Web Giants Look to Home-Services Market
Installing new faucets, fixing balky electrical switches, and performing a variety of other routine household chores are part of a giant home-services market that could be worth more than $400 billion, and it’s an area of growing interest for big internet powers like Google and Amazon.
That’s the gist of an article published April 12 in the New York Times.
Young companies such as Thumbtack, Pro.com, and TaskRabbit connect homeowners who need work done with vetted service providers for a cut of the fee. Angie’s List, an established company that provides online reviews of tradespeople and their work, is expanding its scope with a mobile app called SnapFix that lets homeowners take a picture of something that’s broken and get bids from people who would fix it, the Times said.
Thumbtack co-founder Marco Zappacosta told the newspaper there’s nothing else as lucrative still left for mining on the internet. And that has powerhouses like Google and Amazon eager to jump in.
Amazon has launched a service called Amazon Home Services, which makes it as easy to get your gutters cleaned as it is to order a book. Google, which invested $100 million in Thumbtack, is now looking into getting into the same business itself, the newspaper said.
Sites are easy to use
TaskRabbit seems typical of home services available on the web. Jobs are divided into categories such as “moving help,” “cleaning,” and “handyman.” Pick the task you have in mind, answer a few questions, and you’ll get a list of hourly rates from “taskers” who are willing to do the work.
Payments are handled online once the work is done. TaskRabbit takes a 20% service fee and promises thorough background checks on anyone homeowners hire. It’s currently available in 19 big metro areas, including New York, Seattle, London, San Diego, and Denver.
The company’s pitch is simple: “You outsource errands you don’t want to do.”
The Times uses a woman named Deborah David as an example of how much easier it is to deal with a web-based service provider than an actual tradesperson. The details related in the article went like this:
When she discovered a faucet at home was leaking, she did a Google search to get the names of plumbers in her area, then went to Yelp and New York magazine for recommendations. She made telephone calls, left messages, and eventually talked with a plumber who gave her a “convoluted price estimate.”
So she gave up on the repair and decided to buy new. While ordering the faucet from Amazon, she saw a small icon on the screen that eventually led her to a list of businesses that would install it, plus their prices.
She was “delighted” with the result.
For service providers, the jury is still out
The company that replaced the faucet was Homlux, which was founded only a year ago and offers home services in all five New York City boroughs. Its founder, Matt Feldman, was approached by Amazon because he had favorable customer reviews. Homlux was eventually added to Amazon’s home services list of providers.
Feldman said he had to cut his rates to compete with other Amazon providers, but he also has a lot of new business.
“I look at it as an opportunity–it’s Amazon,” he told the Times. “I would say it’s early days still. We are trying to make it work. It’s a little difficult adjusting with the new prices, but there’s definitely volume there. We’re interested, but a little nervous about the low prices.”
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Ordering the faucet plus an installer is the idea behind a growing home-services industry. It's what a web executive calls one of the few remaining "pots of gold" on the internet.
