BRANDON, Man. – Want a marketing marriage made in heaven? Get down on bended knee and ask customers what they want.
Mike Leslie has plenty of advice for the unwed in Canadian agri-business. He runs a company called Nakodo Consulting, which means marriage broker in Japanese.
For the past three years, he’s racked up half a million miles in air travel finding sweethearts in Japan, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea for North American agribusiness companies.
Leslie told seed growers at a recent meeting here about one of the 25 happy couples he introduced: United Grain Growers and a large Japanese factory that makes pickles from miso, which is a mixture of barley, water and bacteria.
Read Also
Ag in Motion speaker highlights need for biosecurity on cattle operations
Ag in Motion highlights need for biosecurity on cattle farms. Government of Saskatchewan provides checklist on what you can do to make your cattle operation more biosecure.
Characteristics desired
UGG had heard there was a market for hulless barley for miso. Leslie went to Japan and discovered the hulless quality wasn’t crucial. The most important traits were color, shape of kernels and a shallow crease.
“We can’t grow crops and say to the world, ‘Here they are, come and get them,’ ” Leslie told farmers. “We need to ask our customers, ‘What do you want? What do you need?’ “
Canadian farmers can’t continue choosing varieties solely for their agronomic qualities, he said. If they don’t focus on markets, he warned they’ll make less money or will get swallowed into large corporate farms.
He said people are starting to hear the value-added message, but he’s worried that too many are self-centred when diversifying.
“They’re thinking, ‘This is what I have, how can I add value to it?’ ” he said, rather than asking buyers what they want and giving it to them.
One strong niche is organic wheat and flax, cleaned to more than 99 percent purity, and packaged to specifications. Leslie said foreign bakers want it to put directly into bread.
“Organic is a pain in the butt, but if it can get 10 times the price” it’s worth the trouble, Leslie said.
Other hot crops could be coriander, horseradish, marrow fat peas, and pony oats. As long as farmers have enough to fill a container for a ship, and they give customers what they want, there are possibilities.
Leslie had these tips:
- Understand the global market. Read books and trade magazines. Travel.
- Pick a country with which you want to do business. “You have to like the country you’re selling to, you have to like the culture, otherwise you’ll lose interest.”
- Be patient, spend some money and get on the Internet. Leslie said he belongs to a forum on Japan, along with 125,000 people. “You can ask how to make soup using miso, and you’ll get 100 recipes.”
- Make sure those who breed new crops and sell grain are doing their marketing homework.
Leslie paraphrased the president of a European cosmetics company that had made huge inroads in the Japanese market to drive his points home.
“It takes a long time to understand the customer and what he needs and wants, and then it takes even longer to give him what he asked for,” Leslie said.
“But once you do, you can make obscene amounts of money.”
