How the Bubble Engine Fuels Farie’s Growth and Speed

Buying new and used cars is no walk in the park — but the team at Swiss-based startup Farie is on a mission to make it better. Originally formed in an incubation program in 2021, the business has expanded from a simple e-commerce concept to a complex, data-driven auction and trade platform that recently raised a $4.5 million (CHF4.0 million) Series A led by one of Switzerland’s largest insurance companies. 
Powered by Bubble’s Enterprise plan, the team has grand ambitions to make Farie the ultimate destination for online car shopping.

Off to the races in just three months
When COO Tobias Peschke first got together with his Farie co-founders, Johannes Weirather and Pascal Kappeler, their idea to launch an e-commerce shop for used cars just happened to coincide with the peak of the global chip crisis. In other words: It was really hard to get new cars.

“We knew we had to get our product ready — the sooner we could trade cars [on platform], the better. You could sell pretty much any car as long as you already had it.” 


With the pressure on, Tobias connected with HuggyStudio, a Swiss-based no-code agency and one of Bubble’s Gold agency partners, to help them get their idea off the ground. The team didn’t spend a lot of time considering other development options — with their experience in business and technology, they knew time was of the essence. “We thought Bubble offered the right balance of modularity and flexibility to build some of our more complex workflows, but we could also move quickly enough to achieve our go-to-market strategy. What we did in three months on Bubble would have taken us one and a half years to build in proper code.”

“What we did in three months on Bubble would have taken us one and a half years to build in proper code.”

At the end of those three months, they launched with all their essentials — including supporting an entire auction and bidding feature set.

A “race car” for testing and validating new features
Two and a half years into their venture, Tobias emphasizes that Bubble has been a core driver behind the young company’s success. “We use Bubble as a race car to test new products and implement new workflows,” he explains. Once a concept has been validated, they’ll mature the experience and optimize as needed.

Today, “they” refers to their three in-house Bubble Developers. Most of Farie’s frontend and infrastructure is powered by Bubble, with a bit of custom Python augmenting the platform to help supercharge load times. “Whether you’re leasing or buying, it’s all on Bubble,” says CMO Tom Elkins. “The customer data that’s then collected for all the marketing is directly integrated into Hubspot and triggered by Bubble.”

Bubble also powers Farie’s auction platform, which supports users managing their own sale as well as Farie buying a car outright — like an exotic or older model — and showcasing it for other dealers to bid on the vehicle. The Farie revenue model also includes commissions from partnering with reputable companies in logistics, refurbishments, banking, and insurance.

As the platform has grown, so has the team — Farie’s team now includes 17 people all over the world. “We’ve got a Greek Bubble Developer in Switzerland, an Italian Bubble Developer in Italy, a Swiss developer in Spain … we even did a deployment from 30,000 feet on a flight to Thailand,” laughs Tom.

Protecting consumer data, one server location at a time
One of Farie’s key considerations when evaluating Bubble for their tech stack was Bubble’s ability to support the stringent consumer data privacy protection laws in Europe. Given Farie was handling sensitive personally identifiable information (PII) and developing integrations with banks and insurance providers, Farie needed a partner that would not only help them honor legal regulations, but also support the massive amounts of data stored in and passed through the app.



By investing in Bubble’s Enterprise plan, Farie could check all of these boxes, and then some. Enterprise enabled them to move their servers from New York to Frankfurt and upgrade their data storage as volume grew. An added bonus: With the Enterprise plan, Farie has a dedicated point of contact on the Bubble team who advises them on how to keep their service and performance lightning-efficient. As Johannes says, “It’s a pleasure to work with the team at Bubble, who are listening to our needs and help us continually change our expectations of what is possible."

The investment has paid off — this spring, Farie will reach an important milestone: closing their $4.5 million Series A round, led by La Mobilière, one of the largest insurance companies in Switzerland.

As for what’s next, the team plans on building out a machine-learning-powered pricing algorithm, optimizing the supply side of the Farie marketplace, and experimenting with AI chatbots to support the sales team. “That’s why we need something flexible enough to bond our priorities,” says Tom. Bubble it is.

About Farie
Farie is building the future e-commerce ecosystem for trading cars in Switzerland; an online platform for buying and selling used cars. Farie started in 2021, offering a seamless and trustworthy experience through its end-to-end digitalized processes, transparent, high-quality vehicle data, and assured quality standards. Farie is committed to making car trading easier, safer, and more efficient for everyone. The Swiss startup just raised a successful Series A to continue its growth journey.