Team:
Tucker Todd, Mohammad Mohd Sabri, Arcadian Vera, Dipesh Poudel, Shireen Shaik
Problem:
Small and mid-size farmers are almost entirely reliant on farmer’s markets in order to sell their products and communicate with consumers. One problem with this is that it bottlenecks the flow of information between farmers and consumers, leading consumers to have little knowledge of what vendors or products will be at a given farmer’s market prior to the event. This results in consumers who would otherwise be interested in purchasing a certain product not being able to purchase it because they are unsure if it will be sold at their farmer’s market, or if it is even in-season at the time. Additionally, reliance on farmer’s markets limits the window in which farmers can sell their products and consumers can buy the farm-fresh products they love, as farmer’s markets are usually only held once per week.
Solution:
Farmlaza offers a way for farmers to sell their products directly to small businesses and to customers. Farmlaza accomplishes this by providing an easy-to-use platform for local farmers to list their farm, products for sale, and contact information in a manner similar to Ebay and Amazon. Additionally, we allow users to store transaction and billing information on our website for easy transactions between consumers and farmers.
Market Size:
The TAM, which consists of the entirety of the Indiana agricultural industry, is $31.2 billion. Subtracting out the activity which our service does not aim to capture (i.e. hardwood, feed corn and soy, larger farms), we estimate our SAM to be $500 million.
Competition:
Our key competitors include Market Wagon, Farmers to You, and Farmbox Direct. However, these services all control the listing and shipping of products, restricting the agency of the farmers who work with these companies. FarmLaza provides much more freedom to farmers by allowing them to set prices and handle shipping on their own, which is more likely to appeal to both farmers and consumers.
Business Model:
Service fee of ~5% of all transactions
Farmers can pay to feature their farm and products more prominently on our website for an additional fee
Yearly sales on platform per user - $50000
Yearly service fee revenue per user - $50000 * .05 = $2500
Yearly additional advertising fee revenue per user - $1000
LTV - $3500 * 5-year lifetime = $17500
CAC- $5000 (Site development and hosting, advertising, additional user support)
LTV/CAC Ratio - 3.5:1
Marketing and Sales:
Our marketing needs to be tailored towards both farmers and general consumers. As farmers tend to be 50+, our farmer-based outreach must utilize traditional advertising methods
Ways of advertising our website would be done through:
Web Advertisement (primarily aimed at general consumers)
TV Advertisement (primarily aimed at farmers)
Our sales will consist of the service and advertising fees generated by the website.
Progress to Date:
June - July 2021
Established business model
Designed database
Created proof-of-concept website
Future Milestones:
September - October 2021:
Integrate a database
Hire experienced web developers
Add quality of life features
November 2021:
Hire QA and marketing team
Test website for accessibility and ease of use
Implement feedback from testers
December 2021:
Launch FarmLaza to the public and provide user support
Contact local farmers
Run advertisements
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