4 ms·

>> * Are you willing to pay one to two years’ worth of groceries for it (since that is how long it takes to pay for itself)? This would come out to $1600-$3200

by patio11 14y ago

>> * Are you willing to pay one to two years’ worth of groceries for it (since that is how long it takes to pay for itself)? This would come out to $1600-$3200 per adult. This is a poor positioning for something which does not check the "Calories" box on your prospects mental inventories but rather something which checks the "Moral obligation" box. (My feelings on the wisdom of that to the contrary, people do not garden to save money on food, they garden to demonstrate that they are better than people who save money on food.)

ph0rque 14y ago
Patrick, I believe you're right that the vast majority of gardeners in US don't garden for food... I'm hoping to find the homesteaders/homesteader wannabe's in that group who are trying to be self-sufficient, food-wise. Can you explain what you mean by checking the "Calories" box?
- chc 14y ago
  I'm not patio11, but since I had much the same thought: People's motivation for buying this isn't "I want food." It's going to be something more like "I want to be able to say that I make my own food." Think about how Harley-Davidson position their bikes. They don't say, "Hey, here's a way to get around" — instead, their positioning is more along the lines of "ZOMG it's a Harley! How COOL would you look driving this thing, huh?" They're primarily checking off the "Feel like James Dean" box on their customers' wishlists, not the "transportation" box. Similarly, an easy-home-gardening product is checking the "Feel good about yourself" box, not the "nutrition" box. The nutrition is just a nice gimme. So in that way it doesn't make sense to position it against grocery stores. Most grocery stores are not selling "Feel good about yourself." (A few are, like Whole Foods, but they're also way more expensive than the normal ones, and they also don't make a big deal about the price comparison, because those other guys aren't selling moral superiority at all.)
  - ph0rque 14y ago
    Ah, I get it. Would you (or anyone else) have any suggestions as to what questions would trigger the "feel-good" lever?
    - mechanical_fish 14y ago
      Actively remove all references to the concept of saving money on staple foods. In the USA, conspicuously trying to save money on staple foods is a signifier of poverty. Almost nobody is proud of it. Many people try to actively hide the fact that they're doing it. Promote the ability to grow some kind of food that's unusual enough to tell your friends about. If, for example, I were able to harvest fresh heirloom tomatoes in Maine in January and feed them to my dinner guests, that would be both good for my ego and good for your marketing. A more realistic example, perhaps, is the fad for backyard chickens: Raising chickens is fun because, every time you serve someone an omelet or a quiche, you get to start a conversation about the chickens. And the eggs make great gifts. Play up the odd and potentially fashionable. Is there something particularly tasty that your system is uniquely good at growing? Is there something particularly hard to grow that your system makes easier? Are the plants fun to look at? Would you show the garden to your friends? Can kids run it? Perhaps it's an educational experience. Pitch it to school groups, community centers, local parks, science museums, children's museums, et cetera. Can one start small and grow into a full system? "Feed your whole family on a 20-by-20-foot lot" is actually not such a great sales pitch. You ask for too much commitment. I've tried hobbies before. Most of them don't last and I end up selling the starter kit on Craigslist three years later. Worse, if you convince me that replacing 100% of my grocery bill is the victory condition, when I only manage to replace 37% of my grocery bill I will feel like a failure, which is just perverse. What you want, instead, is for me to successfully grow four plants, swell with pride, and tell all my friends that gardening is awesome. So a better pitch IMHO would be "try this thing on a small garden and enjoy the nice fresh [insert delicious thing here]; then, if you like it, you can expand it bit by bit, until you wake up one year and find that your 20-by-20 foot garden is producing more food than your family of four can eat in a year, with almost no effort and at a cost of pennies a day." Congratulations on being smart and realistic enough to try and find your market before you invest any more time or money. Good luck! EDIT: Ooh, here's a fun one: Take a hint from the local county fair and gamify this. Build a social network. Turn it into a competition to see who can grow the most pounds of food in a given area, or something. It's like Farmville with real farms.
glimcat 14y ago
"they garden to demonstrate that they are better than people who save money on food" I think you'll find many more people who garden as a hobby or as a social exercise than people who do it for the smug value.

by patio11 14y ago

ph0rque 14y ago

Patrick, I believe you're right that the vast majority of gardeners in US don't garden for food... I'm hoping to find the homesteaders/homesteader wannabe's in that group who are trying to be self-sufficient, food-wise. Can you explain what you mean by checking the "Calories" box?

chc 14y ago
I'm not patio11, but since I had much the same thought: People's motivation for buying this isn't "I want food." It's going to be something more like "I want to be able to say that I make my own food." Think about how Harley-Davidson position their bikes. They don't say, "Hey, here's a way to get around" — instead, their positioning is more along the lines of "ZOMG it's a Harley! How COOL would you look driving this thing, huh?" They're primarily checking off the "Feel like James Dean" box on their customers' wishlists, not the "transportation" box. Similarly, an easy-home-gardening product is checking the "Feel good about yourself" box, not the "nutrition" box. The nutrition is just a nice gimme. So in that way it doesn't make sense to position it against grocery stores. Most grocery stores are not selling "Feel good about yourself." (A few are, like Whole Foods, but they're also way more expensive than the normal ones, and they also don't make a big deal about the price comparison, because those other guys aren't selling moral superiority at all.)
- ph0rque 14y ago
  Ah, I get it. Would you (or anyone else) have any suggestions as to what questions would trigger the "feel-good" lever?
  - mechanical_fish 14y ago
    Actively remove all references to the concept of saving money on staple foods. In the USA, conspicuously trying to save money on staple foods is a signifier of poverty. Almost nobody is proud of it. Many people try to actively hide the fact that they're doing it. Promote the ability to grow some kind of food that's unusual enough to tell your friends about. If, for example, I were able to harvest fresh heirloom tomatoes in Maine in January and feed them to my dinner guests, that would be both good for my ego and good for your marketing. A more realistic example, perhaps, is the fad for backyard chickens: Raising chickens is fun because, every time you serve someone an omelet or a quiche, you get to start a conversation about the chickens. And the eggs make great gifts. Play up the odd and potentially fashionable. Is there something particularly tasty that your system is uniquely good at growing? Is there something particularly hard to grow that your system makes easier? Are the plants fun to look at? Would you show the garden to your friends? Can kids run it? Perhaps it's an educational experience. Pitch it to school groups, community centers, local parks, science museums, children's museums, et cetera. Can one start small and grow into a full system? "Feed your whole family on a 20-by-20-foot lot" is actually not such a great sales pitch. You ask for too much commitment. I've tried hobbies before. Most of them don't last and I end up selling the starter kit on Craigslist three years later. Worse, if you convince me that replacing 100% of my grocery bill is the victory condition, when I only manage to replace 37% of my grocery bill I will feel like a failure, which is just perverse. What you want, instead, is for me to successfully grow four plants, swell with pride, and tell all my friends that gardening is awesome. So a better pitch IMHO would be "try this thing on a small garden and enjoy the nice fresh [insert delicious thing here]; then, if you like it, you can expand it bit by bit, until you wake up one year and find that your 20-by-20 foot garden is producing more food than your family of four can eat in a year, with almost no effort and at a cost of pennies a day." Congratulations on being smart and realistic enough to try and find your market before you invest any more time or money. Good luck! EDIT: Ooh, here's a fun one: Take a hint from the local county fair and gamify this. Build a social network. Turn it into a competition to see who can grow the most pounds of food in a given area, or something. It's like Farmville with real farms.

glimcat 14y ago

"they garden to demonstrate that they are better than people who save money on food" I think you'll find many more people who garden as a hobby or as a social exercise than people who do it for the smug value.