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Subject: Market Farming

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  • From: "Amy K. Johnson" <akjedj AT gamewood.net>
  • To: market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: New Farmers' Mkt and new farmers
  • Date: Wed, 30 May 2001 15:08:08 -0400


Dear List,

I'm the market manager for a small new farmers' market which has been
going slow since we started in May.We have a great location (except that
it is poorly situated for any special events), support from the town and
area businesses, have been getting some publicity from the local paper,
and while thing could be much worse, sales are very slow and I've been
trying to figure out how to increase sales without having to add much to
my workload as the manager since I am also a farmer selling at the market
and my pay as market manager is free booth rental which adds up to $18 per
month.

We are going to do a direct mailing using lists from a committee member
who has them on his computer as part of his business, postage will be paid
by the Chamber of commerce and we are going to include a 10% coupon with
the mailing. So that should help sales without too much trouble.

I know that it will take some time before a new market will develop a good
following, and my fellow farmers seem to understand this but we all seem
to be battling depression with how we are doing.

It is my feeling that the one thing that really hinders our market right
now is a lack of experienced farmers. All but 2 vendors are pretty much
new to selling at a farmers' market, and these 2 only come on Wednesday.
The ranks of new farmers includes myself. I feel like we're not doing a
good enough job of providing enough quantity and variety to entice
customers. We seem to get some customers that stop to shop, and come away
emptyhanded. I'm aware that I need to work on having more quantity and
variety in my own booth and also see that I need to fine tune my product
mix, but I'm not sure if my fellow vendors see how much their offerings
and display affect sales, or if they just blame it on the customers. I've
tried to pass along info to the vendors if I thought it would help,
including free copies of the special edition of Growing for Market that
Lynn B. made for new growers. But given my inexperience and my dual role
as manager and grower, I'm not sure where to draw the line at advice. I
know that I have no track record at farming success, but I have done a lot
of research before getting going into market farming full-time, and while
no amount of "book-smarts" can equal real hands-on experience, I feel like
I've learned things and found sources of info that these other growers
have not- especially the comment (Lynn B. I think)that the one thing that
new growers fail to plan for is the sheer amount of produce one needs to
plant and sell to make any money. I've tried to set a good example by
using good display techniques, and trying to bring as much varied product
as I can too. Short of enticing a larger grower to leave a larger, more
established market to come to ours, what can I do to improve our market?
The booths look half empty sometimes and no customer wants to buy anything
if it looks like its the last one left, and therefore inferior ( of course
this leads to the issue of taking more than you can sell and taking stuff
home, but that's another discussion). I was so happy when I found out that
one of our farmers was big enough (or so I thought) to add our market to
the one they already attended, but their offerings have been puny at our
market so far and they can barely fill their space half full. Today they
had 8 pints of berries and that was it. I've got another grower whose
total garden measures maybe 50'x 75' and seems to be upset that he doesn't
have much to sell.

Our market allows for reselling of produce but only if sold by someone who
also grows their own stuff. So far, no one has resold anything. This makes
me think that maybe we should capitalize on this by becoming a
producer-only market. We would be the only producer-only market for more
than 75 miles or more. While having farmers resale produce might bring our
needed quantity and variety up, we would like to avoid that route, and
besides, none of our farmers so far have wanted to resale. We are a small
market with official space for only eight vendors but plenty of room to
expand should we need to, and since we so far have 7 vendors on Wed, and 5
vendors on Sat. with hopefully more to come in June, maybe all our market
needs is more time.

What do ya'll think?

In need of patience and feedback,
Amy




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