Anthony Davison, Director of BigBarn, explains how they have created a virtual on-line farmers market.
The History
BigBarn was a concept created by Anthony Davison, who is from a fourth generation farming family. His main objective was to create a website in which local food producers can trade with consumers in a virtual online farmers market.
Research has shown that consumers want to buy local produce, which is seen as both safe – because its origins can be tracked – and also better quality. However, local producers are scattered and usually lacking funds for marketing, making them hard to find. BigBarn intends to solve this dilemma.
The Solution
The BigBarn website, powered by software from Hometrack, harnesses the latest technology to create a virtual marketplace. It allows visitors to:
- Gain access to over 5,000 independent food producers and gain information on their goods and services
- Buy local, which means fresh, direct from the producer, rather than goods that have been imported, warehoused and distributed
- Pay less for better quality
- Find specialists who deliver throughout the UK
- Gain information on nutrition, recipes, crops and plants
The website’s unique mapping technology makes it easier to find the freshest produce as locally as possible. Simply by entering the first four characters of a postcode, anyone can check which producers are within reach.
The software allows customers to see a map of the required area. By clicking on different icons that represent producers and the type of goods they sell, a window will open to display relevant information for specific producers.
Benefits
BigBarn has now been trading for 3 years specialising in developing technology to promote the direct trade between producers and consumers of local food and drink. They now include over 5,000 producers on the website as icons and receive over 12,000 hits per day.
BigBarn customers greatly benefit from the project’s innovative and user-friendly construction. So far over 7,000 consumers have registered their email addresses and postcodes to help BigBarn persuade producers to team up and offer a wider range of goods in their local area.
The delivery of BigBarn’s information is in a pictorial, easy-to-read format, meeting the needs of its two groups of customers: producers and consumers.
The innovative mapping technology incorporated within the web site gives BigBarn a distinct competitive advantage.