DormItem, the student run business powering classified listings in online college portals, has been acquired by Universal Advertising Inc. The acquisition makes DormItem one of the few Babson undergraduate student-run businesses to have been acquired, and completes a two year success story for the site’s founders Dan Scudder Babson '08 and Zack Coburn Olin College '10.

Scudder and Coburn started DormItem in 2006 as a solution for college students that were frustrated with the lack of a centralized yet regionally focused college classifieds website. DormItem quickly became a destination for students to buy and sell items, find used textbooks, and job hunt. Through the technology that Scudder and Coburn developed, DormItem was able to aggregate classified listings from dozens of smaller websites and distribute the listings into the “microregional” search system. Additionally, DormItem partnered with several colleges, including Babson, to feed listings into the student web portal.

DormItem was incubated in the Babson College undergrad hatchery, where they received support from advisors, faculty, and outside professionals. At launch, several notable pres sites covered DormItem, including Techcrunch, The Boston Globe Online, and Entrepreneur Magazine. In January 2008, Universal Advertising acquired DormItem from the two founders and parent company Moses Marketing Ventures for an undisclosed sum.

About DormItem

DormItem is an online college classifieds search engine that makes it easy for students to find listings at their school and neighboring colleges. DormItem aggregates content from over 25 sites nationwide, distributes to numerous college portals, and features over 100,000 listings across several categories including “jobs” and “for sale. DormItem was founded in 2006 by parent company Moses Marketing Ventures. Co-founders Dan Scudder and Zack Coburn incubated DormItem in the Babson Undergraduate Hatchery.

About Universal Advertising

Universal Advertising, inc. is located in Atlanta, Georgia and specializes in working with college newspapers in the field of classified advertising. UniversalAdvertising.com launched the first multi-market, web based classified purchasing application in 1998, and was the first on line classified system to focus exclusively on collegiate media. In March of 2007, Universal Advertising launched CollegeClassifieds.com, a free classified service for every U.S. college campus. Classified listings on CollegeClassifieds.com are derived from college newspaper listings, many of which are found nowhere else on line until syndicated through CollegeClassifieds.com. Additional listings are supplied through aggregation and private label classified purchasing systems.