The Truth about your Competition (and cruise ships and life rafts)

One of the concerns we hear from time to time from farms and butcher shops considering selling via ChopLocal is that they don't want to compete with all the other vendors already on the platform.

But the cold, hard, truth is that you're already in competition!

And the vendors using ChopLocal are benefitting from our marketing and our support.

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Think about it this way - if you were in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, waiting to be rescued, would you rather be on a life raft or a cruise ship? Which is more likely to be noticed by rescuers? Which has more resources in the meantime? The answer is pretty obvious, right?

Your own online store is a life raft in the ocean of the world wide web. And it's a LOT more work than most meat businesses realize to draw the attention of the rescuers (customers).

ChopLocal is the cruise ship. And not only is our ship easier for customers to find (our product catalog, blog, and backlinks are an SEO powerhouse) but our ship also comes fully stocked with amenities and a friendly, helpful crew.

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"But what if I come on ChopLocal and I lose my customers to a different vendor?"

I'm not going to say that never happens, but to be honest, it's not super common.

There are two types of customers who shop on ChopLocal.

The first type are the loyal-to-one-vendor customers like Richard M. Richard came to ChopLocal because his favorite local farm set up their store with us. And in the past 18 months, he's ordered 38 times for a total of $4888. And every. single. one. of those orders has been from the same farm.

Like many customers who support local meat, Richard has developed a relationship with the farm he orders from, and he's incredibly loyal. He doesn't chase lower prices from other farms because we give him plenty of opportunities to save throughout the year with ChopLocal sales and promotions. And he gets a discount at no cost to the vendor.

Then we have Shawn Z. Shawn didn't know any of the ChopLocal farms when he placed his first order 14 months ago. He found out about ChopLocal through our advertising and since that first order, he has placed 29 additional orders for a total of $3,755. And those orders have been spread across at least 16 different ChopLocal vendors. Trying out new vendors and new products seems to be one of Shawn's hobbies. And if he is pleased, he'll order from the same vendor again. But he also likes to test out the new ones and we see that almost any time a new vendor in his region joins ChopLocal. (He's also fantastic at leaving positive reviews!)

Based on what we've seen over the past 4+ years, it's very unlikely that you'll lose loyal customers like Richard M.

And it's very likely that you'll gain customers like Shawn Z.

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One final thought on competition. There are over 125 million transactions happening every year through meat-specific online delivery services like ButcherBox and Omaha Steaks. Those companies are the real online competition. And it's really hard for one individual farm or butcher shop to develop the skills or find the time to stand out against those big players.

That's why we created ChopLocal in the first place - to bring together smaller, independent farms and butcher shops in a collaborative marketing model and help them compete against the larger, better-funded online meat companies. We know that marketing is a vital part of your business, but we also understand your way of life as farmers and small business owners.

So if you feel like you're floating at sea on a life raft, jump on the cruise ship! We're happy to help!