Brico Shopping: from family hardware store to European brand on Amazon

Interview with the founder Daniele Coppola

Tell us how Brico Shopping was born

The company comes out of my father Felice Coppola's business, a hardware store in Pomigliano opened in 1971. My father, who at over 80 years old still drops by to do his calculations, had done a bit of everything before opening the shop — carpenter, insurance agent, blacksmith, working in the fields. From that experience he decided to start this small hardware store, which within a few years became a reference point for Pomigliano and the surrounding area.

I grew up inside the business. I'd finish school and head to the shop, do my homework between the shelves, give my father a hand. Then I graduated with top honors in finance and marketing from Federico II.

But before joining the business you did something else, right?

Yes, back then I ran a stock market analysis site, Studio Borsa. I was going strong, I had 4-5 people working with me. When I started there were no real-time stock quotes — they only arrived the next day. I bought a program that cost six million lire and built a system that would extract the data each evening so that by the next morning the charts were already on my site. Something nobody else had.

Fund managers used to call me, I'd go to conferences with banks, I even wrote a few books on statistical analysis of stock quotes. It was a future I was thinking about — but then 2001 happened, the Twin Towers: I watched portfolios worth millions of euros get cut in half overnight. Too volatile. I let it go and threw myself into the family business.

And when does online begin?

In 2006 I started selling on eBay. I still remember the first item: a toilet brush holder. We didn't even know how to ship it — my mother packed it and took it to the post office. The first feedback was "item as described, packaging needs improvement". Positive.

From there I figured out how eBay worked and started listing items that weren't moving at the shop. In 2008 I built brico-shopping.it — my wife and I picked the name. I immediately registered the domain across Europe: FR, DE, COM, Spain.

I hear the Brico Shopping trademark has a particular story

Yes, Brico Depot challenged my name. I went to one of the top Italian trademark lawyers. I studied the regulations so thoroughly that I drafted him a 4-5 page letter with all the references myself. He called me back and said:

"You've written a letter I couldn't have written better. I'll take it, tweak it a bit, and send it. You have no problem."

In 2010 I registered the figurative trademark, and last year — after twenty years — also the wordmark across all of Europe. I now have a European trademark, both wordmark and figurative. I defended it on my own.

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The philosophy: one step at a time

In twenty years online what principle has guided you?

Always one step at a time. I've watched companies do five times what I was doing in a couple of years — investments, loans, even a sound vision — and I've watched those same companies go bankrupt three years later. People who eventually called me to join forces. My answer was always:

"No, no, you go your way. I'll go mine, one step at a time."

And in twenty years it has always worked.

Never get into a price war

This is something I learned early. Many start out without really calculating Amazon's fees, VAT, the real commissions. You see €100,000 in monthly revenue and then at year-end your accountant tells you nothing is left in your pocket.

I'd rather sell 80 with less effort thanks to FBA, and end up with triple the margin I had before.

My logic is to bet on product knowledge, on differentiation, and increasingly on our own brand.

And on cash flow?

I always work with a strongly positive cash flow. I pay suppliers up front to get the maximum discount. When it's time to sell, the goods are already paid for, I have no problems, and the suppliers are happy. Ideas travel better when your back is covered.

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The turning point: from vendor to FBA

You also became an Amazon vendor in 2018. How did it go?

Vendor destroys you. From 2018 to today we've never raised prices, because once you set a price, changing it is a war. Meanwhile they raise fees every year, and at some point we found ourselves with tens of thousands of euros of stock sent back by Amazon out of the blue, on their decision.

That's when we changed strategy. The big growth has come from FBA, especially pre-COVID, and today 60-70% of revenue passes through FBA.

How did you build the catalog over time?

At first the idea was to push everything: at one point we had 11,000 ready-to-ship SKUs in the warehouse. But every morning I was afraid to open orders, because between suppliers with different lead times and lack of synchronization it often happened that, out of 50 items sold, 10 you couldn't reorder.

So I trimmed it down: out went fragile items, items I couldn't quickly reorder, items with thin margins. On eBay and Amazon I dropped to around 2,000 items. In FBA I'm currently at 200.

Now in the morning I open my phone satisfied: 20 items sold, I have all of them.

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Brico Shopping private-label products

A few years ago you started launching products under your own brand

Yes, we're in our third year. Last year we did 3 items, this year and next we'll reach 10. They're products already on the market, but we know them well thanks to our hardware-store background, and we manage to have them produced under our own brand — either directly or through agreements with the manufacturer.

The logic is simple: instead of selling the same Nike everyone else sells and fighting on price, sell the same quality under your own name. You get a different margin, you don't have to fight anyone, you can add a euro because no one is pushing you down.

And this happens because some manufacturers sell directly to Amazon

Exactly, and I've seen it happen with two big suppliers. They see the good price, they fill you with orders for two-three years, and then they start to crush you. You cut all the other channels, you end up only with them, and at that point they create a parallel line or kill you on price.

The moment a manufacturer sells directly on Amazon, they lose their brand image, they lose the supply chain, they lose everything.

With the suppliers who pulled this on us we walked away and started our own production.

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Brico Shopping and ZonWizard

How did you arrive at ZonWizard?

ZonWizard was a lifesaver for taxes. I picked it up initially when OSS came in, because I really didn't know how to handle it. The absurd thing is that I had to explain it to my accountant, not the other way around. Still today, if I don't feed him the stats ZonWizard generates, he can't do the job.

I remember it cost €50-60 and there was a 15% discount through Scuola Ecommerce. I closed my eyes and said yes. Truly blessed back then.

And how much time did you save on accounting?

At least one full day per month of manual work gone. Today my team downloads the data and sends it to the accountant in a few minutes. On the tax and OSS side I spend 10 minutes, we cross-check with the accountants, and the close is done.

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Without ZonWizard: 1 day/month

of manual work to properly close Amazon accounting and OSS.

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With ZonWizard: 10 minutes

I extract the data, send it to the accountant, and Amazon tax is closed.

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Then Refunds came along

Refunds were the second big surprise. As soon as you launched them I opened cases on every FBA ASIN. From the dashboard I can see that I've recovered €1,250 in a few months, and considering the early cases you helped me reopen going further back in time, I estimate €1,600-1,700 in total. More than 2 years of ZonWizard paid back from refunds alone.

Before, I'd sometimes open cases and never follow up. Here you open the case and from the panel next to it you know whether it went through, whether you need to reopen, what happened. Our idea is to do as little as possible to get to the result.

The same applies to inbound refunds: in one recent case I recovered over €100. Sometimes you open a case and Amazon never follows up. With ZonWizard's structure it's all more organized.

Have you also used the negative-margin alerts?

Yes, and here came an important discovery. When we moved to Pan-European, ZonWizard started sending us negative-margin alerts on items where we'd previously been comfortably positive. Digging in, we discovered that Pan-European applied a €2 surcharge for oversized items — a footnote hidden in a tiny box.

Without the ZonWizard Profit Table alerts we'd never have noticed. On low-margin items it was a real blow.

ZonWizard sends you the email: "look, you're underwater here, go check". I extract the data, load it correctly, and if needed we automatically nudge the margin up without getting into a price war.

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Why we went FBA-only abroad

You also sell across Europe today?

Yes, but FBA only. We do roughly 70% in Italy and 30-40% in the rest of Europe, mostly France and Germany.

FBM abroad had created too many return and complaint problems: a single negative feedback on a handful of orders could push you to 100% negative feedback and get your marketplace shut down. We reopened France after almost a year and from that point on we decided: abroad, FBA only. They ship, they handle returns, we just answer the few questions that come in. Problem solved.

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The future of Brico Shopping

Where do you want to take Brico Shopping?

We created Brico Shopping SRL in 2021 precisely to separate the online brand from the historical retail shop and give a sharper identity to the online side.

The direction is clear: more and more private label. We're at 200 FBA SKUs today, the goal in 2-3 years is to reach 500 own-brand items — some manufactured directly by us, others through agreements with Italian manufacturers.

We always work with our back covered. Never take a bigger step than your leg can handle: if I have doubts, I stop. When I finish an import and see it works, I launch the next one. If it doesn't work, nothing happens — I still have the stock myself.

A closing philosophy?

Free your mind to focus on the most profitable ideas, less work and more profit. That's the direction.

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Thank you Brico Shopping

Thank you Daniele for sharing your story. Twenty years of online built one step at a time is a valuable example for the ZonWizard community.

Thanks to you for the tools you provide. ZonWizard is a program that makes life simpler by giving you the tools you need. The rest should be cut away.

See you soon.