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We requested Loic Masson, who is the owner of the HomoPlantus company to share his success story and entrepreneurial journey with Webkul. Please read the interview below:

Loic Masson

France

Why you have started this business? What kind of problem it is solving for the end customers?

The fight against climate change has been a top priority for many countries after the Paris agreement on climate change was signed in 2016. Waste management and ecology, in general, have become important topics for the citizens of the world. Therefore, we wanted to create a marketplace where people could sell their own ecological products such as seeds, plants, vermicompost and vermicompost worms. We created the HomoPlantus platform: www.homoplantus.com.

With this platform, we aim at connecting urban people to nature and promote one green recycling technology, vermicomposting.

Exchanging worms on our marketplace is important to us. Indeed, what is difficult and expensive when vermicomposting is getting the worms. By connecting people together we make it easier and cheaper for all. We expect to grow the number of people recycling their food scraps using vermicomposting technology. By doing so we would be happy to take our part in making the world a cleaner place.

Who is your role model in your business, product, or organization and how did you get inspired?

We are inspired by Jacques Attali – the president of NGO Positive Planet – working on creating a better world for future generations. We were also inspired by nature, in particular, the natural waste recycling process performed by the worms. We decided to democratize the vermicomposting technique through our platform by selling the worms and the vermicompost. Then we extended the products range to other ecological products, seeds, and plants.

What were the challenges you faced while setting up your business?

Technically we had to find the right checkout process for when a buyer buys from a seller. We decided people would meet each other in a specific location, available on the seller profile, exchange the product(s) there and pay by cash. Coding all this was challenging since Webkul extension Joomla Virtuemart Multi-Vendor Marketplace did not have this feature by default. The Webkul and HomoPlantus team worked hard together to successfully solve this challenge.

Any advice to the users who are running a similar business like yours?

Understand your market and make things easy for users.

How did this Business Idea click in your mind?

Recycling our wastes at home must be a normal behavior nowadays given the climate challenges we are facing. Vermicomposting is a great solution as it is efficient, inexpensive and ecologically friendly. We first decided to promote this technique and then we extended our products range to other ecological products.

What do you do for Business Promotion ( Online and Offline)?

We heavily use social networks such as Facebook or Twitter. We share articles about green technologies and plant/soil sciences to describe the latest innovations in the field, to explain how the plant world works and explain why vermicomposting is so cool!

Offline, we meet people from ecological communities and share our passion for the seeds, plants and vermicomposting.

What is the team size and you manage your team?

The team is composed of five people who all have scientific backgrounds. We work in groups of two to three people on the different topics we need to take care of.

How Webkul is helping you in setting up your online store/marketplace?

Webkul has been very helpful in providing several customizations of their commercial extension Joomla Virtuemart Multi-Vendor Marketplace. Our requirements were not easy to grasp but the Webkul team successfully understood and delivered what was required. In addition, the support was very active and provided us with top level support. 

I would like to give a special thank to Gautam who, as a business developer, functional analyst, and project manager, masterfully managed the relations between Webkul IT team and the HomoPlantus team. For the record, more than 900 emails were sent over a year and 8 customizations were delivered by the Webkul team. During this time, Gautam facilitated the work between the two companies.

What do you think is it a good time to go online?

You must go online as soon as you have a beautiful working MVP (minimum viable product). Your product should not contain several features but the most important one only. This feature should work well (professional grade). That way you can try your concept in production and improve your product over time.

What market segment you are trying to capture?

We are trying to enter the plants and the recycling business. Our first geographical markets are the French-speaking countries such as France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Canada. We would like them to extend the concept to other European countries.

HomoPlantus eCommerce Marketplace

To get more detailed knowledge of the business Loic does, kindly visit the https://www.homoplantus.com/.