The "Vegetables-Fruits OPT" group, which has been working in telegram for two years, is an ideal meeting place for sellers and buyers. Dozens of ads are published here every day, and the feed is replete with vivid photographs: fresh tender zucchini, golden onions, red-sided apples, juicy strawberries, greens, nuts, mushrooms ...
The geography of the group members is very diverse and covers almost all the post-Soviet space: Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Armenia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan. In addition to them there is also Egypt, Iran and other foreign countries.
There are a lot of people who want to sell or buy: at the moment there are more than 8500 people in the group, and their number is constantly growing.
We talk with the founder of the resource, Alexander Andriyants, about how the channel managed to turn into a successful trading platform.
- Alexander, why was this group created?
- I needed an effective distribution channel for my product (Alexander Andriyanets is the head of two companies: LLC A-Trade (Russia) and IE Andriyanets A.V. (Republic of Belarus), engaged in the sale of farm products - ed.). But the group was initially open to other proposals, and I believe that this decision was correct. Now the flow of ads is large, which allows us to constantly “keep our finger on the pulse”: to be aware of the prices in the market, to see the needs of buyers. And who owns information, as you know, owns the world.
Take, for example, the ending season: since autumn it was clear to us that there is a shortage of carrots on the market, since requests for this product from large contractors began to come literally immediately after the harvest was completed, and in previous years, interest in carrots did not wake up until the beginning of spring ...
- Did the group become popular at once?
- Of course not. People came gradually. First, we invited our clients, acquaintances of farmers from Russia and Belarus, they attracted their acquaintances, and then the rule of “six handshakes” was in effect.
- How did you promote the group in other countries?
- It is rather the merit of telegram itself. This messenger offers users a wide range of groups based on search queries, and this algorithm works. We also have a group of the same topic on Viber, with half the number of members, and a very small community on WhatsApp (there is a limit of up to 250 members there). The telegram channel turned out to be the most successful.
- Your group has a very friendly administrator. If ads do not meet the requirements, their authors receive a warning, but the information itself is not deleted. Everything is stricter on other trading floors.
- This is the policy of the group. People may not read the rules or do not read them completely, they may not understand something - this is normal, everyone has the right to make mistakes. The administrator helps newbies figure it out. Only frank spam is deleted immediately, which, fortunately, is not enough.
I will also say that the tasks of the administrator in our group are performed by a farmer from the Rostov region. Accordingly, in winter he can devote more time to this work (at this time he not only controls the feed, but also puts news relevant to the audience), and with the beginning of the season - less, but the group does not need strict regulation: only ads are published in the feed , any questions to their authors can be asked exclusively in a "personal".
- Based on experience, what should be the ideal ad for your channel?
- It is necessary to indicate in the text: product name, price, location, contact. If all this is there, neither the seller nor the buyer has to spend the most important resource on clarifications - time.
- The main question from agricultural producers: how to find your group on the Internet?
- https://t.me/vegetables_wholesale
We will be glad to new participants!