Manitoba’s Pitura Seeds is has announced that it is partnering with Agro.Club Canada. Pitura Seeds is the first retailer to join Agro.Club’s Canadian online ecosystem, which combines a digital storefront for farmers to order products and services.
In this week’s podcast, Pitura Seeds President Tom Greaves says the move creates a new benefit for the company’s farm customers.
“Part of this started back at the beginning of our global pandemic. We were not able to connect the same way that we did in the past with our customers and growers. The technology was also changing really quickly, and we were finding that we were doing Zoom calls and meeting online, and just trying to figure out how that tied into our business,” he says.
To use the system, customers go to pituraseeds.ca and select the products they want. That takes them to the Agro.Club website where they can order the product. Alternatively, they go directly to Agro.Club and follow the prompts from there.
“It’s not only our seed products we have on there. We’ve also been able to put some different services on there. We have seed processing, research, agronomy and production contracts on there as well,” Greaves says.
For Greaves, the move represent a new niche for agri-retail as people increasingly look to the online world to buy products.
“We’re just really trying to understand and listen to our customers as to what they need and want. You know, when I think about this platform, it’s not going to be for everyone. There’s going to be some people that definitely want to work with us with a handshake face-to-face. We’re excited to do that and to continue to do that,” he adds.
“But there’s also going to be that other group that wants to just order from their phone and move forward. I think that we need to be able to adapt, and move to what our customers really want and need, and continue to listen to them.”
