The Rumie app offers buy, sell and rent services exclusively to university students across the Southeastern Conference.
Tanner McCraney, co-founder of Rumie and graduate student at the University of Mississippi, said he created the app to give students a unified and safe platform to exchange used goods.
“What we noticed was that college students were using like Instagram and Snapchat as a means to buy, sell and rent on campus because Facebook Marketplace is scary for college students,” McCraney said. “People don’t want to meet up with a stranger in strange places.”
Patrick Phillips, co-founder of Rumie and graduate student at Ole Miss, started Rumie with McCraney in 2021.
Phillips said the idea for the app came from his own experience with scams on Facebook Marketplace.
“I tried buying a Nintendo Switch, and as soon as I tried to buy it, this guy basically told me ‘Oh, yeah, you can pay through PayPal’ and like, basically … everybody on Facebook Marketplace seems like they’re trying to scam you,” Phillips said.
Phillips said scammers often use electronic money transferring apps like Venmo and PayPal to obtain money from customers without sending them the item they bought.
To avoid scammers, McCraney said students are required to sign up with their university email to access Rumie.
Since a university email is required, each user is bound by their school’s code of conduct.
“It’s very easy to report any kind of misconduct that happens on the app, and that can get forwarded to upper management at the university. With your ‘.edu’ email address, it’s connected to your name, so there’s full transparency,” McCraney said.
The app is home to a standard marketplace where students can purchase tickets, textbooks, furniture, clothing and more.
“Let’s say you’re an average student who’s looking for some sunglasses and you see someone at Ole Miss has the sunglasses you want. You can get them to ship it to you,” McCraney said.
Caki Field, senior majoring in management and entrepreneurship at Ole Miss, became involved with the app over the summer. Since then, Field has overseen the rental feature of the app.
“After COVID, we were going to all these social events, date parties, formals, and I was buying a new dress for every single one of them, which obviously, as a college student, is not cost effective,” Field said.
According to Field, the rental feature can help students cut down on outfit spending for events.
“Girls across campus can rent from each other, you know, dresses that have been worn once or not even once or lightly worn,” Field said.
McCraney said the rental feature also allows students to rent out their own creative services to others.
Field said the app was especially useful for items that only students would be interested in buying.
“Like, the other day, I sold a hardcover card for a bar here in Oxford. I mean, that’s something specifically only college students would really buy,” Field said.
Before launching to universities across the nation, McCraney said the objective is to allow students in the SEC to become accustomed to the app first.
“Our objective is to get, you know, a couple thousand students at every school across the SEC, and then once we can help thousands of students across there, then we can expand across the actual country,” McCraney said.
Currently, McCraney said around 1,000 students at Mississippi State University have started using the app.
Rumie is currently available in the App Store and the Google Play Store. For more information, visit rumieapp.com.