The important thing is not to have the merchandise in 15 minutes, but to pay for it a price that is as reasonable as possible and for quality products. This is the philosophy with which Borja Solé, Ruben Vilar and Carlos Costa founded the online supermarket Buo, in 2021. They prefer a customer who makes a leisurely purchase, with foresight, in which price and quality are prioritized above all else and whose deadline delivery is between two and three days to get the best possible price. “We eliminate all unnecessary intermediaries from the production chain and we eliminated the main frictions that online shopping had until now: higher prices, shipping costs and minimum orders”, explains Borja Solé, co-founder of Buo.
To do this, the platform gives rise to the creation of purchase groups among users so that they unify orders and request products at more adjusted prices. “Buo gathers its clients in groups —which can be a minimum of two buyers—, which allows them to have greater bargaining power when it comes to negotiating prices with suppliers and getting final prices on average 30% higher cheap”, explain those responsible for the project.
Established in the Barcelona metropolitan area, the company has just closed a financing round of two million euros to face its growth, initially with the opening of the service next July in Madrid. Also, has recently closed a long-term operational agreement with Glovo, in which it will not only provide them with logistical synergies, but also strategic knowledge in terms of expansion and markets that will allow them to grow faster as a company.
The Mangrove Capital Partners fund (with subsidiaries such as Wix, Skype or Wallapop, among others) and investors such as Didac Lee, Óscar Pierre, Inés Urés or Roger Solé participated in the financing round. Buo’s new partner, the Mangrove fund, understands the investment as a step in the strategy of promoting social e-commerce, “a booming trend in Europe”, according to Yannick Oswald, a partner at Mangrove, so “this is the best possible time for a company like Buo, which offers a clear value proposition in times when inflation dominates our daily lives ”.
Buo’s business model also breaks delivery schemes: shipments are not made to customers’ homes, but go to collection points that are located a maximum of five minutes from users’ homes and delivery is not immediate. In the words of the founders: “We have more than 50 collection points throughout the city so that users can collect their purchase for free five minutes from home”. Thanks to this and to the elimination of intermediaries within the chain, Buo obtains final prices below those of the large supermarket chains.
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