Building an "Airbnb" for Warehouse Spaces - Transforming Urban Logistics

Industry: Freight & Logistics · Location: Switzerland · Type: B2B Digital Marketplace

20%+ of Swiss warehouse space potentially unlocked from idle capacity 350K m² of total warehouse space now accessible on the platform No fixed pricing. Buyers and providers negotiate terms freely 1 MVP validating market fit before committing to full product build

A structural gap in urban freight logistics The e-commerce boom has fundamentally reshaped how goods move through cities. Retailers need warehouse space near metropolitan areas, fast, flexible, and close to the last mile. But the supply is scattered, opaque, and grossly underutilized. In Switzerland alone, over 70,000 m² of warehouse space sits unused on any given day, which is more than 20% of total capacity. At the same time, logistics providers and retailers are struggling to find flexible, short-term storage near city hubs. The market existed. The connection didn't. The challenge wasn't a lack of space, it was a lack of visibility. Warehouse owners had no simple way to monetize downtime, and buyers had no efficient way to discover available space on short notice. Our client, a Swiss company developing a visionary underground freight transport system, recognized that for their city logistics vision to succeed, smarter intermediate hub utilization would be essential. The concept of "hub sharing" was born and they needed a partner to bring the vision to life.

We partnered closely with the client to design and develop a minimum viable product that validated the market hypothesis before committing to a full-scale build. The goal was to prove, quickly and efficiently, that both supply (warehouse owners) and demand (logistics providers, retailers) existed and would transact on a shared platform. 1. Hub sharing marketplace A two-sided platform connecting warehouse space providers with buyers seeking temporary or short-term storage. Both parties find each other and agree directly on lease terms, with no fixed pricing and no intermediary fees for providers. 2. Dynamic search and filters Buyers can filter warehouse listings by size in m², price range, and hourly slot availability. Providers can record open slots to the hour, making capacity visible in real time and easy to discover. 3. Rich listing detail pages Providers can upload photos, specify opening hours, ramp and access details, and list any additional logistic services, giving buyers everything they need to make a confident leasing decision without a site visit. 4. Seamless onboarding for both sides Simplified sign-up flows tailored to providers and buyers respectively, minimizing friction so both sides of the marketplace could activate quickly during the MVP validation phase.

For warehouse owners, the platform creates a new passive revenue stream with near-zero overhead. There's no need to negotiate complex long-term leases or manage broker relationships. Owners simply list available slots and let interested buyers come to them. For logistics providers, retailers, and wholesalers, the platform solves an urgent operational problem: finding verified, flexible space on short notice, without expensive commitments or time-consuming searches. They can rent by the day or by the month, sized to their exact current need. At a city scale, this directly improves last-mile logistics efficiency by reducing unnecessary truck movements, enabling smarter freight consolidation, and supporting the broader vision of sustainable urban freight distribution.

We selected a lean, proven stack that would get the MVP live quickly without sacrificing the architectural foundations needed for future scale. The stack enabled rapid iteration throughout the discovery and build phases. Stack: React · Node.js · Express The frontend in React provided a fast, component-driven UI that could evolve quickly based on early user feedback. The Node.js and Express backend gave us flexible API design with a small deployment footprint, well-suited for a market validation product that needed to iterate weekly rather than quarterly. The MVP architecture was deliberately scoped with no unnecessary infrastructure complexity and no over-engineered auth flows. Just enough to test real transactions between real buyers and real providers, generating the signal needed to justify the next phase of investment.

The Hub Sharing MVP successfully validated both sides of the market. Warehouse owners could see immediate value in monetizing idle time. Buyers discovered a genuinely faster, more flexible alternative to traditional space sourcing. And the client got the concrete evidence they needed to move forward with confidence. More broadly, the platform represents a concrete first step toward more intelligent urban logistics, proving that connecting distributed, underused infrastructure with real demand is not just a theory, but a buildable, functional product.