A direct-sales App for small farmers globally

So what's up YouTube? Now, most of you that are farming know that sales, accounting, marketing accounts for up to half of the actual role of being a farmer. And those of you that follow our channel know that we've been working with drop off buying clubs and more recently flying the Ricoh flag, which Johanna has been instrumental in setting up several ricos to create what I think is the most optimized and efficient method of selling direct to consumers that exists. But what about if that was available as a globalized app integrated with your accounting systems and your local market concerns where you could effectively start up drop off points and effective sales management yourself. So we really love the Ricoh model and it's been something that we've been doing since the start of our farm is running drop off points to minimize the time going into sales, things like farmers markets, etc. It's just a lot of time invested with no guarantee of sales. Now I've made videos about Ricoh several times on this channel, so go and have a look at them if you're not familiar. But in a summary you could say Ricoh is like a pre sold farmer's market. It's run exclusively through Facebook and it's a very effective way of dropping off a lot of products in a very short time. Now, because it's a pre sold market, it means you eliminate waste by not bringing products that you haven't sold. And it also gets around some of the trading laws, which means you can pop up with a bunch of producers in a car park of some predetermined location like a school or community building or a shop that's out of use after hours or whatever. Now there is a certain pattern language. What makes Ricoh successful. It's spread all over the Nordic countries and some of our students and followers have set them up in North America, in South Africa and even in Ireland. Now we love Ricoh. It's very effective. We have one hour drop offs in the summer and half an hour in the winter and we can turn up and drop off thousands of euros of products very efficiently. However, there are some drawbacks to Ricoh which I've talked about before. Those drawbacks include the fact that that every interaction is with a customer on Facebook. Now, part of the success of Ricoh is on Facebook and most people are on Facebook. A customer has to say, okay, I want to buy 30 eggs and a veg box and a kilo of beef please. And you have to go back in and say, okay, thanks for the order. It's 2019 turning 2020, that stuff should all be fully automatic. Now, there are people who have created code for the Ricoh circles that can pull all that data out and put it on a spreadsheet. But we sell in many different ways. We have restaurant sales, we have subscription customers, we sell on Ricoh and we offer bulk discount deals where people can buy 50 chickens and get them whenever they want throughout the season. So we're really excited about this app called Local Food Nodes, which has been created to directly connect consumers and producers. And the biggest difference over any other such app is that it does not charge the producer to join it. Now, we know these models exist and many people are coming up with new models to try and act as middlemen between farmers and consumers. But they all want a cut of the profit. I've seen them in Germany ranging 10 to 20% of sales. Now, that is your profit margin and we can't have that. We need direct customer to farmer relationships that do not have to pay out money to a middleman. This is a project that's been worked on over several years by people who have not been getting paid. Local Food Nodes already exist with over 6,000 members, but they're just about to launch a crowdsource campaign on Kickstarter and they want to take this global. Now, I want to get fully behind this and I want it to go viral. This is what we all need. If you can take all your sales now, a drop off point could be your farm, it could be a RICO ring or similar, it could be a pickup point that you just do on your own as well as with other farmers producers. It could be linked to restaurants, it could be sending out fresh sheets to restaurants, it could be dealing with subscription orders, it could be dealing anything. Essentially, the functionality of this app is limited purely by developer costs and that's what the Kickstarter campaign for Local Food Nodes is going to be about, raising money for developers to really take this to the next level. Now, I've been talking with Albin, who's behind this, and we're going to interview him on the channel on Sunday to have a longer, more nuanced conversation. And I want you, if you're a producer, to answer in the comments below, what are some of the functional technical needs that you would need from such an app? This is basically you can go on local food notes and see this already, but as a consumer you can find out who's selling local food, of what kind of what price, where you are. You can see when their pickup points and drop off points are you can order online and then the back end of that is what can make this so much more useful in ricoh because it can compile all the data and if the money is there in this campaign, then they will be able to link that with your bookkeeping. Whether it's QuickBooks or here in Sweden we use Fort Knox. All of that functionality is limited only by how successful this campaign is. Now I want it to go viral and make us an immediate global platform that any farmer can tap into. I have dozens of emails weekly about people wanting to set up rico's where they are. There is not a huge amount of information out there. Ricoh is a word that doesn't mean anything in most languages and I think we need an updated, more efficient system than that. Ricoh is amazing. I stand behind it fully, but I think all of the back end stuff should be automated and it's better for the customer and it's better for the producer. As I said, what I love about this model is that the producer does not need to pay to join. How do they make their revenue? Well, every single consumer needs to donate for 365 day access to the site. Now this will always be available for a donation of zero so anyone can join. But what they found with the 6,000 members that are currently using the app is that most people donate a small amount towards it. So the consumer is funding the salaries of the people that are making this system possible. And that's what I really love about it. These are people that have worked over several years now without any funding, stream off their own backs because they want to see this happen for the benefit of all. And that's why I'm willing to get behind it. We need a globally useful model and we need the level of functionality that I think if we can spread this campaign and make it go viral, it will generate the funds to put the top end developers on that will make this seamless for people in totally different contexts all over the world. Right now there are just three people working on this project over the last years and so currently they need about €300,000 to pay for their offices and salaries to make this available to everyone freely. If this goes global and gets much bigger, they will obviously need to employ more people. Now in Sweden, taxes etc are very high, so employing people is expensive and so they'll need more funding. But think about it, if millions of consumers join and donated $1, it's nothing to the consumer and the ease of just being able to go on the phone donk order your grass fed beef at the drop off point you want and you as a farmer be able to print off your list each week and have all your data there already linked into the accounting payments sorted. It's just exactly what we need. If you're a farmer, tell me about what you need. Specific technical details in the comments below. If you are a YouTuber or someone that's got a social media presence in this field and you want to be in discussion with me on this channel, that we can hash out some of the different details and nuances that are going to be needed in your country, especially America, because I think that's going to be the biggest marketplace for this app. Please get in touch. I'd love to invite you on the channel and have a conversation with you for the benefit of more people. This is something I'm really wanting to stand behind and I think with your help we can spread this globally and it will make a massive difference to small farmers who are wanting to work for the land, for their own benefit and for their customers benefit. The best way you can find out more is check out local food nodes in the link below. And on Sunday on this channel we'll be interviewing Alvin and and having a much longer conversation. So your comments and questions below will feed into that interview. And likewise I hope to get other producers and people on YouTube to join the conversation on our channel during the next few weeks that the campaign is running so that we can really see what the global need and what the functional needs of such an app are. I think this is an amazing project. We're not financially invested in this company, we don't benefit from it in any way. I'm putting my time into showing this because I really believe in it and I believe the people behind it have exactly the right intentions. And purely the fact that they are not charging the consumers for this makes this a model that I can stand behind. So thanks for your attention and you'll find more on the interview on Sunday. Don't forget to leave comments, questions or get in touch through private messages. See you in a video soon. Sam.