"We wanted to repair a roof and... we changed the building materials market in Europe."
If you want a better world, you have to build it. Literally.
This is the short story of how Edifacile.com came into being.
The year 2020 was a special year for construction in Italy.
The Italian government had allocated funding and incentives to renovate old homes and make them more energy efficient.
Starting that year, at least one construction site was visible on every street in every single Italian city.
Scaffolding, cranes, earthmoving equipment--the demand for these kinds of building materials and construction equipment was so high that it had become a problem to be able to satisfy all construction companies.
Edifacile.com is the brainchild of a close-knit team of programmers, translators, purchasing managers, and sales managers, all of whom have a very long experience in the field of large Web portals and (not surprisingly) in the construction industry.
«At that time a friend of ours needed to repair the roof of her house. Easy to say, hard to do. The problem was that no matter what construction company she asked, the answer was always the same: "We have to finish the work on another house first because we don't have enough scaffolding, props and cranes to work on your house."»
«At first we didn't believe it - we thought it was an excuse from the construction companies. Then, as we became better informed, we realized that unfortunately--it was true!»
«So we decided to solve the problem at the source and ... in our own way.»
«Since materials for setting up a construction site were in short supply in Italy, we devised an international portal dedicated exclusively to the purchase and sale of scaffolding, props, cranes, earthmoving machines and construction materials, so that we would have the opportunity to find foreign suppliers and, at the same time, facilitate the market for used Italian materials to foreign countries.»
«This is how the first version of Edifacile was born.»
«Why did we come up with a new portal and not simply turn to one of the existing portals?»
«Marketplaces for buying and selling building materials in Italy have always been monopolized by generalist portals, but these have some problems that make them unsuitable for construction professionals.»
«Among the marketplaces for construction equipment in Italy have a long history Subito.it, Manomano, Mascus and Machineryzone. But we quickly realized that they had some problems. So we tried to create a new portal that would solve them.»
What are the problems with other portals and how is Edifacile different?
- The PRICE.
Other marketplaces are often very expensive.
Marketplaces that specialize in the construction industry often have such high membership or publishing costs (as much as €2,500/month) that they are prohibitive for small businesses that market these materials, which often give up promoting them online for this very reason.
Edifacile.com, on the contrary, is a free marketplace.
Opening an account on Edifacile.com is free, and you can always try to post your first ads for free and at your leisure, "without stess" and without time limits.
- INTERNATIONAL MARKETS.
Other portals are often popular only in their own nation.
An Italian portal may be popular in Italy, but it may not necessarily be popular in the rest of Europe. Italian building materials are popular abroad because they are regulated by stringent regulations. To limit sales to Italy alone is to circumscribe a market that could be expanded to... the whole world.
Edifacile.com, on the other hand, is a portal that constantly receives visitors from all over the world.
Every time an ad is posted on Edifacile.com, it is translated into the world's 25 most popular languages (and translations are included in the service). This allows Edifacile.com to be popular in several countries, enabling advertisers to reach a much wider market.
Map of visitors on Edifacile.com
- SPECIALIZATION.
Other portals are often generalists.
It often happens that materials in the construction industry are hastily classified as "Garden equipment." And if the advertiser has not entered the right keywords, finding the materials we need becomes impossible.
Edifacile.com is a portal specializing in the sale of construction and building materials.
The categories and search mode are designed to allow users to quickly find just the material they are looking for, in the quantities in which they are looking for it and at the price (and conditions) in which they are looking for it.
- PRIVACY.
Other portals often share users' personal data with third parties or publish advertisers' contact information (phone numbers and emails) in plain text.
When a portal has thousands of visitors a day, it is likely that users' personal data are shared with hundreds of partners as soon as the user clicks on the "Accept Cookies" button. And it is very often the case that anyone-including "spammers" who collect information automatically from the web-will see advertisers' personal contact information (and this includes phone numbers and emails) without fail.
Edifacile.com does not share users' data with third-party partners and shows contact information only to members.
Visitor data collected by Edifacile.com, always and only following users' consent, is for statistical use only. In addition, each advertiser can decide at any time what contact information to share with other portal subscribers.
Thanks to an anti-spam system and the portal's built-in chat, Edifacile.com users can interact with each other with maximum privacy.
- EASE OF USE AND FUNCTIONALITY.
Other portals are often born years ago. Updating a large portal is something that large companies consider "risky" because too many users have been used to using it the same way forever. This is why the interfaces are often unintuitive and outdated: because it is risky to change them. And they delegate smartphone use of the portal to dedicated Apps that require installations, updates and take up space on users' cell phones.
Edifacile.com was released in summer 2022. It does not need dedicated apps or installation files to work: all it needs is a valid email address and a device (cell phone, tablet or pc) connected to the Internet. Notifications-if users wish to receive them-come via email and can be turned on or off at any time.
In Edifacile you can publish and translate your ad with 1 click, contact 500 suppliers in one go, receive email notifications about new products we are interested in, chat with potential buyers without having to leave personal contacts...
And the updates, with the addition of new features, are continuous and immediately available to everyone.
«Since we needed such a portal, we finally got tired of waiting for someone to invent it for us and decided to make it, making it available to everyone.»
Thus, within weeks of its publication, Edifacile.com became one of the most visited marketplaces among those dedicated to buying and selling scaffolding, props, formwork.
«The hope is that Edifacile will continue on this path: that it will become an authoritative and impartial point of contact between supply and demand for building materials. And that it ensures, in a simple and accessible way, more and more visibility for professionals in this sector.»
«For those involved in construction sites, selling or buying the right materials, at the right time, and at the right price should never depend on luck but be the norm. Especially in today's world, where there is no shortage of materials and information retrieval just needs to be made a little easier.»
— Stefano Savio
Product Manager Edifacile.com
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