Four students at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) are using remanufactured cartridges and recycled paper to deliver printouts of emailed documents to teachers and students on campus.
The printed documents are personally delivered with a 30-minute guarantee by the first employee of the company, Kotu Printing, to claim the job, with prices at $1 (€0.94) for 10 pages in black and white and $1.50 (€1.41) for 10 pages in colour, along with a $3 (€2.82) flat rate for delivery, Daily Bruin reported.
The rates offer an alternative to FedEx’s $20 (€18.83) charge for printing and shipping, Chief Operations Officer and fourth-year history student Steve O’Dell said. Each of the founders operates from their campus accommodation, with some of the orders delivered within 10 minutes.
Kotu was the idea of Terrell Gray, CEO and second-year philosophy student, who noticed that not all students can easily access printers, while buying your own “doesn’t make much sense […] because they’re so expensive”.
Gray used Facebook in October to gauge student interest on several UCLA groups, and received over 75 likes and six direct messages within a day. With three other students now recruited, Kotu has served more than 50 customers over the past month, with one student using it six times in the past three weeks.
Orders include “all kinds of things, from papers to utility bills”, and Gray hopes that the company can eventually “go global”, with some documents already delivered off campus and to Culver City, while there are plans for delivering to high school students and professionals.
Kotu is also looking for employees and interns to help with deliveries and enhance its social media presence.