Importing Olive oil from Sicily

[yottacom]

Hello!

i'm a marketing guy but i would like to ask a question about trading

A friend in Sicily produce an amazing Extra Virgin Olive Oi. It's a family-run business, they collect olives by hand, everything is certified as "BIO" and "Organic" and the final product is exceptional: when you open a bottle, the fragrance of oil immediately fill the room.

Being a small-scale/high quality production, their average price is, as you may imagine, well beyond the mass-market production.

I always wanted to help them in selling the product outside italy and any advice on how to approach the UK market would be great!

thanks in advance

 

[cjd]

Posh street markets like Borough Market, posh shops like Harrods, Fortnum and Mason. Posh hamper gift sellers. Posh...anything.

 

[yottacom]

Posh street markets like Borough Market, posh shops like Harrods, Fortnum and Mason. Posh hamper gift sellers. Posh...anything.

I love the Borough market and being in hackney road i can eventually ask some informations to some of the sellers

how could they approach the other brands ?

 

[cjd]

Send them a sample with a nice, hand written letter.

 

[yottacom]

simple and brilliant! thanks!

 

[Sherlock Homeless]

That particular sector is rife with gangsterism, fraud and crime. Take a peek:

http://www.businessinsider.com/fake-olive-oil-2012-1?op=1

http://www.olivarsantamaria.com/?blog=6&articulo=12

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/...ive-bottles-of-Italian-olive-oil-debased.html

 

[yottacom]

Thanks @Sherlock Homeless it's sad that olive oil is often subject to fraud.

Fortunately my friends have always maintained high standards of quality!

 

[Twoscoops]

I would start with restaurants, get chefs to taste it and see if you can get a few high-profile chefs around the country using it. That way there is a volume opportunity and also a marketing angle for delis and farm shops "so and so uses it in his restaurant and endorsed it in this interview..". I know that every other producer will be trying to do the same so it will be tough to crack but I've found with olive oil that the market for the really good stuff is so tiny, and people have to believe it is going to taste so much better than the other oils out there before they buy it.

 

[beasty]

Oddly a lot of olive trees are nicked from Sicilia and smuggled north!

Why would you collect olives by hand? that is stupid, you use olive nets! they drop off into them

Anyway PM me I have an idea for you

By the way, in using the most famous virtual office address in the UK i can tell you without checking the actual address is 145 to 147 not 145 to 157

Better to use an obscure one, less obvious that you have no office especially as you live in Torino