Starting a Commercial Aquaponics Farm - Bright Agrotech

“So You’re Ready To Go Commercial?” Starting a Commercial Aquaponics Farm

Sponsored by Bright Agrotech www.brightagrotech.com

Webinar Overview 1. Understanding your markets !2. What products to grow and how to grow them !3. Business Plan and Marketing Strategy- Base your production plan and schedule on this !4. Mistakes to Avoid

Dr. Nate Storey & Bright Agrotech

Understanding Your Market

#1) Markets are competitive.

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You are not an island- you exist in a competitive landscape

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What works in Excel will not always work in real life.

!!Consumers are not well educated on products and are very price sensitive. !The guy with the smallest margins at the same pricing will typically lose.

Remember:

You have more competition than you think… !➡ Big producers, ➡ small producers, ➡ producers of substitutions

Competitors Include…

What will set you apart?

Must be cost effective (not cheap necessarily) to implement !“Aquaponic” is typically not good enough.

Remember:

Education, appearance, quality, price, marketing, etc.

Markets Are Unique

These differences decide what type of “niche” market you should be looking at.

Regional differences, income differences, ethnic and religious

differences, age differences,

cultural and social differences, etc.

Every market is different and wants different things, but everyone wants more value/$

Markets tend to either be general or niche.

If you’re just beginning, you’ll most likely be operating in a niche or specialized market

• Niche markets have hurdles to entry for large firms

• Niche markets tend to offer higher prices

• Niche markets have a ceiling- how do you scale out of them?

Remember:

* Typically high volume, low margin- especially in the produce market

General markets are very competitive

Most likely, you can’t afford to compete in these

markets, on their terms- you must be distinct or make

better margins at standard pricing, or both.

Live Sales Helps Commercial Growers Compete!

Do Your Market Research!- How many grocery stores are there in your area?

- What do they sell? How much?

- Will they do business with local growers?

- What will they pay?

- What are their expected margins?

- What are their payment terms?

- What are their insurance requirements?

- What other compliance costs are there?

Questions To Ask:

* See follow up email for complete list of questions *

Bigger populations represent more niche and market opportunities!

Place Matters!

2What Products To Grow

& How To Grow Them

Knowing your market allows you to pick potential product wisely using this series of questions:

• What products will sell in my markets?

• What products do the largest volumes locally?

• What products can I grow?

• How will I grow them?

• What technique will work best for the majority

of these products (get rid of the products that

cannot be grown with this technique) K.I.S.S.

• Which of these products represent the best and fastest return on investment (fast growth, low cost, high price), high value and minimal risk? (These will be your crops with the best margins and the lowest inherent risk and is technique dependent.) • Choose the top 3-5 crops and start there for traditional markets

• Exception: CSA business models

!!Know which crops are hard to grow!

Please, please, please. . .

What you choose will influence how fast you see returns.

Do not unnecessarily complicate your life from the start!

don’t start with tomatoes!

Business Plan & Marketing Strategy

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Once you know what you need to grow and how you’re going

to grow it, figure out the growing and operational specifics.

This is 10% of putting together a business!

1.How much room will you need to produce the type of crops using the chosen technique? !

2.How much will the greenhouse/growing space, infrastructure, utilities, equipment, etc. cost? !

3.What will be the operational costs? (Electricity, gas, salaries, distribution, maintenance, !

4.How do these costs scale? !

5.Are there unnecessary costs?

Questions To Ask Yourself

Note: Not all costs are bad. Consider the costs that allow fast ROI and high margin “good,” and costs that don’t represent this “bad.” Also, some costs are simply unavoidable, but still be critical in approaching cost. Not all costs are necessary.

Build a Marketing Plan and

Have a Marketing Strategy(The other 90% of starting a business!)

How will you sell your product?

Know what the marketing materials will look like and cost.

Graphic design, logos, labels, etc.

Differentiate yourself

Your Marketing should start before you start growing.

Don’t you dare start growing before you know exactly how you will sell your produce.

It doesn’t matter how much you can grow if you can’t sell it.

!Will you do it yourself (preferable for local sales) ?

Know what compliance hurdles there are to selling.

Build a strategy for accessing a mixture of…

! - Reliable Markets (ex. Grocery stores, CSAs)

- High margin markets (ex. restaurants aren’t always reliable buy

they’re typically high margin. CSAs are high margin and reliable.)

- High visibility markets (ex. Farmer’s markets aren’t always really

profitable and are fairly unreliable, but serve as high-visibility markets

for introducing customers to your product.)

Know how you’re going to distribute to these markets Will you use a distributor?

Build a Business Plan…

- What will you grow?

- How, where and to whom will you sell it?

- How much will it cost to grow?

- How much will you make on it?

- Build a design/building calendar

…to document everything.

4 Mistakes To Avoid

Mistakes To Avoid1. Never forget that the market is competitive. 2. Don’t go aquaponic just because you like the idea of it.

Rainbows and Unicorns don’t pay the bills. 3. Don’t go too big too fast.

Figure out what the minimum viable size is and then go slightly larger. 4. Please don’t go with raft production.

You can make money with rafts in some markets, but these are rare. 5. Don’t take the Local Foods craze for granted. 6. Read the Top 10 Mistakes download on the website

for more thoughts and information.

So, are you ready to go commercial? !

If you’re interested in ZipGrow towers, talk with us about our grower’s support program!

!

LIMITED SPOTS AVAILABLE

The Bright Agrotech Team

Chris

Paul

NoahQues

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? Dr. Nate Storey