The Internet is becoming the largest market on the planet and a facilitator of connections between agri-food producers and consumers. More and more people are starting to sell their products online, either to eliminate abusive intermediaries from the distribution chain, to grow their brand or simply as a complementary sales channel. What is a reality is that it is becoming essential to have an online presence, at least as far as promotion is concerned. For all this, Productos de Aqui has created the section A UN CLIC, in which we will tell the experience of our producers in their adaptation to the digital environment. For this first issue we will talk about the blueberry on the Internet.
The blueberry is already one of the star products of Asturias. It is increasingly consolidated in the region, where more than 100 producers of this fruit already operate. How could it be otherwise, many of these producers already operate on the internet to sell or promote their products. That is the case of El MolÃn del Bao, which with the pandemic found it necessary to open an online store. Similarly, Arándanos El Cierrón realized in 2015 that the trend was online sales and that it would be a necessity to enter it, becoming almost pioneers in the sector.
Although these are two different cases, both El MolÃn de Bao and Arándanos el Cierrón agree that online sales are very important to take their products out of the region and to connect directly with consumers. For Adrián GarcÃa, son of Juan Carlos GarcÃa, founder of Viveros El Cerrón, one of the first blueberry plantations in Spain, the main advantage of selling Blueberries on the Internet is that connection with consumers without going through intermediaries. According to the manager of Arándanos El Cerrón, customers prefer to buy directly from the producer.
The Internet is also an important promotional channel in all business sectors, including agri-food. For Verónica Iglesias, from El MolÃn del Bao, this channel “plays a very important role when it comes to making ourselves known.” Adrián GarcÃa agrees with her, for him “Internet is a basic pillar” since it allows to easily bring brands such as Asturian blueberry or Alimentos del ParaÃso to all potential customers and a very wide audience.
Barriers to the online sale of blueberries
Not everything is positive and the process of immersion in the digital world for fruit and vegetable producers is not a bed of roses either. Small producers like El MolÃn del Bao have certain difficulties for online sales, which requires technical knowledge that in many cases there is no choice but to outsource. Verónica tells how they had to hire her to create the website and the online store for them. After this, they were the ones who had to start managing the store and the social networks.
In the case of Arándanos el Cierrón, they also had to resort to specialized personnel to create their online store. For Adrián it is essential to put himself in the hands of professionals and mainly to have the help of a good web developer. In addition, these blueberry producers have also decided to hire a person to carry out digital promotion tasks such as advertising on social networks.
What both producers agree on is the great barrier for online sales that logistics represents. Both Verónica and Adrián complain that the prices of refrigerated transport, necessary for the shipment of blueberries, are very high and point out this section as the biggest inconvenience of selling their products on the Internet. To try to solve this problem, Arándanos el Cierrón has opted for the urgent shipment of freshly harvested fruit in less than 24 hours, thus dispensing with refrigerated transport. These producers also see how sometimes the carriers do not treat their products well.
The pandemic as an accelerator of digital transformation
It is nothing new that the pandemic has accelerated the digitization of businesses of all kinds. In the current scenario, a great majority of distributors and agri-food producers have online sales channels that emerged in times of confinement. This has helped to standardize processes, to accustom consumers to buying online and to improve some parts of the process that for those who previously sold digitally were true upside down.
El MolÃn del Bao was one of those agri-food producers that began selling on the Internet in 2020 with the pandemic. In their case, they realized that it became very difficult to “sell their products door to door” and said they took the initiative by opening their online store. This is how this small blueberry producer had to enter the digital world.
Arándanos el Cierrón had already been selling its products on the Internet for a few years when the pandemic struck. What they did realize with the “new normal” is that some transport services improved and that, above all, consumers became more demanding. According to Adrián, his clients began to pay more attention to the quality seals and the trust transmitted by his website and online store.
The digital future of the blueberry
The future of almost any business in any sector is going through digitization. In the case of blueberries, you have the opportunity to start boosting your presence on the Internet thanks to the little competition that currently exists, compared to other sectors such as textiles or tourism, for example. For Adrián, the future of the fruit sector in Asturias and Spain will be marked by professionalization. This producer believes that as the market progresses it is professionalizing and the competition is greater and stronger.
Verónica sees a good future in the blueberry sector. This producer believes that the blueberry is becoming more and more known and that this encourages more people to stay in rural areas and undertake agricultural projects. For her, the Internet also helps this product to be more valued and well publicized.
The digital future of blueberries may also go through association and union so that small producers can better solve the problems of entering the online world. An example could be Productos de Aqui, which was born as an alternative to their own online sales channels, which greatly facilitates the lives of producers who cannot face the costs of creating an online store or hiring someone to manage it. . For Adrián it is a good initiative because alone he is not going anywhere. For Verónica, the visibility that platforms such as Productos de Aqui offer to small producers makes it much easier for customers to reach them.
Online sales are imposed in the agri-food sector and are becoming a condition for having a presence in the market. Either through its own channels or associative projects, this sector is being digitized and for this reason it is based on the fact that producers can share their experiences and help each other to promote local commerce, direct sales and quality communication.
