class. Using Duke's own campus as a
prototype, the now-22-year-old set up shop as Dukeboxes, offering
to store students' belongings for the summer. By his senior
year, he'd changed the name of the company to Collegeboxes Inc.
and expanded to nine campuses. By year-end, he'll have launched
locations on 41 college campuses across the country.
So how does it work? "Think of us as a college UPS
service," Karsenti says. "We're a full-service
company that will literally go upstairs to a third-story dorm room
and pick up the belongings from a student."
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Collegeboxes then either ships students' belongings to their
homes or stores them in a climate-controlled warehouse for the
summer, then delivers to the students' doors at the beginning
of the school year. Collegeboxes charges on a per-item basis, and
customers can store anything that isn't fragile-from bikes to
desks and couches-for $35 to $75 per box or per item.
Karsenti, who graduated last year, prides himself on the fact
that not only does Collegeboxes cater to the college market, but
student managers also run the business. "We really believe in
the student marketing presence," Karsenti says.
The demand for the business, expected to make $2.1 million in
2001, is clear, he says: "At the end of the year, like selling
back books, we become kind of the thing to do on college
campuses."
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