Rooted Farmers is a different kind of tool for your entrepreneurial toolbelt. As the leading online software solution and marketplace platform for small and mid-sized flower farms, we provide inventory management software and powerful data analytics for your budding business.
As a SaaS (software as a service)-based marketplace, our growers benefit from both our software that enables them to streamline their sales and the network effects of selling on an online marketplace.
What exactly is a marketplace platform?
A marketplace platform is a website or application that simplifies shopping from different suppliers in one convenient location. They allow businesses to present their inventory to customers and enable selling transactions. Importantly, they offer convenience to consumers, including real-time inventory and broader product availability than stand-alone e-commerce sites (Forbes, 2017).
5 Benefits a Platform Provides to Your Business
1. Power in Numbers
As a small farm, it is nearly impossible to meet the needs of all of your buyers 100% of the time. The pressure to deliver on all of your buyers’ weekly needs can take a toll on your mental health and can lead to burnout, an outcome that farmers are affected by in disproportionate numbers.
Read more about burnout and ways to combat it.
By working collaboratively with other producers, farmers can meet more of their customers’ needs, help to backfill product failures, and provide easy access to other local farms – all in a one-stop shopping experience for their buyers. By solving the challenge of shopping from multiple suppliers each with unique sales channels and processes, you are increasing the ease of the shopping experience for your buyers, ultimately increasing their desire to seek out your – and your neighboring farms’! – business as they shop.
2. Streamline Your Operation
Working smarter (not harder!) can be the key to long-term sustainability as a small business owner. As Entrepreneur advises, “you must make sure that you are working efficiently… because of the limited time you have available. The biggest key is working smarter and utilizing the best tools in the market to scale your business. Then, let other people manage the aspects of it that you can’t handle, and you will be successful.”
3. Better Customer Experience
Building relationships is hard, but managing them shouldn’t be. Utilizing a marketplace tool built around floral buyers’ shopping preferences, search habits, and filtering needs allows your buyers to quickly and easily find the product that they are looking for while also presenting them with additional related results.
By allowing buyers to shop intuitively for your product, you are reducing friction in the buying process; these tools lead buyers to increase their average order values (AOV) from farms over time, broadening and strengthening the local flower movement.
4. Unique Data & Analytics
Insights otherwise unavailable to small farms, including sales performance of specific crops, and specialized pricing data from across the industry. These insights can help you to crop plan, optimize pricing, and ultimately run a more profitable operation.
5. Improved Scalability
Maintaining a physical storefront or setting up a conventional e-commerce website with all the bells, whistles, and plug-ins to manage your inventory and sell your farm goods can be expensive and time-consuming. As Entrepreneur points out to small businesses, “the built-in infrastructure that online marketplaces provide makes it easy for brands to scale by providing search, shipping, return and customer support features in-house that allow entrepreneurs to focus on their business.”
Curious to learn more about how the Rooted Farmers marketplace platform can transform your farm business? Check out some of our testimonials here. Ready to take the next step in leveraging a marketplace platform for your farm? Apply now!