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E‑Commerce Strategies for Hydroponic Growers · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hello there and welcome back to
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  Hydroponics Daily, your go-to podcast for everything soilless cultivation.
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  I am your host, Dr. Russell Sharp, the founder of Utreema Limited.
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  And today I thought I would talk more about the business of hydroponics and
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  especially about online sales, e-commerce.
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  Direct-to-consumer sales, or business-to-business on e-commerce,
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  and talk about what business models suit that for hydroponics.
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  Now you can sell and there are many websites doing this leafy greens and micro
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  greens online now and obviously it has to be within the country you're operating,
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  direct to consumer and they can buy them on the website the advantages of this
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  is that there's a large market for it and you can use google ads to find your
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  customers your customers will be searching for it and you can find them using Google Ads.
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  The disadvantage is that you're selling a perishable product that has to be
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  mailed and your margins are going to be lower because you're competing with the supermarkets.
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  So it's not a niche product. It's a commodity product, you know,
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  salad, spinach leaf, microgreens to some extent.
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  So I would avoid that when it comes to online sales. Although many people do
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  it, I don't think it's the best option.
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  Certainly not if you're starting out and you're bootstrapping your company now
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  you can sell things like when it
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  comes to unpreserved undried products things like a tuber or a stem a fruit
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  is a lot it's going to have a lot more longer shelf life than a leafy green or a micro green.
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  But again it's you'd have to have a very niche product something like vanilla
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  you know if you could grow that or no you're talking about sweet potato in the
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  past but that's too much of a commodity um to to find a unique selling point
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  so i would avoid them what i would go down is,
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  if you've got a really unique product you could have a dried product and you
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  could dry it but even better than that are you are better ways of preserving
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  fresh produce that increase the.
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  Price that can be paid that can be um charged for that product go so go more
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  niche go high end and for that we're talking first of all the main one would
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  be freeze drying if you can freeze dry buy a herb,
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  then that is a massive, massive potential,
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  unique premium product.
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  So rather than selling to the masses, you're selling a unique product.
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  So there, Google Ads is not good. You have your website, you sell it on that.
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  Google ads would be trash for that because people aren't searching for it.
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  No one's searching for freeze-dried products. What they will buy freeze-dried
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  adverts is like meta-ads, your Instagrams,
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  your Facebook, TikTok, those sorts of adverts where people say,
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  oh, freeze-dried, insert your product.
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  Whether that's basil, chilies, anything like that, that's a premium one.
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  The sorts of things you would buy in Harrods or Selfridges in the UK going beyond
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  your waitrose and marks and spencers beyond your high-end supermarket these
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  are you know freeze-dried.
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  Produce even freeze-dried sweets sell for an
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  absolute premium so that would be my go-to
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  if i had a unique product say when i was growing marsh samphire
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  then if i had a freeze-dried version i wouldn't
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  need to worry so much about the the cold chain
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  as it's called getting it to the customer in a
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  fresh way you could dry it down preserve
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  all the the good nutraceuticals the
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  flavor compounds and and i would
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  also do trade shows where i was
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  able to compare normally dried herb
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  to freeze dried herb so that
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  would be a big win i think in that in that sector
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  the gourmet food sector as i
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  say facebook ads where you're building desire building knowledge of
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  the product because people don't know that that exists and then
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  in addition to that i would look at things like
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  pickled versions of your produce because pickling things like sauerkraut kimchi
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  in korea these are much more viewed far more highly than dried product they
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  can sell a lot higher volume not as expensive to create as freeze-drying.
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  The bigger disadvantage of freeze-drying is it's a really expensive product.
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  Process that involves a lot of energy you're and
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  a lot of capital cost so your upfront costs of buying a
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  freeze dryer crazy high and your running costs
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  are high whereas pickling is dirt
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  cheap to set up and dirt cheap to run really compared to freeze drying and freeze
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  drying you take what is a large crop and turn it into a tiny crop so you just
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  will not sell it to the masses because they'll think it's just not worth it
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  it will be what's termed pearls after pigs as some people say in many countries in Europe.
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  They just will look at it and go, what the hell is that? I'm not buying that.
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  So freeze drying for the real connoisseur, kimchi sort of type products.
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  There's a massive opportunity there, sort of European American homegrown kimchi
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  rather than imported kimchi, if you can get that right.
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  Obviously you have to become an expert in microbiology if you're going to do that as well.
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  But I think there's a massive opportunity there for e-commerce hydroponics.
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  The beauty of hydroponics is you can have a really good story about your,
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  cultivation method you can take people behind the scenes
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  whereas field-growing crops you
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  know no one wants to see a farmer in a field we've seen that a million
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  times people want to see sexy hydroponics they want to see freeze dryers they
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  want to see fermentation things like that so i think there's a really good opportunity
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  there for e-commerce i've got a number of different ideas around that that in
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  the future i might want to explore and if i was you i would look at it as well
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  because if you're growing a novel crop like i said the.
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  That grown vanilla I came across last week, you know, different ways of preparing
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  and storing the vanilla, something
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  that can differentiate you from what's already in the supermarket.
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  That's where online sales would be good.
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  And then I would just avoid selling on Amazon at all costs because Amazon are the devil.
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  You know, Jeff Bezos can go F
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  himself in the A as far as I'm concerned don't want to
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  be as b-i-t-c-h i would
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  never sell on that platform the fees that
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  get charged the the way that they
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  make you charge the lowest price on there or you
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  get booted off the fact that you never get your
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  customers details so you can't retarget them
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  with ads everything has to be done on their platform and you
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  have to pay charge after charge after charge if you've
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  got a unique product if you're producing freeze-dried carolina
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  reaper chilies or you're producing freeze-dried hemp or you're producing kimchi
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  with a special ingredient then there's no need to sell on amazon just get it
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  on your own website get on tiktok shop facebook marketplace.
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  And promote it that way you know we use those
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  sort of channels all the time and they're great so that would be my advice
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  if you're doing e-commerce with hydroponics if you've tried it if you've had
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  a success growing lettuce and selling it online then let me know certainly in
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  the uk i think it would be a dud but maybe in other sectors it's a really good
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  way of selling lettuce and spinach leaves and stuff like that but yeah you've
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  got another way of selling,
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  hydroponic produce and obviously it doesn't have to be edibles it could be ornamentals
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  it could be non-food crops all sorts of other options as well obviously flowers
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  through the door is a big one now sustainability if you can grow flowers cut flowers.
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  Or even edible flowers that could go through the post box rather than being
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  in a parcel, that's a big win.
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  So there's loads of opportunities for e-commerce and hydroponics.
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  So definitely think outside the box and let me know your thoughts and the experience
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  selling directly online to the end user.
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  I'd love to know. There's loads of people who listen to this podcast that do
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  that. So any sort of feedback you've got, let me know and I'll do a follow-up episode on it.
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  All right. Thank you very much for listening to Hydroponics Daily today.
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  word of hydroponics with the greater horticultural
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  because if you are grown hydroponically and you need a novel premium fertilizer
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  That's been Hydroponics Daily for today. Until tomorrow, goodbye.