Looking to shake-up the online classifieds space, mondebarras.fr raises €2.1 million

 

BonCoin has long been the one of the top leaders in France’s online classifieds and second-hand sales space.  mondebarras.fr, which is owned by eMotion Map is looking to change all that with the announcement that they’ve closed a 3rd round of funding, this time at €2.1 million.
BonCoin isn’t, of course, the only player in this extremely crowded space. Ebay, paruvendu.fr, Vivastreet, TopAnnonces plus a whole host of others who have come and gone, may have tried to gain traction in the online classifieds market. That they were able to raise a pretty significant level of funding indicates that, perhaps, there is still room left to innovate the long-standing model of how the online classified sector operates. Founders Olivier Phéline, Alexandre Leroy and Olivier Levacher, are betting as well that it’s a sector that’s still ripe for innovation.
Their pricing model is structured around a free entry-level ability to list a limited number of announcements, followed by ‘packs’ which enable users to make a large volume of listings for a fixed price (ie 15 euros/month for 50). Additional paid services for professionals look to be in the plan as some of their new funding will be deployed towards developing new services. Marketing and promotion of the site, will also be a key expenditure as they look to increase the visibility and awareness of tmondebarras.fr and, ultimately, rapidly ramp up their number of visits which hit 2 million in 2014.
Although they do recognize that their pricing model is fairly standard, they view their approach where they encourage users to ‘create’ their online store to sell multiple items as well as the integration of video, which helps the vendor not only sell their product more quickly, but also helps, more generally, reinforce security.