Wizaplace:
Winner of innovation award in Lyon

On Monday the 10th of October, during an evening dedicated to Innovation organised by the Progress Group, Wizaplace, designer of the creation platform and of eponymous marketplace management, received an Award for Commercial Innovation. This distinction was awarded to Eric Alessandri, CEO of Wizaplace for its platform’s modularity and the democratization of the marketplace model which it allows. The ceremony took place at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Lyon.

“The marketplace is the new model of e-commerce, says Eric Alessandri. Our mission is to make this model accessible to everyone. Before, E-commerce was a seller on line with their inventory to sell. Today, there are hundreds of sellers, even thousands of individuals, united on one platform dedicated to increasing a particular market (taxis with Uber, Airbnb with real estate, trade with Amazon, etc.). It is this model which is gradually gaining ground, and it applies to all companies in all sectors. So, we still need a flexible and simple platform to create tailor-made marketplaces. It is our job to create them and to put them in place.”

Although the company was established in 2012, the commercialization of the Wizaplace platform only began in September 2015, after 3 years of R & D. The company has about twenty customers including a dozen which are already in production, including Okadran.fr (direct contact between meat producers and consumers) Kolectiv-Design.com (resale of signed/vintage furniture) Edcom.fr a (marketplace dedicated to mobiles) and also LeHubz.fr, BtoB marketplace IT experts.

Over this first year, Wizaplace has signed twenty marketplaces and hopes to triple this figure next year. The first big names will be unveiled early next year for the production of marketplaces for over a million products on behalf of CAC 40 companies.

The company has a dozen employees. It was created and is managed by Eric and Cecile Alessandri. Product direction has been entrusted to Sylvain Ramousse, co-founder of AppGratis. Alain Laidet, founder of the E-Commerce Paris exhibition, intervenes in Wizaplace as investor and Managing Partner.