The Smoves story: how a student startup was born in Milan in 2025

Where the story starts

Smoves was born in 2025 in Milan from an idea by Francesco Nigro, a student at Bocconi University. As is the case for many away-from-home students, the idea didn't come from market research or a corporate brainstorm: it came from living the problem first-hand, year after year.

Every late June, the same scene: a room to empty, exams just finished, suitcases too small to carry everything home, parents living hundreds of kilometres away. The choice always boiled down to inconvenient options — loading a friend's car, paying a courier, giving everything away, or finding a self-storage warehouse outside the city accessible only by car.

The problem nobody had really solved

Milan has more than 200,000 university students, a large share of whom live away from home. Every year, in June, these people face the same logistical hurdle. Yet the existing solutions weren't built around them.

Traditional self-storage warehouses (MyPlace, Casaforte, BoxMyPlace) require renting a full unit, physically going to the warehouse often outside the city, signing annual contracts. They cost hundreds of euros for a few boxes and don't offer door-to-door pickup. Standard couriers deliver but don't keep things in custody. University residences rarely accept summer deposits.

The gap was clear: there needed to be something built around the needs and timing of students, not around the self-storage model designed for entrepreneurs or warehouse keepers.

From idea to service

The original idea was simple: we pick up, we store, we deliver. All online, all transparent, prices per box rather than per cubic metre, door-to-door pickup included. No annual contracts, no paper to sign at the warehouse, no surprises.

Getting started meant building the operational base: a warehouse in Milan, an online booking system that allowed booking in a few minutes, a team capable of running pickups with branded vans, a pricing model that worked for students on a budget. The whole first year was spent putting those pieces together.

The operating base is at Viale Bligny 19A, in the heart of Milan's university district, right behind Bocconi University and a few minutes from Statale. It's not a random choice: being physically close to the target audience matters.

What makes Smoves different

**Booking in 3 minutes, not an afternoon**: no warehouse visits, no signing in person. Everything happens from a smartphone.

**Price per box, not per cubic metre**: you only pay for what you actually store with us. No rounding up, no minimum square footage.

**Door-to-door pickup included**: you don't need to be there — the pickup is arranged with a flatmate, the building doorman or a friend. Nobody has to drag boxes onto a tram.

**Designed for academic rhythms**: the service is built around the typical student windows — summer, Erasmus, exam sessions, thesis abroad. Not around the annual contracts of classic self-storage.

Where we are today

Smoves operates today in Milan, serving students at all the main universities: Politecnico, Bocconi, Università Statale, Cattolica, IULM, Humanitas, NABA. Coverage includes the whole municipality of Milan and the surrounding first-ring towns.

The service is bilingual (Italian and English) to reflect the reality of a city where a large share of university students are international — Erasmus, students on English-taught programmes, PhD candidates.

Where we're going

The goal for the coming years is to expand the model to other Italian university cities (Turin, Bologna, Rome, Padua are the most obvious candidates) and to extend the service beyond the summer window: theses abroad, Erasmus exchanges, internships in other cities, gap years. All situations in which a student needs a flexible, low-cost logistical fallback.

The underlying idea remains the one Francesco started with: make away-from-home student life slightly easier, one box at a time.