Niche Market Pros And Cons
October 25, 2010 According to the management team of Erickson Farm, specialty farming is not for everyone. While there are payoffs, challenges can mount.
– Pro: When you’re dealing with niche, most of your customers appreciate the flavor and are less price sensitive.
– Con: A number of consumers familiar with the product are much smaller. The awareness of mango is growing, but the market is small.
– Pro: Lack of domestic competition
– Con: We don’t have a lot of readily accessible knowledge. There aren’t a lot of workshops on growing mangos or carambola, etc. When you choose to grow a specialty product, you have to really go dig to learn how to care for it successfully.
– Con: Weather can be a challenge when you’re trying to grow something not quite in its natural range.
– Con: Equipment needs. You have to repurpose a lot of items. To wash our mangos, we use a cucumber washer. To trim the trees, we use workers that trim citrus groves. But cutting mango wood is much different than a citrus tree because it’s a lot bigger and harder. In picking the fruit, we have to use the best containers of what’s available to find. There’s nothing that’s optimum because our fruit is much bigger and heavier. Things they use for stone fruit may be sturdy enough but not big enough. We need different size boxes. Almost everything we need is special-sized. You repurpose, you make yourself, or you save up and really invest.
– Con: When you grow exotics, they’re uninsurable crops. We have to rely on Farm Service Agency. Essentially, they give you money to plant trees back. However, if you lose a full-production tree and you plant back a 3-gallon tree, you’re going to have to wait seven years for it to come back in production. Our system is not set up to support that. It would be years to get back up to full strength again. So, you have to self-insure.
– Pro: There’s a pride of producing something and the reaction you get from that personal interaction with your customers.
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