Sell direct or get them gone?

[Sid]

I have some cattle fit to slaughter, I was wondering if I should just ship them or maybe take a punt,take them to local slaughter house and get them boxed up.
200kg@£11/kg is £2200 - £500 cut and pack cost = £1700
Got to find 20 people to buy it......

 

[Chris F]

I was thinking whether we should do sales of farm products on Farm Marketplace. We can promote them easily enough. Free for farmers to use baring card processing cost.

Could easily set up new accounts. Add products for sale, sell direct. I think the public would appreciate it too. Must be loads of farmers who have products for sale.

Would that be useful to you? Maybe get 100 people to buy smaller boxes?

 

[Chris F]

@Lucy @ Farm Marketplace

 

[Sid]

I was thinking whether we should do sales of farm products on Farm Marketplace. We can promote them easily enough. Free for farmers to use baring card processing cost.

Could easily set up new accounts. Add products for sale, sell direct. I think the public would appreciate it too. Must be loads of farmers who have products for sale.

Would that be useful to you? Maybe get 100 people to buy smaller boxes?

Issue used to be people finding a home for 10kg in a freezer. I think freezers will slowly be getting empty in couple of weeks

 

[honeyend]

I was going to send one but people have bought loads to freeze and even my own freezer is full meat from last year. Its just judging it right, and how many weeks before to book it in, then hang it.
10kg seems about a standard box, they say it takes upthe space one shelf of a freezer.

 

[Sid]

I was going to send one but people have bought loads to freeze and even my own freezer is full meat from last year. Its just judging it right, and how many weeks before to book it in, then hang it.
10kg seems about a standard box, they say it takes upthe space one shelf of a freezer.

Always historically hung for 2 or 3 weeks

Would get them signed up and deposit paid before delivery

 

[Chris F]

Issue used to be people finding a home for 10kg in a freezer. I think freezers will slowly be getting empty in couple of weeks

Beauty of the internet, there are 60 million people using it and you only want 20 sales.

 

[Sid]

Beauty of the internet, there are 60 million people using it and you only want 20 sales.

I have more than one to go!

 

[Chris F]

Think you will be fine! You will just need to expand on your 0.000033% market share.

 

[Sid]

Think you will be fine! You will just need to expand on your 0.000033% market share.

Did it before, was hard work.....think this maybe easier?

 

[Sid]

Have added a poll

 

[Chris F]

Did it before, was hard work.....think this maybe easier?

Dealing with the public is hard work, we (I mean Lucy mostly) are doing it a lot at the moment right now. But the payment portal works, the emails are all automated to make sure customers are kept up to date and our system works. Still we have an overhead of about £2 an order in just staff costs. So beware of selling in packages that are small. Smaller number of bigger orders is easier to deal with.

If you do it, don't take deposits take full payment. Deposits just double the amount of work.

 

[brigadoon]

we do this with Dexter's and as others have said dealing with the public can be "interesting" in order to make it worthwhile selling direct there has to be a premium over selling through the normal chain.

Its up to each individual to decide how much of a premium is necessary but we can (sometimes) sell a 200 -240Kg Dwt dexter steer in boxes and get the same nett return as a 550Kg shorthorn through the live ring.

 

[Chris F]

we do this with Dexter's and as others have said dealing with the public can be "interesting" in order to make it worthwhile selling direct there has to be a premium over selling through the normal chain.

Its up to each individual to decide how much of a premium is necessary but we can (sometimes) sell a 200 -240Kg Dwt dexter steer in boxes and get the same nett return as a 550Kg shorthorn through the live ring.

I used to get at least double (normally triple if there was some processing like with bacon or sausage) by selling direct to public. Was a bit of a captive market though being holiday makers.

 

[Clive]

I have some cattle fit to slaughter, I was wondering if I should just ship them or maybe take a punt,take them to local slaughter house and get them boxed up.
200kg@£11/kg is £2200 - £500 cut and pack cost = £1700
Got to find 20 people to buy it......

I would buy - so I say do it

But you will need a platform to sell from, either a farm shop or website (I would say the latter gives you a infinity larger market !)

 

[Clive]

Have often thought we could easy create a Farmers mart version of farm marketplace for TFF members - farmer puts his produce on there for sale, public buy it ? A customer could get a more complete shopping basket if able to buy beef, pork, lamb, chicken, eggs and veg etc all on the one site benefiting form scale and SEO vs lots of smaller producers all trying to paddle their own canoe....... usually badly , kind of group online marketing

good idea or not ?

 

[milkloss]

Have often thought we could easy create a Farmers mart version of farm marketplace for TFF members - farmer puts his produce on there for sale, public buy it ? A customer could get a more complete shopping basket if able to buy beef, pork, lamb, chicken, eggs and veg etc all on the one site benefiting form scale and SEO vs lots of smaller producers all trying to paddle their own canoe....... usually badly , kind of group online marketing

good idea or not ?

I’m going to sound like a miserable beggar but won’t that create a race to the bottom if the buyers can just flick through the prices?

 

[Dalos]

Have often thought we could easy create a Farmers mart version of farm marketplace for TFF members - farmer puts his produce on there for sale, public buy it ? A customer could get a more complete shopping basket if able to buy beef, pork, lamb, chicken, eggs and veg etc all on the one site benefiting form scale and SEO vs lots of smaller producers all trying to paddle their own canoe....... usually badly , kind of group online marketing

good idea or not ?

good idea I would say

 

[Danllan]

I was thinking whether we should do sales of farm products on Farm Marketplace. We can promote them easily enough. Free for farmers to use baring card processing cost.

Could easily set up new accounts. Add products for sale, sell direct. I think the public would appreciate it too. Must be loads of farmers who have products for sale.

Would that be useful to you? Maybe get 100 people to buy smaller boxes?

I’m going to sound like a miserable beggar but won’t that create a race to the bottom if the buyers can just flick through the prices?

Hmm... it's a good idea, but the point @milkloss makes is a fair one. We do sell boxed meat, but the best way for us is selling half a beast. Unless we know them well we get a 50% deposit, we deliver it butchered and vacuum packed, unless they come over and stay in a holiday let and take it back with them - a win-win. But that may now take a while to happen again.

 

[Sid]

Have often thought we could easy create a Farmers mart version of farm marketplace for TFF members - farmer puts his produce on there for sale, public buy it ? A customer could get a more complete shopping basket if able to buy beef, pork, lamb, chicken, eggs and veg etc all on the one site benefiting form scale and SEO vs lots of smaller producers all trying to paddle their own canoe....... usually badly , kind of group online marketing

good idea or not ?

But how do you sell your USP.
It would be akin to putting it on the supermarket shelf and not having a marketing website to sell your story.