wow.... this going to be very tough sell. here are the reasons.
1. the brands you are selling are very common "super-market" brands in Colombia. I used to buy them in Bogota supermarkets for our co-workers when I used to work for electronic company at way lower pricing.
I am guessing that you are buying them in bulk and selling them on line.
I can not imagine them being "freshly roasted" for overseas customers. EVEN IF they are roasted WHEN YOU GET AN ORDER, it will get old when your customer receives them. 15 to 20 days by postal service.
2. your sales pricing is very close to USA local roaster pricing with freshly roasted coffee. so you can not really compete in quality and pricing.
3. your web says "NO RETURN". well, even if you accept returns, if customer has to pay for the shipping, ...... forget about it.
Selling roasted beans from overseas to overseas just can not work in coffee business.
But people are keep trying..... never learn.
First of all, I really appreciate your comments as ExoticCafe is a recent enterprenur project. Comments from someone so experienced like you will be much appreciated for the progress of this project.
I would like to answer your comments one by one:
1.- You're right, this is a newly project with just few agreements with local roasters. In these initial stages, I'm keeping some well known options like J. Valdez (a not so specialty coffee) as they are a very popular brand (and cafes) locally as you sure know. The idea is to offer something familiar to the ones that, once visited Colombia, would like to continue getting that product.
You're always welcome to come to Colombia and get some good coffee in any supermarket or great cafe, that's an option. If someone not so lucky as you, want a good Colombian coffee, can order it from ExoticCafe.
I'm not buying coffee in bulk, precisely to avoid introduce more time from roasted to final client get it. With my business model, we have agreements with roasters to get what the customers wants when they want it.
2.- My offer will be more and more focused on Specialty Coffee direct from the origin country. The idea is to offer origin warranty vs someone in whatever country that said they roast "Colombian", "Guatemalan", "Kenyan", etc, etc coffee.
More than compete in prices, which I try to keep as competitive as possible, my value offer is:
a) Single point of sale to find Specialty Coffee (just Colombian at this moment).
b) Origin warranty as all products are origin certified (Café de Colombia) and packaged in the origin. Not something that someone roast and said is Colombian.
c) Variety as a goal. Not that much at this time, but new brands are added constantly.
d) World wide delivery.
3.- It's easy for someone that just deliver in-country, like US, to include the delivery costs in their costs structure and offer "free delivery and returns".
Hopefully my clients keep thinking different from you, and I'm respect you opinion and market knowledge, believe me. I'm not a roaster and I'm not selling bulky green beans neither which I'm agree is the big business around the coffee. I'm just a small online Specialty Coffee retailer.
Hope we can do business in the near future as one of my next milestones is to include Specialty Coffee from other countries, like Guatemala of course.
Best Regards!
