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Grow Link
Voting Summary (Elevator Pitch):
Grow Link is a social marketplace to host wholesale-direct trades between regional farmers and food buyers. It will enable traceable product aggregation and distribution, through both existing distributors and contracted logistics providers.
Supporting organization:
Ecotrust
URL:
http://www.ecotrust.org/
City:
Portland
State/Region:
Oregon
Country:
United States
Project Vision Statement & Potential Social Impact:
Grow Link (working title) builds off eight years of Farmer-Chef Connection Conferences and product sourcebooks hosted and produced by Ecotrust and the Portland Chapter of the Chef’s Collaborative in Portland, Oregon. With Portland’s farmers markets booming and virtually every restaurant paying closer attention to product sourcing, Ecotrust is working on several fronts to facilitate local/regional purchasing among higher volume buyers: schools, hospitals, and so on.
Grow Link is a web-based platform to host wholesale-direct trades between regional farmers and food buyers. We think of it as a social networking engine overlaid on an e-commerce platform, overlaid on a logistics network. It will enable traceable product aggregation and distribution, through both existing distributors and contracted logistics providers.
Ecotrust has secured commitments with some of the most progressive retail and institutional buyers in the region to help design and test Grow Link. A key value proposition for these buyers is product aggregation. In many cases, they cannot accept smaller, individual deliveries.
That aggregation will enable smaller growers to meet the minimum order requirements of wholesale distributors. For all growers, Grow Link will provide the traceability that is lacking in current wholesale distribution systems and is fundamental to product differentiation, including differentiation by food miles, organic standards and other best practices.
Ecotrust will work to introduce its network of 400 growers and buyers into the online Grow Link platform. The platform will allow current business relationships to be maintained, as well as enhanced through sophisticated order tracking and rich data collection. Social networking features will encourage new relationships to be forged online.
The Farmer-Chef Connection Conference model has successfully spread to many other rural/urban areas around the country. We are designing Grow Link to be similarly scaleable. Key partners on the project include Washington-based 21 Acres and the Web Collective.
Sustainability (financial) model:
First-round funding for Grow Link is in place and development will begin in spring/summer 2007. We are currently assessing the most appropriate revenue model for the services offered through Grow Link and are tentatively planning to base our fee structure on a combination of monthly hosting fees, plus a simple per transaction fee.
A transparent fee structure would be a welcome change for many farmers and food buyers, who are used to distributors applying a standard 20-30% markup, regardless of the value per weight or volume of the item being distributed.
Our due diligence to-date indicates that a system that maintains current business relationships between local growers and existing customers, while enhancing these same relationships through modern billing and order tracking systems, rich data collection and sharing features, including collaborative supply-demand forecasting, would be a boon to small and medium scale growers.
Potential obstacles:
Slow adoption rates among farmers and food buyers
Difficulty working with distributors
Keeping the system updated
Perception as middleman
Resource Needs:
The project is seeking approximately $250,000 over the coming 12 month period. We would also appreciate expertise and insights into how to build and maintain an online community that supports real world community, as well as how to value the services we provide.
Key Milestones:
April: Continue the process of designing and specifying the trade platform
May: Work with partners and customers to refine the specifications
June: Begin to build the system
Project Summary:
The efficient distribution of local food is a known bottleneck in the growth of regional food systems. Grow Link is a social marketplace to connect small- and medium-scale producers to buyers. Through the Grow Link marketplace, Ecotrust, a non-profit based in Portland, Oregon, will build on years of trust and handshakes developed through the Farmer-Chef Connection Conference.
Comments
an important initiative
web technology offers deep value at facilitating the decentralized coordination of economic activity. this is an invaluable initial example. one of the key features is that rather than transferring living relationships into virtual ones, the project supports and expanding networks of face-to-face communities with the aid of the web as coordinator. i look forward to participating in this and related movements towards a more holistically facilitated economy!