About UGent

The University of Ghent, founded in 1817 employs about 15.000 people. 50.000 students attend their courses every year.

UGent’s Green Office desired a solution to safely support secondhand student material reselling. They hold sustainability in high regard and strive to be pioneers and sources of inspiration when seeking sustainable solutions.

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Socio-economic sustainability

The life of a student is expensive. Student housing furniture, appliances, books and course material… the costs add up quickly. To alleviate their financial burdens, students often turn to the second hand market to buy their material and sell them once they are no longer needed.

UGent is well aware of their students’ financial constraints and, given their own sustainability goals, aimed to stimulate and support these transactions on a secure platform. To ensure this safety, the platform needed to be a closed system, available only to students and employees. Additionally, this set-up allows for the creation of a micro-community that allows students to buy and sell their belongings in a trusted environment.

Approach

Foursevens assisted UGent in defining a central goal and a strategic use for this platform. After formulating this goal, UGent compiled a shortlist of specific features and Foursevens commenced the search for a fitting technology.

UGent had specific requests that quickly ruled out more obvious solutions (like Facebook Marketplace or 2dehand.be) mainly because those platforms failed to provide the desired level of organizational control and did not meet the requirements for single sign-on (SSO). Instead, Foursevens found a Finnish product, called “ShareTribe”, to be the perfect match. ShareTribe offers a flexible platform that can easily be extended with additional functionalities to offer a fully customizable experience.

This out-of-the box solution allowed UGent to significantly reduce custom development costs, which in turn could be spent on tailoring the platform to their needs.

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Technology

The solution is built on ShareTribe Flex, a headless marketplace that already covers the majority of required functionalities. However, using a headless solution meant that the front-end still required development. By utilizing theShareTribe API, React.js and chart.js frameworks in combination with the opensource Directus CMS, Foursevens was able to build the platform tailored to UGent’s requirements.

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Collaboration

Circular economy as part of a broader sustainability goal.

This case is an excellent example of a collaboration between 2 companies who share the same dedication for sustainability in the broader sense:

·      UGent through their sustainability goals and their mission to contribute to society as a major university.

·      Foursevens by always looking for initiatives where their strategic and analytic digital expertise can assist clients to focus on the actual problem and look for the most sustainable solution.

Foursevens’ technical expertise ensures the delivery of high quality and user-friendly solutions, built to last. Foursevens believes that circular economy initiatives will only benefit our society in the long run, especially when carried by likeminded partners.

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Conclusion

The realization of this platform at the end of 2022 allowed UGent to respond to the need to give used materials a second life. Seemingly “discarded” stuff gets value again. Offering these items through a user-friendly and accessible interface makes it easier to convince more people to join UGent’s circular endeavor.

Since its launch, more than 5000 items were listed by almost 10.000 students. The categories “thrift store” (meant for general second hand stuff) and “studybooks” are most popular, especially during the typical change-over moments (February, June).

UGent has become a pioneer with this story and with this, hopes to incentivize other academies and universities to invest in sustainable initiatives. Foursevens can help realize this dream.