From DIY to gardening, the community of experts changes e-commerce - Lifestyle

Revolutionize the sector of do-it-yourself, gardening and home furnishings, offering the customer a more humane and personalized online shopping experience, based on a community of enthusiasts who can exchange advice and help each other in the product choice. ManoMano, one of the most promising European responses to e-commerce giants such as Amazon, co-founded in 2013 by the two French web geniuses, Christian Raisson and Philippe, is part of the new hybrid trend that mixes e-commerce and expert advice. de Chanville. Present on the Italian market since 2015, the platform listed in the Next40, the index of the main startups across the Alps, has more than 1,800 sellers and over 4 million products, the largest European offer in the sector, 100% digital: electricity , plumbing, hardware, tools, deco and indoor and outdoor furniture, swimming pools and animal supplies. 420 collaborators operate in 5 markets on the continent. In addition to the two Latin sisters, France and Italy, also Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom and Belgium. "Italy - explains Philippe de Chainville - represents an extremely important market and at the center of our ambitions: it is our second market in terms of business volume and the second in which we launched, immediately after France".
The originality of Mano a Mano, or in any case its bet, concerns first of all the buying experience, thanks to the so-called 'Manoadvisors', a community of experts and enthusiasts of DIY & related to whom anyone can contact for free for the advice and pre-sale phase, online and by phone, 7 days a week. With more than a million 'chats' or conversations managed only in the last year, the priority is to further expand this community in the next three years. In this sense, Italy is the best in class country in reference to the ManoMano markets, confirming the fact that the Italian customer is the most demanding in terms of product choice and pre-sale advice. "Our Manodvisors, today 100 in Europe - explains Christian Raisson - are enthusiasts and experts who are part of the ManoMano community. They are true enthusiasts but above all experts and their quality level is very high: before being enrolled as Manodvisors they must go through several tests, technical and sector but also aptitudinal and sociological: they must know how to speak to a customer and advise him best in any situation ". To the founders themselves, the idea came not so much because they were experts in the sector but precisely as customers with a hand for DIY. "At the base - they say - we were real DIY enthusiasts, we took care of our homes at the weekend and we carried out various DIY projects in our free time. The problem is that we never found the products we wanted, we spent hours at search in the various shops and specialized centers. A lot of time (lost) in the car, often without finding the dreamed product. So, we said that nowadays we can find anything online, buy anything on the web. But there is no one real offer for DIY, gardening and home furnishings. We therefore decided to launch a specialized site for this sector ". Virtue of necessity, therefore. And with some success. Following the last 110 million euro financing round last April, motivated by strong European ambitions, 2019 recorded growth of over 50% and generated a global turnover of 620 million euro. Italy, the second most important market, closes with 77% growth and 65 million euros in turnover, to which are added an additional 18 million euros of crossboarder business generated by Italian sellers to other European marketplace markets.