Business is a game to three area entrepreneurs.
Jon Dugan, Valerio Zanini and Mark Nebesky founded Goozex Inc., a video game-trading Web site, after meeting while attending the University of Maryland, College Park.
Taking their dream from scratches on paper to cyberspace, the Terp trio has won several awards for its business venture, most notably the2007 Cupid?s Cup from Under Armour executive Kevin Plank, a Maryland alumnus. The award provided Goozex with $15,000 to grow.
Dugan, Zanini and Nebesky are thinking big.
“Either this week or next week, we are launching upgrades to the site, community features for users to communicate with each other,” Nebesky said. “We have value propositions out to advertisers to target specific members based off of the collections in their libraries.”
One of the important aspects of Goozex is its simplicity.
When consumers swap games online, Goozex acts as a moderator, valuing the video games and connecting traders. Charging $1 per trade, the company established a base of nearly 7,000 users, recording about 15,000 trades since its inception 10 months ago.
Screen Digest, a global media research firm, predicts video game sales will top $11.2 billion internationally this year. That means with new purchases, old games will need a home, and Goozex wants to help consumers find that home.
Working on expansion, Zanini is in Italy representing Goozex to European game distributors and Web portals. Because video games are formatted differently from continent to continent, Goozex would have to be launched in several different regional zones around the world to make trading work. The three founders plan to invest $10,000 of their Cupid?s Cup winnings to market their company?s name.
“Our vision is to expand Goozex as a global company with a global brand that reaches out to not just gamers, but all people,” Dugan said. “We want to find new ways to interact with gamers.”
