Apply HN: SpotMarket – A market-space for small scale famers and local vendors
SpotMarket is a real-time web based application allowing farmers to post items they have for sale (think Craigslist) where vendors receive notifications letting them know what is available in their local market (realtime deal-flow ticker). Vendors can also post up what kinds of things they are looking to buy locally helping farmers understand demand profiles in their region.
How many times have you heard the term 'the spot market' on the news in a newspaper and never really thought about what it actually means?
The reality is the 'spot market' is whatever price a farmer can get for their goods based on traditional relationships or technologies (think phone/word of mouth)
SpotMarket aims to change all that by establishing a more efficient, user friendly platform for farmers and vendors to be aware of what is available locally and provide a mechanism to establish pricing and demand trends. Plus a way to get produce from the farm to market (restaurant/grocer).
The working theory is that there is a viable market emerging around what would traditionally be called 'back to the earth' or 'buy local' movements making use of mobile / real-time / web technologies. (think food hubs with more market focus (price discovery / market intelligence))
Business model (revenue streams):
- Basic market participation is free to avoid any friction (no membership sign up required up front).
- Value added market analytics/metrics collection and analytics will be the core of the value proposition. user registration, usage tracking, pricing metrics will be collected and used to provide insight and market intelligence for a subscriber based revenue stream. (Google analytics)
- Simple storefront and payment processing will also be offed as a value added service (Shopify model)
- Shipping and transport logistics offer an opportunity for an Uber-style model of third-party transport logistics.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 22.2 ms ] thread- start small (see below) - provide valuable information to a target market where there was none before - minimize participation friction by not abusing users with invasive TOS or advertising - ensuring there is a valuable service at the core of the platform for free (promote sticky-ness)
Our plan is to focus on one local region (Vancouver/BC) and one crop (beer hops) this year to 'prime the pump' and grow from there.
The craft beer scene is in a hyper-growth mode in British Columbia (a bit behind Washington and Oregon) and the demand for local ingredients (beer hops) far outstrips the current local supply. Consequently hops are becoming a hot new crop. Thing is there is no established 'market space' for brewers and hop farmers to meet; its pretty ad hoc.
We're aiming to provide a platform for this year's harvest as a way to vet the idea / platform.
From there we hope to work into the Pacific North West and across Canada and stretch out into other kinds of locally grown produce.
I'm hoping to keep it as lightweight/simple as possible (node/socket) and try out some Progressive Web principles (https://addyosmani.com/blog/getting-started-with-progressive...)