Fixable's Managed Marketplace for DIYers
Q&A with Dan Spinosa and Drew Stanley from Fixable on building a managed marketplace for DIYers
This reveals that Fixable is betting the hardest part of home services is not supply, it is product speed inside a giant retailer. Home Depot already has traffic, trust, and a huge catalog, but its service model is still built around selling products and routing customers through standard support. Fixable is trying to turn that dead end into a live expert workflow, where a homeowner can show a problem on video, get trade advice, and immediately buy the right parts.
-
Home Depot already runs installation services and spent $3.5B in fiscal 2024 on the core retail business, especially its pro ecosystem. That scale makes it powerful as a distributor, but it also means new service models must fit a large existing operating machine rather than a startup style product loop.
-
Fixable is designed as a managed marketplace, not a leads marketplace. Instead of selling a contractor a customer name, it vets pros, matches a homeowner to the right trade expert, runs the interaction through text, photos, and video, and can attach product commerce through a Home Depot API with a 5% to 6% commission.
-
That is a different workflow from Thumbtack and Angi. Thumbtack still centers the pro around lead budgets and max lead prices, while Angi still reports leads, ads, and pre priced service requests as core marketplace products. Fixable is trying to win on guided diagnosis before the job becomes an in person visit.
The next step in this market is tighter bundling of advice, parts, and fulfillment. If Fixable proves that virtual triage lifts conversion on tools and materials, large retailers are more likely to plug it in as a partner layer than rebuild it from scratch, and the winner will own the homeowner relationship before a truck is ever dispatched.