There are many ways to get people to buy your wonderful Hawaiʻi-grown or -made product. Customers can come to your business and buy it directly from you, you can take it to a farmers’ market and sell it to them, you can take it to a restaurant, a wholesaler can send a truck to your farm, you may ship or sell to overseas customers or it can be a combination of distribution options. Each one of these options has its positive and negative sides.
- Distributing your Product within Hawaiʻi (Click Here) – In this lesson the costs of distributing your product within Hawaiʻi will be discussed, along with the pros and cons of different distribution models. Some local resources also will be given.
- Exporting your product (Click Here) – Serving the market on your island might be enough work and income for you, and if so, good for you! But, if it is not and you want to expand your market beyond, you need to be prepared for additional requirements. These requirements include additional business paperwork and better understanding of banking systems. In addition, for fresh agricultural products, you will typically need a phytosanitary certificate (ensuring that you have checked for diseases and pests on agricultural materials). Exporting to a neighbor island is relatively simple, but the process gets more complex when you ship to the US Mainland and more complex still when shipping to a foreign country. Fear not, it has been done countless times by American agricultural entrepreneurs and is typically just a matter of knowing the rules and following them methodically.
In this lesson, we will provide you the basics of exporting. Because every product and business relationship is unique, take this advice and add it to the knowledge you acquire as you create an opening in a new market.