Chyreen Fruit Farm
Phil and Caroline Langdon own Chyreen Fruit Farm, a small farm specialising in fresh, quality fruit. Most of their produce (fruit, local vegetables, eggs, cream and honey) are sold direct to the public from their farm at Carnon Downs, between Truro and Falmouth.
Now they have signed up to broadband they have a faster internet connection that is on all the time and the whole family have found that they use the Internet more often as it is a great research tool for comparing fruit and vegetable prices and identifying pests and plant diseases as well as keeping up to date with the latest plant varieties.
When considering how best to quantify the benefits of broadband to Chyreen Farm, Phil believes the greatest bottom line impact has come from the use of eCommerce marketing. A firm believer of ‘minimum outlay for maximum effect’ and ‘keeping things simple’, Phil had historically used more traditional forms of marketing to promote the farms products - local newspapers and large signs beside the main road on either side of the village.
“Adverts in the paper could cost around £100.00 but we found that it was a bit hit and miss depending on who had read the paper or if they remembered the advert by the end of the week.”
Since having broadband Phil has begun an email marketing strategy. Using his list of customer emails and new registrations from his website he can now bulk email people with an update on what is in season, stock availability and any special offers that they have. The emails also contain a link to their website, which has details of all produce available from the shop and ‘Pick Your Own’ along with details of the different crops and varieties, timing during the season, maps and directions, recipes and links to other related sites. The website is updated as often as necessary so that it is as accurate as possible.
“At the beginning of the season things used to be a bit slow to get going. Our road signs would go up and it would take a week or so for the customer numbers to build up. Since getting broadband we send an email out to our 300 or so contacts letting them know that we will be opening up for the season at 10 am the next day and we have customers calling from the moment we open the gate.”
“We had a really wet week earlier in the season. We pick fruit everyday but as no-one was coming in to buy anything we were building up quite a large backlog. I took the punnets from the backlog and put them into larger baskets. I then took a photograph of them and emailed it out to our email list publicising bargain baskets of fruit for £10.00 on a ‘first come first served‘ basis. Within an hour the phone started ringing from people calling to reserve baskets. We cleared the whole backlog and our fruit for that week within four days.”
In May 2005 Chryreen Fruit Farm won the actnow ICT award for best agricultural use of broadband.
Phil said
“Our customers have had the benefit of our website to see what fruit is ready when and now we’ve been rewarded too – it’s the icing on the cake.”
