The brief

Create an innovative service for building craftsmen

With a rapidly evolving building renovation sector, the role of the craftsmen is changing: end-users who are becoming prescribers on their building sites, a need for more and more advice, regulatory changes to be aware of, digital devices settling in … For La Plateforme du Bâtiment, this led to having to rethink the support they offered to craftsmen. This is reason why La Plateforme du Bâtiment asked us to imagine a new innovative service, aimed at their craftsmen clientele.

Our solution

Allow craftsmen to save time on waste management

During our exploration phase, we identified a key pain point in the daily journey of craftsmen: managing waste on construction sites.

Evacuating rubbish, cleaning construction sites, and bringing bags of rubble to rubbish dumps are painful, expensive, and time-consuming tasks for craftsmen, which prevent them from focusing on their core business. Some services exist for the evacuation of rubble, but they are not always adapted: not flexible enough, and not adapted to the constraints of urban renovation sites (waste in rubbish bags, often high up on building floors).

Existing solutions are so unsatisfactory that craftsmen are turning to illegal disposal solutions: it is estimated that 40% of waste produced by construction sites ends up in wild dumps.

The result

Les Ripeurs du Bâtiment !

Based on this insight, we imagined, prototyped and tested the service Les Ripeurs. A rubbish bag disposal service for building professionals, ultra-flexible and ultra-responsive: intervention on demand, in less than 3 hours.

After 4 months of project, we had:

• a service that we had prototyped and tested on the field;
• solid returns (operational constraints, user feedbacks);
• a 3-year business plan;
• a launch strategy and acquisition plan.

At the end of our mission, together with La Plateforme du Bâtiment, we decided to launch this service as a startup. 2 months later, the startup “Les Ripeurs” was born, offering its service in the distribution network of La Plateforme du Bâtiment, in Paris and in the suburbs.

For its first year of operation, the startup accumulated a turnover of 350k€,which represents 1700 tons of waste collected. 40% of this waste has been revalued. As proof of its potential, the incubator Paris&Co selected the startup in its 2018 Social and Solidarity Economy cohort.

Our ambition doesn’t stop here! In 2019, we want to:

• Expand our offer even further (big bags, skips)
• Develop a service with local communities to evacuate wild dumps
• Reach 60% of revalued waste
• Open the service in other major French cities

En savoir plus

• Les Ripeurs's website
• Les Ripeurs : what I learned lauching a start-up with a big corporation