The Smoves story: I started a moving company without owning a van

The short version

The Smoves story starts in Milan in 2026. I started it, Francesco Nigro, as an away-from-home student at Bocconi, because every June I had no idea where to put my things. When I began I didn't have a van, just the idea. Today we pick up boxes across Milan, Brianza and the Bergamo area, keep them in our warehouse and bring them back when you book the redelivery.

No market research involved: it came out of a room I had to empty in June with exams still running. The operating base is at Viale Bligny 19A, and the warehouse holds the things of people who expect to find them intact in September.

The formal version is on about us, and what we do, point by point, is in what is Smoves. This one includes the missed train.

Where it really starts: June, one room, two suitcases

Every late June went the same way. A room to clear by a date somebody else had chosen, exams not finished, two suitcases with the combined capacity of a wallet, and my parents a few hundred kilometers away. The academic calendar and the rental calendar don't talk to each other, and you're in the middle holding the packing tape.

Every option was bad in its own way. There was a friend's car, and a friend who stops being one somewhere around the third floor with no elevator. There was a courier, who moves things but doesn't keep them. I could give everything away, which is free only if you ignore what you re-buy in October. Or I could rent a unit in a warehouse outside the city, reachable by car, and in Milan neither I nor almost anyone I knew had a car.

The one I wanted didn't exist: someone who comes and takes the stuff and brings it back after the summer. I spent two years waiting for somebody else to invent it, and at some point I stopped waiting.

Why the United States had already solved this

I went to look at how other countries handled it, and found that the United States handled it much better, and had for a long time. Self storage there is a grown-up industry: the American trade association counts roughly 49,000 facilities in the US against 15,000 in the entire rest of the world. And services built for students emptying a dorm in June have been around for years.

Not in Italy, even though June is June everywhere. Classic self storage arrived here later, and it was built for people with a business, a van, and a reason to visit the unit every week. A student with twelve boxes, no car and a move-out date set by the university is a different customer, and that product wasn't made for him.

So the model already existed, written and tested by other people. My job was to make it work in Milan, for students without a car.

What I had to build before I could say yes to anyone

An idea takes thirty seconds to describe. Then you find out that picking up the first box takes a real warehouse, online booking that doesn't involve a phone call, and a system that always knows how many pieces you have and where they are. You also need vehicles for the transport and a price a student can pay without calling home.

On price I made the decision I'm proudest of: you pay a monthly rate for the square meters you take up, from 1 m² up, plus a one-off pickup and transport charge at the start. You book and pay for the redelivery when you need it. The rate renews month by month, with no annual contract, and the figures are on the pricing page.

Then came the instructions on how to pack your boxes, with the 20 kg limit per box: one person lifts it, and that person has only one back.

I wanted the base at Viale Bligny 19A, behind Bocconi and minutes from Statale, so I could walk there whenever a customer needs us. The idea was mine, but Smoves became a company when Giulia Massari joined as a partner, right when the project had to stop being a project. One of us brings the enthusiasm and the other brings the calendar, and I'll let you guess which. The full step-by-step is on how it works.

The time I went to Florence in person

A father writes to us from abroad: his son has to move out for the summer from Florence, on a date that couldn't move by a single day. The easy answer was no. I organized it from Milan and, to make sure it went smoothly, decided to go in person.

The move happened on the agreed day, and the customer didn't have to think about any of it. That's what stayed with me: when someone has a date, the problem becomes ours, and we show up.

Where we are today

Today Smoves picks up and redelivers as far as Lake Como and the Lomellina, serving students at Politecnico, Bocconi, Statale, Cattolica, IULM, Humanitas and NABA. In June 2026 we collected over 200 items from students, mostly around Bocconi, which is the neighborhood the whole thing started in. The service runs in Italian and English, because in June a lot of emails open with «Hi, sorry for writing in English».

Redelivery can travel even further: if you end up living in another city or another country, we ship on a quote. Storage built around studying is described on student storage.

On Trustpilot we're at 4.3 out of 5.