✌️ THE 'shop local' marketplace + 🤯 Earning $105k/month on $600 no-code tools!

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📚 Posts

🏪 Using no-code to build a marketplace that helps people shop local

"Hey! My name is Bryan Costa and I'm the founder of Piqup – an online shopping experience for customers wanting to buy from local sellers.

I've worked in the startup scene in Berlin since 2015.

After spending a few years as a product manager digitalizing rehabilitation for a health-tech company, I left my full time job in 2021 to pursue my calling: building a better experience for local shoppers and sellers using awesome no-code tools.

A pandemic-born idea

During the first COVID-19 lockdown, here in Germany non-essential stores couldn't open. A friend of mine told me how tough business was. Bills needed to be paid, and inventory was simply sitting around.

It got me thinking. Customers couldn't go to his store, but if he offered order pick-up, that would be fine.

The problem to solve was simple: allow stores to list their goods, customers to place orders, and then be notified when orders are ready to be collected and paid for.

Discovering problems/opportunities around local stores

Problem 1: A lack of knowledge and resource to sell online

For shops to offer their products online to local customers, they need to rely on solutions which usually need to be implemented by someone else. They also need to invest a lot of time into these solutions – time that they don’t have.

There are shoppers who want to buy local. But finding the time is tough for them too. Also, local shops' online stores are often outdated with a terrible UX.

Problem 2: Solutions can be pretty complex

Existing solutions to sell digitally are often complex, expensive with hidden fees, and require time to be integrated into their businesses.

Problem 3: Cashflow struggles

Many local sellers lack the opportunity to get large investment rounds, so cashflow is critical.

What's more, most tech solutions have monthly payouts. Selling a product then waiting 30 days to be able to use that capital makes business growth difficult.

Piqup: proudly built on no-code tools

Recognizing these problems led me to ask:

• What if local shoppers had access to a single marketplace with their favorite local stores?
• And they could support the stores by making direct purchases?
• What if sellers had access to a platform where offering their products digitally was as easy as using Instagram, saving them time and hassle?
• What if businesses could be paid directly, increasing their cashflow? Would this lead to better service and product offers?

And so the idea for Piqup was born.

The MVP was built on Glide, with a Google Sheets database. Transactional emails (since I couldn't offer push notifications) were sent via MailerSend. And Integromat (now Make) connected things.

The second iteration of Piqup is built with Bubble, an outstanding no-code tool.

For anything design related, such as logos and assets for the App Store and Google Playstore, I use Figma.

For support documents, I use Notion. This is where we keep our knowledge base for Piqup Partners.

The landing page was made with Carrd.

If you want to follow my journey and see me fail spectacularly (but constantly learn), or just want to say hi, you can reach me on Twitter!

Also: Even if you don't end up using Piqup, please support local sellers near you!"

​Read the full post.

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🐦 Tweet of the Week

Justin Welsh @thejustinwelsh My one-person business does $105k/mo in revenue. It costs me $623/mo to run it. Here are the 11 no-code tools in my tech stack: 🧵 July 14th 2022 1,639 Retweets 10,725 Likes

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Cheers!
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Ben & the Makerpad team ✌️