By Sheryl Rowling
SAN DIEGO–What do you get when you combine two nice Jewish boys, an entrepreneurial spirit, and a desire for Tikkun Olam? You get SwoopThat – an online service that saves college students time and money when purchasing their textbooks.
According to the company’s website (at www.swoopthat.com), SwoopThat can save students up to 75 percent on textbooks in about 10 minutes. To use the service, students merely select their courses and SwoopThat locates every required book at the lowest available price. Currently SwoopThat supports textbook requirements from almost 500 schools. Within a few months, this number is expected to grow to 1,000.
The founders of SwoopThat, Jonathan Simkin and Ben Carson, became close through their families – beginning when Ben and Jon’s older brother were in kindergarten together at the San Diego Jewish Academy. According to Ben, it was “in the blood” to combine entrepreneurship with doing something good for the world. Both Ben’s and Jon’s grandfathers were successful entrepreneurs who emigrated from Europe. And, they gave back to their communities.
Applying the lessons learned from their grandfathers, Ben says proudly, “It’s free to students. We want to grow and give money back to the schools.” The company currently offers fundraising opportunities to on-campus clubs and organizations.
The pair started their business in the fall of 2010, offering the SwoopThat service to students at the five Claremont Colleges (Ben’s and Jon’s alma mater). Based on the success of the pilot program – 30 percent of the students at these colleges used the service – SwoopThat was soon expanded to include other colleges and universities.
Profit margins are tight, yet promising. Although students can typically save between 25 and 75 percent on their purchases, SwoopThat gets its cut from the online booksellers it refers to. Last semester, the company generated almost 20 percent gross profit on sales. Currently funded by family and friends, Ben and Jon are hoping to expand to outside investors soon.
With SwoopThat’s diversity of features, vast representation of schools and charitable partnerships, Ben is confident in the future. What does success look like to Ben and Jon? “We’re ambitious”, says Ben, “We want to expand our service nationwide. As soon as students need textbooks, they should go to our website.”
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Sheryl L. Rowling, CPA/PFS, partner of Moss Adams Wealth Advisors LLC, has been providing tax, financial planning and investment advice for over 30 years, since 1979. She may be contacted at sheryl.rowling@sdjewishworld.com