Aisle0 makes shopping at UNH easy

Cars, trucks, subleases, furniture, watches, musical instruments, clothes, jewelry, purses and even a pet turtle can now all be bought and sold in one location exclusive to the University of New Hampshire and its inhabitants.

Aisle0.com is a new website that allows its members to buy and sell a variety of items on an easy- to-use website. The website's simplistic design uses big pictures of the item with only its title and price below it. If interested, clicking on the picture allows the shopper to see it in more views, read a brief description of the item and where it's located, and also provides the seller's contact information. 

"There's a picture and a price. It's clean and a good visual presentation," said founder of Aisle0.com and 2011 UNH alumni, Nick Rivera. 

Rivera paid close attention to make sure Aisle0.com would be easy to navigate. Rivera's frustration with other disorganized community shopping websites was actually one of the reasons he founded the website.

"People don't go on Facebook to buy things and Craigslist is just disgusting ... and disorganized," Rivera said. 

Rivera also found inspiration in certain websites such as Twitter and Instagram. The combination of popular social media sites and the dislike of Craigslist's inefficiency led to the birth of Aisle0.com.  

"Twitter's for talking, Instagram is for pictures; why not one for buying and selling? Now Aisle0.com is here for buying just that," Rivera said.

Now, in just its third week of running, Aisle0.com gained over 1,200 members. Rivera expanded his inventory by allowing local businesses to advertise some of their products on his website. This allowed the website to be tested exclusively at UNH first before members began posting their own items. Currently over 100 items have sold from the site and members have added over 200 additional items.

"I haven't bought anything yet, but I've seen a lot of pretty good stuff on there," UNH sophomore Daniel Walsh said.

For those students who live off campus, finding a summer sublease can be difficult. Since members are exclusively UNH students, posting a sublease on Aisle0.com gives sellers the opportunity to network with over 1,200 students they may not have been able to otherwise.

"Definitely going to post my cottage to sublet," said UNH sophomore Josiah Driscoll.

Rivera intends on keeping the website exclusively to UNH but not forever. By spring semester next year, he hopes to expand the website beyond Wildcat territory. His main goals for introducing the website are to stop college students in need of money from throwing away valuable items and provide them with a platform to make that money.

"It's not profiting at all, just trying to make an awesome versatile tool for kids to use. I really want to get the point across it's the real deal ... completely free," Rivera said. "It's good for the buyer and the seller."