Nomady developed custom features in the wake of exponential demand and growth

Oliver Huber has always been an adventurer. He isn’t just your standard weekend camper, though. He loved being off-the-grid, exploring far-flung corners of the world: Alaska, Lapland, and beyond. 

But adventuring wasn’t always easy. Many of the most beautiful and unique places to explore and camp were owned by private landowners, and there was no way of getting in touch with them. 

Intrigued, Oliver thought there might be a business he could build to connect adventurers with landowners to solve that problem. Instead of just talking about his idea, Oliver wanted to build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to really understand if people would be interested. He started looking for a ready-made marketplace platform and quickly found Sharetribe. He reflects: 

“Choosing Sharetribe was an easy decision: the support was really helpful, and we had a great first impression all around. Everything went smoothly.”

After partnering with Paolo De Caro, Oliver launched Nomady in the summer of 2019. At first, attracting supply to the marketplace was hard work. Oliver explains:

“In Switzerland, where we’re based, most of the private land is owned by farmers. They’re not tech-savvy people: using email or Google Ads to recruit them wouldn’t work. So instead, we went door-to-door, building relationships with all the landowners in our local area and convincing them to try Nomady.”

That first season, around 50 people booked a camping stay on Nomady. Oliver and Paolo interviewed them all individually, asking detailed, qualitative questions about their experience to learn what they could do to improve the Nomady.

As they approached the 2020 season, Nomady was in a good place. Oliver had gone on a TV show to raise money to expand, and the business was poised for an exciting summer. 

And then COVID-19 hit. 

Nomady’s investors pulled out.

Despite this, after the first couple of months of the pandemic, demand started to skyrocket. Oliver remembers:

“Demand was growing like crazy. We’d have over 100 new sign-ups every day, and all of our campsites were fully booked – all without any marketing.”

As Nomady started to get real traction, Oliver knew he had to add more features. At the same time, he made a conscious decision that Nomady would be very brand-driven, with a beautiful frontend that delivered a memorable experience for users. 

With the help of Sharetribe’s Developer Network, Nomady was able to transition to a self-hosted Sharetribe marketplace. This allowed them to build a better, more customized experience for their users.  

With their new and improved marketplace platform now live, Nomady’s sights are firmly set on ambitious growth plans. 

“We have a great product-market fit in Switzerland, but it’s a small market,” says Oliver. “Our focus now is on internationalization, on growing beyond Switzerland to the rest of Europe. We’re excited to see where we go.”

Sharetribe remains an important partner to the Nomady team. It’s a relationship that extends beyond just the Sharetribe product, as Oliver explains: “We love Sharetribe’s Marketplace Academy. We’re first-time marketplace builders, and there are so many great resources there. Everyone at Nomady is signed up to the newsletter: there’s content for everyone, from the marketing team to our CTO.”

› Check out Nomady

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