Review our startup Farmly.net - buy fresh food in the UK

by sensecall • 14 years ago

33 36 14 years ago

bdfh42• 14 years ago

First criticism - I have to create an account with you guys to see if there is anything of interest to me in my part of the UK.

Any chance of finding some way of indicating the density of local suppliers before I sign up?

I would prefer to use OpenID or OpenAuth to creating yet another username and password combination plus I have no way of telling if you will keep them secure.

linker3000• 14 years ago

Came here to say the same thing - I want to see what's local to me first without having to sign up.

Also, living in a village in West Sussex, I have a selection of local farm shops and independent butchers within a 4 mile radius so I am not sure what I'd get out of this service - and since I can't see without giving up my personal details, it looks like I'll never know.

sensecall6• 14 years ago

I think you've hit the nail on the head here. So many people here in the UK live within a few miles of some amazing independent food producers but use them rarely, if ever. That's the problem we want to solve.

We're definitely going to tighten up the message on the site to clarify why we think people should join – thanks for the feedback.

GFischer• 14 years ago

I like your landing page.

Maybe you should have titled it Ask HN: Review our startup, Farmly.net - buy fresh food in the UK (or something along those lines).

Plenty of guys from the UK here (I'm not :) ), good luck !

sensecall6• 14 years ago

Thanks very much. We've renamed the post to clarify what we do.

alexobenauer• 14 years ago

Love the design of your page.

However, I shouldn't have to signup to see if there is anything useful beyond the signup page; to see the actual content. You've lost me right there. I'd bet if you let the content show before a signup, you'd get far more (and far more meaningful) signups.

d_j_s• 14 years ago

Even more frustrating when the email hasn't come through after 10 minutes

sensecall6• 14 years ago

That's a weird one. We're using Mailchimp to handle signups right now & it looked like they went down briefly just now. Should all be fixed now :)

bencoder• 14 years ago

Like others have said. I want to know if there's any local suppliers before signing up.

This isn't useful to me because I'm not in the UK currently, but my father would be interested, so I wanted to see if there's anything near him before I send him the link. Not interested in signing up to find out and plus I'd have to enter a false (my Dad's) postcode to do so.

Fletch137• 14 years ago

I agree with what others have said, and on the signup front, I think a facebook login might be a good idea. You could then pull the location info that you need, reducing the info the user needs to put in to practically nothing. Authorise facebook and start buying almost immediately.

tomsinger• 14 years ago

It looks nice and I honestly love the idea (I'm UK based) but you have no contact information, use a service to hide your registration information and have no privacy policy yet you want my name, email address and postcode? That's not a fair exchange.

What is the legal status of your startup as this will have an impact on the information you legally need to have on your site.

sensecall6• 14 years ago

Thanks Tom. Really appreciate the feedback. We're getting a privacy policy & terms in place as we speak. We'll look into what we legally need to have on the site too.

AffableSpatula• 14 years ago

How much overlap do you think your company has with Sustaination (http://sustaination.co) ?

kaolinite• 14 years ago

Signed up for the mailing list. Really hope this succeeds! Design is great by the way.

meaty• 14 years ago

I'm not signing up unless I can see what I'm getting first (like all the other vendors allow)

Also, you're fighting the likes of Ocado, Abel and Cole, Waitrose there. That's not a fight I'd walk into myself.

jasoncartwright• 14 years ago

Right - exactly, me too.

See how housebites.com (kind-of your competition) does it. They show me pictures of tasty looking locally cooked food when I give them my postcode - that I can then signup to order. Almost irresistible.

pcrh• 14 years ago

Thanks for the tip! They do look irresistible!

user242• 14 years ago

the signup email field is called "EMAIL". If you called it "email" instead, you'd benefit better from browser autocomplete.

user242• 14 years ago

There's no information on this site, it's just a signup page. How does(will) it work? What do(will) I get? Tell me how awesome you are. Make me want it. Excite me.

CookWithMe• 14 years ago

Like the idea!

In addition to what others have said: I find the overall design good, but I don't like the stripes/greyness over the food image (http://www.farmly.net/images/home-banner.jpg) at all. Getting the color of food images right is always tough, but this definitely fails. For some images, e.g. the strawberrys, it may be fine because the red is very saturated, but others, like the cheese or the cupcakes... they look grey / too dark, which is not what food should look like.

Also, I'm not sure if the transition helps. Makes it harder to look at the images and takes the attention away from the text.

Good luck!

Pennycade• 14 years ago

http://www.abelandcole.co.uk/

kombine• 14 years ago

I guess the difference is that Farmly connects you to the local producers while Abel and Cole are a big food supplier and manages the logistics internally. But it means a steady supply(at a cost of importing of foods) and also they guarantee organic source of all of the produce.

twelvechairs• 14 years ago

Love the idea. Can't tell enough about how it works without signing up (I haven't).

Key question for me - I can't see what I'm buying so how can I be sure that it is good quality/fresh? I assume some kind of buyer-rated reputation system for producers would be useful for this kind of thing? Would like to see how you resolve this.

Also - I can't tell whether you or the sellers are supposed to handle the actual transportation of goods.

cpursley• 14 years ago

Interesting. I've had a similar idea for the US and actually own farmersstand.com (haven't done anything with the domain yet).

I'm not sure people will order local food online in the US, but I think a case can be made for a tablet app that allows the user to sit on their couch and browse local farmers and read about a specific farmer's growing methods, farm photos, selling locations/options, etc. The end goal of the user would be to meet up with the farmer at a market, csa, ect to make a purchase.

Not sure how to monetize or populate it with farmers. Two-sided marketplaces are difficult.

thisone• 14 years ago

I'm part of your buyer market here I believe, as I've just started receiving fortnightly deliveries of organic produce from a local box scheme and I spent a heck of a lot of time recently trying to find local lamb and beef and running into dead ends left, right, and centre.

That being said, first of all and completely off topic, I appreciate you're in Heslington (York alumnae and still living in the north east). Perhaps you could consider spelling out on the site if you are planning on being a middle man, or an information centre, or a facilitator.

Will you show information for local box schemes, local farm shops, markets, independent cafe's?

I'm quite interested in seeing what you're trying to do, since I've recently had such problems searching for box schemes in the North East.

stfu2• 14 years ago

Just a random suggestion: What I would want is a "system" to replace any snacks I eat with fresh fruits. Meaning, I want the same level of convenience.

I want it organic, sliced, and delivered twice per week. I know that this sounds like a logistical nightmare, but that would be something with a crystal clear positioning.

z00mer• 14 years ago

graze.com sounds like what you are after?

--edit, code for a free box MCH1FRRA

stfu2• 14 years ago

Wow, that's nice! HN is really full of suprises. I was more looking for fresh fruits, but this is really close. Going to give it a try.

luxpir• 14 years ago

Congrats on a solid idea/execution combo. I suppose we need to support UK startups as much as we do our local suppliers. Fingers crossed I think you might even manage to win over the British luddites and naysayers with this blend of old and new!

Design-wise I can only say that it matches the expectations of consumers in the demographic pretty much spot on. And I like it :)

Would be good to follow your progress so will stick to Twitter for now, but in-depth blog posts would be welcome if you find time.

sensecall6• 14 years ago

Thanks luxpir – we really appreciate the support.

Mz• 14 years ago

I have just subscribed to get updates and I am not even in the U.K. I hope you do really well. Like others here, I am curious as to your exact business model. It isn't clear to me what specifically you will be doing. I hope this kind of business becomes more common. It is a potential antidote to some of the problems caused by largescale modern farming and general commercialization of our food.

threedaymonk• 14 years ago

I'm not sure that "buyer" is the best word to use: it often has a specific nuance (someone who arranges ordering for a brand or retailer). Maybe it's just me, but I initially thought I was in the wrong place when presented with a button that said "I'm a buyer". Perhaps "shopper" might be better.

sensecall6• 14 years ago

Thanks for pointing that out. Terminology is certainly something we're trying hard to get right – buyer, consumer, shopper, foodie etc.

EwanToo• 14 years ago

You have to make a really quick and easy search on the front page which lets me check out which suppliers are available in my area.

Otherwise, you're just wasting everyone's time.

[edit] having signed up for the product since I want to be nice, and I've found all I've done is sign up for a mailing list of a product that might launch at some point in the future.

This isn't a startup to review or comment on, it's an MVP landing page test.

ojr• 14 years ago

good front-end technique of not putting the whole Twitter Bootstrap library on to the site but only the javascript and css that you need

antihero• 14 years ago

I joined but I don't seem to be able to log in or anything.

Review our startup Farmly.net - buy fresh food in the UK

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