ABOUT PROJECT
FromLocals was founded by Stefano Pedretti with a simple goal: to connect travelers with authentic local experiences in Lake Como. Instead of standard tours, this local experience marketplace helps visitors discover unique activities hosted by locals, making each trip more personal and meaningful.
The Roobykon team was enthusiastic to build the digital platform for FromLocals. We focused on creating a clean, reliable foundation that puts the focus on people and experiences, not on the technology. Designed to grow, FromLocals starts in Lake Como with the vision to expand into a worldwide community.
Key Challenges
The starting point wasn’t a list of features, but a feeling – the idea of “authentic connection.” Our challenge was to work closely with the founder to shape that idea into real, usable tools for the website. We had to ask: What does “authentic” look like on a screen? How do you build a platform that feels personal, not like a simple store?
FromLocals needed to launch with a sharp focus on Lake Como, but had big dreams to expand worldwide. The technical challenge was building a local experience marketplace that works perfectly for a small local community now, but can scale smoothly to new cities and countries later. We had to build with the future in mind from day one.
TECHNOLOGY STACK
Solution Highlights
In practice, this was a Sharetribe marketplace development project – we leveraged Sharetribe’s core to rapidly deliver a production-ready solution. This strategic foundation provided an immediate, scalable marketplace structure, allowing our team to concentrate fully on customizing the user experience and refining the interface to capture the authentic, local spirit of the Lake Como region.
To ensure seamless and secure transactions, we integrated Stripe as the dedicated payment engine. This powerful combination of Sharetribe’s marketplace core and Stripe’s trusted financial infrastructure delivered a fully functional, transactional website with remarkable speed. From a service perspective, this involved Stripe payment integration as part of the overall marketplace platform development.
THE PROCESS
01
Conceptual Scoping & Foundation (November 2025 – December 2025): Our existing collaborative relationship with the client allowed us to move swiftly into refining the vision for FromLocals. Over this initial two-month phase, we worked intensively to translate the broad idea of a local experience marketplace into a concrete technical and strategic blueprint.
02
Custom Development & Integration (January 2026 – Final Stages): With the blueprint approved, we entered a focused development sprint to customize the platform and bring it to life. Our team dedicated this month to tailoring the Sharetribe core to the specific brand and flow of FromLocals, while integrating essential third-party services like Stripe for secure payments.
Main Features
Contextual Google Auto-Translate
To welcome visitors from around the world, the site fully supports content in both English and Italian. User profiles and experience listings can be created in either language, giving travelers the ability to browse and book in the language they prefer.
Smart Auto-Cancel for Group Tours
Hosts can set a minimum number of guests needed for a group tour to run. If enough people don’t book by a set time, the tour is automatically canceled. This protects hosts from running events that aren’t viable.
Configurable Booking Cut-Off Time
Hosts decide their own “booking deadline.” They can set how many hours before an event someone must book, giving them control over their preparation time.
Flexible Booking Confirmation Modes
Hosts choose how bookings work. They can set experiences to be instantly confirmed or manually approved. Instant is great for simple activities; manual lets them review each request.
Provider-Controlled Stripe Payouts
The marketplace owner has complete control over the timing and release of provider payouts. Instead of using an automatic schedule, the owner can manually review and approve the transfer of earnings to each provider’s bank account via Stripe.
RESULTS
The partnership between Roobykon and FromLocals successfully turned a beautiful vision into a living, working marketplace. By delivering Sharetribe-based marketplace development, we created a digital space where real human connections and local discovery can easily flourish. The platform captures the authentic spirit of Lake Como by empowering local hosts with smart tools and offering travelers a genuine way to connect with the destination.
Lessons from Cordially
The development of FromLocals was a masterclass in turning vision into viable technology. Our key lesson was learning to thrive within open-ended requirements, transforming our role from mere developers to strategic interpreters. By deeply collaborating with the founder, we honed the skill of distilling a powerful ethos like “authentic connection” into concrete, functional features through continuous dialogue and prototyping.
We also grew stronger by solving the core technical paradox of building a local experience marketplace for an intimate launch while preparing for global expansion. This project ingrained in us the discipline of making every foundational decision with scalable architecture in mind, ensuring immediate functionality never compromises future growth.
WHAT OUR CLIENTS SAY
Pat Drinan
Founder & CEO, Homehak
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Founder & CEO, Global Rev Gen
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