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unior Laura Hoferer reluctantly spent 300 dollars on a textbook for organic chemistry before a friend told her to buy her books from Chegg.com.
Chegg.com offers students 65 to 85 percent off their textbooks and plants a tree for every book rented.
Hoferer returned her book and turned to Chegg.com
“In the long run, using Chegg.com has saved me a lot of money and I recommend it,” she said.
Students order their books, set their return date and receive the books with a pre- paid shipping sticker with their order. Chegg.com also gives students the option to buy the books they have rented as well as sell books they have purchased elsewhere.
The company started in 2007 as a type of college-friendly Craig’s List when the founders saw that textbooks were 80 percent of the market, CEO Jim Safka said.
“The whole purpose is to save students money on textbooks which are notoriously too expensive,” he said.
In the beginning, the company had no textbooks in stock, so, whenever a customer put in an order, the founders would find the books somewhere else and ship it to the student. Now, the company boasts 150 employees and connections with publishing companies throughout the country.
“Our goal is to have every textbook the student could possibly need,” Safka said. Although the company has achieved much success, they want to continue to expand their brand.
“We have a long way to go, the word is spreading quickly and we have plans to expand internationally to Canada, the UK and Australia, Germany and Scandinavia.”
According to Safka, Chegg.com has done virtually no marketing and the company’s success, including nods from the New York Times, Fox News and the New York Stock Exchange, has been driven by word of mouth.
“In this economic climate people are looking for signs of home and companies that are doing the right thing to save people money,” he said.
Fair prices are not the company’s only goal; the company has also taken an environmentally friendly policy and plants a tree for each book a student rents, in Lake Tahoe, Guatemala or Cameroon. The company wants to rebuild habitats for animals that live in those areas and need reforestation, Safka said.
“The average student in the course of a year with the textbooks that they read are consuming the equivalent of one tree per year and we thought, because of that it would be a good idea for us to help the environment, it seems responsible,” he said.
Chegg.com has helped to plant more than 750 acres through their partnership with American Forests Global ReLeaf Program, according to their site.
Junior Kevin Murphy has been using Chegg.com since his freshman year.
“I got my books through the school first semester and the school was a rip-off, so second semester I rented a couple,” Murphy said, “It met my expectations.”
Although renting books from Chegg.com means students receive no money upon selling books back, Murphy said it still proved to be a much cheaper option.
Today, Chegg.com has saved students over 43 million dollars, according to their site, and wants to continue to help students.
“It is a brand that was really created by students and their desires,” Safka said. “It’s a brand that is really owned by students and we feel lucky to serve them and finally lower the cost of textbooks.”
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