Every summer, countless students move out of their rooms, leaving their old routers, fridges and microwaves abandoned in the trash. A shame, Business Economics student Erdem (26) thought, so he decided to buy up these appliances to resell them to new students.
‘Anyone selling a router?’ The new semester is upon us, and that can clearly be seen in the Buy and Sell group chat, which has over 1000 members, mostly students located in Nijmegen. As many newly arrived students find their room without a router, some try their luck in group apps like Buy and Sell, where they are almost immediately referred to one specific seller: ‘Erdem might have one or two, or maybe even 37…’
In the Elinor Ostrom building, Erdem enthusiastically retraces how his side hustle came to being. ‘After my exams, I had some time before I would go to Turkey for the summer. I lived in Hoogeveldt, which is densely populated, and many residents are international students. At the end of the semester, many people were about to finish their studies or their exchange semester and leave Nijmegen. So the group chats were flooded: everyone was selling their routers, their fridges, their microwaves – and there was no one to buy them up, because everyone who stayed already had their own. I knew people would rather get a bit of money for their stuff than nothing at all, so I said: “For €5, I will buy any router that you cannot sell.” So everyone came to me.’ He ended up with 37 routers and a handful of fridges, microwaves and kettles.
Now, three months later, a new cohort of students is on the lookout for electronic appliances and Erdem is selling his inventory. A router costs €15. His project was a success: he has even received more messages from buyers than he had routers for sale. Trading is nothing new for him – he has been involved in trading goods and financial markets since he was 15 – but in this case, profit-seeking was not the goal. ‘This is a very small sum, something funny that I had some time for and didn’t have to put a lot of effort in. This project is not related to my usual practices of financial trading, which is one of my sources of income. But it has been fun’, he explains.
‘Router dealer’
His trading has earned Erdem a certain cult status within Buy and Sell. ‘I’ve been called router man, router king, router dealer… It has become a bit of a meme’, Erdem admits. Some people started asking him whether this project was even worth his time, sending private messages with questions about his business model. ‘I’m like: it’s just a few hundred bucks, calm down!’
For Erdem, this project is not about making the most amount of money with minimal effort. ‘That’s how people get stuck in soul-sucking jobs for life! I have a rule: if I can make the same amount of money on my own in the same time – even if it costs more effort – and that means I can create value, I will always prefer that to working for a wage and fulfilling a role that already existed. Life is more fulfilling when you try to chart your own route, instead of automatically following the trodden path’, he says.
‘It’s a great thing that the Netherlands can provide its young people with a high quality of life, without them having to worry much about financial security. But we have to be realistic: that gives very little incentive to do anything other than working the minimum hours at Albert Heijn. Sure, life is about enjoyment too, going out on terraces, having brunches – and this is completely subjective – but I wish there were more incentives for people to achieve something on their own. Many people were actually surprised that I would even bother doing this. But I’d rather do this, because I’m providing a service that otherwise wouldn’t have been provided. Someone needs to do this, why not me?’
Combatting waste
Those still looking for a router can unfortunately no longer turn to Erdem. All 37 routers were sold out within a few days and so were the microwaves and refrigerators. Erdem has no plans to do anything like this again next year. Then he would have to turn this side hustle into an actual business and that would require a lot of work, from filing tax returns to registering with the Chamber of Commerce. Nevertheless, he sees an opportunity for an initiative like his.
‘Of course, there are second-hand stores and groups like Buy and Sell in Nijmegen, but they are often not very convenient and efficient. The students leaving Nijmegen are usually in a rush to get rid of their items, and the newly arrived students don’t know where to go or don’t even have bikes to pick items up. In all the chaos of moving, they buy everything new.’
Erdem is perplexed at how much waste is involved in this annual game of musical chairs. ‘So much gets thrown away, not even donated. It’s so bad. Take Hoogeveldt: no one cleans their kitchen before leaving. Dirty pans and pots often stay on the stove all summer and when the new residents arrive, everything is full of maggots. So all those usable pots and pans end up in the trash!’ Erdem wishes there were some individual or organisation, a non-profit perhaps, willing to take over his work. ‘There needs to be some mechanism that bridges the supply and the demand, that can bridge the three month period between the semesters. Someone needs to carry that inventory.’ Until then, a new router king has yet to be crowned.
