STUDENT ENTREPRENEUR BEGAN WITH CHUTZPAH AND A CREDIT CARD
By Jennifer Caspar
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 27, 1991 ; Page F10
Many people can look at an empty college room and see a symbol of an impersonal
institution. Richard Rosen looked and saw profits.
There are nearly 10,000 lonely, uncarpeted college dormitory rooms in the Washington
metropolitan area, and most of their occupants are looking to cozy them up on the cheap.
So five years ago, while still a a sophomore at George Washington University, Rosen began
his first venture, Campus Carpets. Seeing demand for simple floor coverings, Rosen rented
a truck and filled it with as much carpet as he could sell in a day. In its first year --
about six days' work -- Campus Carpets grossed $5,000, half of which landed in Rosen's
pocket.
Like other students at local colleges, Rosen discovered that a little inventiveness and
risk can pay better than a part-time job.
"It used to be you got a job to work your way through college," said Nancy
Flake, director of Howard University's Small Business Development Center. "But today,
with the cost of tuition, you can't buy books and pay tuition with a minimum-wage or a
$5-an-hour job."
According to Flake, student entrepreneurs are providing a growing number of college
services, from buying and selling used textbooks to transporting students to and from the
airport at vacation times.
For Rosen, who received a masters degree in business administration from George
Washington earlier this month, "school was always first." He said he found it
easier to run a business than keep a part-time job because the money was better, and he
didn't have to mold his life around somebody else's schedule.
And since his business was seasonal, he said he did not have to worry about it during
most of the school year. He sold the students carpet remnants when they arrived in
September and stored all their belongings over the summer. Each of the two businesses
takes about a month of work each year. "I could do it at the beginning of the year
when there were no tests," he said. "At the end of the year it was kind of
tricky with finals, though."
For Rosen, getting started was easy. He used a credit card to buy about $400 to $500
worth of rugs and pay the deposit on the $50-a-day rental truck. By the end of the first
day, he had sold the rugs for more than twice that and could operate on a cash basis. His
business overhead was about as low as it can get. And since his customers were a captive
audience, he found he could charge students more than twice what he paid for the rugs.
"With the abundance of credit cards that are marketed on college campuses, that's
all a person needs," he said.
Later, he and a partner, Jon Curtis, put together another venture, Collegiate Storage,
for students who do not want to lug their carpet remnants, books and furniture home during
summer vacation.
But with his profits came important business lessons. Since he didn't do much research
before diving headfirst into the venture, Rosen was unaware that he needed a vendor's
license. That is, until police brought him in to pay $106 for a license and to post a
$1,000 bond insuring that he would pay taxes on what he sold. "We'd been in business
a few days by then, so we had $1,000," Rosen said.
Rosen set up operations on other local campuses and advertised in campus newspapers.
His second year in business, he brought in more than $12,000, and he grossed more than
$17,000 the third time around. In 1990 the company's sales were more than $37,000.
This year's tight job market has made him rethink his initial plan of trying to find a
job with a large company. Instead, Rosen plans to expand the business, which is now called
Collegiate Marketing Concepts, by looking for other services, such as career preparation
courses, to market to local students.
Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington Post and may not
include subsequent corrections.
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