Our History

Striving for success and value from the beginning.

Flashback - it is 1989. Ten year old Bobby Brannigan is not watching television or challenging neighborhood kids to a game of Nintendo; he is up early to work at his father's Italian specialty food store in Brooklyn, New York. It is here, from his father, that Bobby learns the value of hard work, and how to build a successful business. Years later, Bobby would find out that the skills he learned at a young age would allow him to be a successful entrepreneur just like his father.

Fast forward a little bit to 2002 in the upstate New York college town of Fredonia. No longer a child working under his father, Bobby is now a straight A college student, hockey player and Financial Management Association president. In May of 2002, walking out of the college bookstore after selling his textbooks back is where the real story begins.

Bobby saw value and opportunity in this pile of once valuable textbooks the bookstore had deemed worthless... Upon exiting the store that day, Bobby noticed a large pile of abandoned textbooks. He found out that these books were not being bought back by the campus bookstore because the store appraised them to be worthless. Now, this story would be over had he walked past the pile and continued with his day. Only, he didn't. Bobby saw value and opportunity in this pile of once valuable textbooks the bookstore had deemed worthless since the semester was over. With permission from the bookstore, Bobby and a friend loaded the books into his car, and he headed back to Brooklyn, NY for the summer. One week later, he was able to sell these abandoned textbooks online for $1,500.

Before Bobby returned to school in the fall, he proactively contacted all of his professors to ask them which textbooks he needed for the upcoming semester. He then purchased all of his books online and saved over half of what he would have paid at the bookstore! At that time, fewer than 10% of college students were purchasing their textbooks online, even though the prices were about 50% less than the campus bookstore, on average. Bobby couldn't understand why his peers were throwing away their hard-earned money at the campus store when there were cheaper options available. Here, in his 12x12 dorm room the idea for a textbook marketplace was born. The vision for the company was to build an online college textbook marketplace that would specifically cater to college students and include a student-to-student, commission-based, marketing program, today known as the Valore Agent program.