I've been learning more by selling at markets. People at farmer's markets tend to favour buying larger quantity items, they like to buy a full kilo of honey whereas people at more community events, like fundraisers (church fetes) or festival type events, tend to buy the smaller, less cost effective honey jar. I believe the former are about to celebrate, they like to contribute and might fancy the notion of a small jar of honey to use here and there. People at farmer's markets are there to consume, they are more serious customers that want less to support and more to simply get high quality cheap produce to consume.
Since Australia is quite a multicultural country, and that many ethnic people value good quality produce, I often barter with a large type of audience. I've noticed that, Asian brown people (sort of India area) are more inclined to haggling, many other Asian demographics take stronger consideration of the price of goods and are more insistent at buying at the lowest standard honey will go for.These types seem to almost culturally value competitively standard cheap priced produce, whereas the brown Asians tend to be more inclined towards haggling to undercutting degrees.I was wondering whether honey is simpler more popular amongst caucasian and Asian demographics, but it seems like that's not the case, seems like honey is quite popular amongst a variety of ethnicities and it just seems like there's more caucasian and Asian interest due to them being the highest population demographics present.
The haggling is something that I'm not good at. I experimented with adding some honeycomb to some jars, and early on in the day someone ended up buying all 9 of my experiment, he haggled me down to a price though that I regretted afterwards. I need to work out beforehand what's the lowest price I'm prepared to sell x at y quantity, which I'm not that sure how to do.
Something that I'm unsure about is allowing myself to drop in price. I sell my honey at a price slightly higher than the lowest standard price, I figure because my honey is better quality than most and many people are willing to pay that. Whenever people ask to pay the lowest minimal standard amount for honey, I've just been agreeing, because I want the sale. One of the problems is, people will come to expect that lower price in the future. A stronger move in general is, let's say you're selling honey at $11 a kilo, and someone wants it for $10, to then offer them two kilos of honey for $20. That is, to offer them the discount that they desire, but at a greater quantity. If someone wants them for $9 for a kilo tub, I can tell them I can sell them 4 for $36. This plays into their desire to haggle, it doesn't just blow them out or shut out the bartering exchange, it doesn't reveal weakness or allow oneself to develop the reputation of just agreeing to dropping the price if asked, it instead offers them the discount price, at a condition that oneself is happy with; a greater quantity of sale. One thing I'm unsure about, is when if I should ever agree to lowering my price, or just insist on selling it to them for a lower price at a greater quantity only. Some people have haggling bartering styles but some are just straight forward, seemingly open and honest and are direct about wanting to buy it a cheap competitive price. I'm not sure if they ask to pay $10 instead of $11 for one kilo, then I offer them two kilos for $20, then they express that they just want 1 kilo and offer me $10.50 for it, whether I should accept that offer, or decline.
A lot of people have been asking me "do you add sugar"? I'm not entirely sure what people mean they ask this and I'm under the impression that different people are asking different questions when saying this, and one needs to try and best gauge what they're asking this and what information do they want to hear. Some believe adding sugar to beehives is unethical, some believe it creates a poor quality honey flavour and healthwise. Some seem to believe that people stir in sugar into honey to make it sweetener, that people dilute honey with sugar and possibly other stuff. Some seem to be uninformed diabetic or other health people. Either way I struggle to navigate these interactions well and figure I need an effective way in communicating with these types and relay the information they want to hear. I even had one person point to the crystals in my sample jar and ask me if there's no sugar added, then what's those crystals then, and apparently wasn't convinced when I told them about honey crystals and walked off.
I had a weird interaction where one person asked if my honeycomb was real, he then told me that some people are manufacturing fake honeycomb that looks real and attempt to sell them as the real deal. I did my best to convey that was not the case by talking about my practices and bees and well frankly I was surprised that he even thought that because I hadn't heard of that before, he asked if he could try a piece to be sure and I said sure, he took off the smallest bit and tried it, looked unsure and he eventually said that he couldn't tell so, unconvinced, he wandered off.
I'm coming to learn that, people are quite suspicious about honey products. They often know that there's a difference in quality with honey, they might have some ideas as to why that might be the case, they might not, but my products will be under scrutiny; people want to be reassured that, what they're buying is a pure, raw quality product and my ability to believably communicate such to people is directly related to how much I can sell.
I've had people ask me for beepollen. I haven't looked into that but apparently it's sweet, popular in certain regions in the world and with health people. There seems to be a decent demand for beeswax also, and I can't really tell but people seem to be willing to pay more for wax than they do for honey.
