Saturday, January 29, 2011

Post Driving by Machine

Kiwifruit vines cannot support themselves and wooden posts and wires are needed to support the canopy. While "inside" posts can be set manually, it is advisable to use hydraulic post driver for perimeter, end and side posts. Today we started to learn how to use this machine.


Picture: First Day of Post Driving

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Video: Planting Our Kiwi



This most recent video on our YouTube channel. You see how our team is planting kiwifruits. They are placing it directly on the point marked by the bamboo pole, then make sure that the width of the hole is wide enough for the roots to fit, and also spreading roots evenly to maximize feeding area for the vine. We planted several thousand fruits that way, in the last two weeks. More images to follow.

Kiwi Planting | Live Image from Field


Here you see some impressions directly from planting. The weather is good, the sun is shining, and we are managing to get many plants into the ground, about 600 per day. More images to follow.


Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

We Got Plants!!!

Yesterday we got 2 year old Hayward green kiwifruit plants and this morning we started to plant them. Below you see a picture of a well developed root system of kiwifruit plant.


Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Friday, January 7, 2011

Website or Facebook? How to Connect to Consumers?

We started to think about it as soon as we started to think about sales. As Facebook users ourselves with our profiles we saw how many interesting pages there were representing different companies and products. We liked (not Facebook's like but just a like as a like) some of them and we did not like (again just a pre-Facebook like) some. We thought what would people think about our page and what and how should we communicate to be likable (now both, Facebook and a real like).

We even learned that there are many firms who offer and sell to companies their consultancies on how to become popular on Facebook and how to "even measure impact of Facebook activities on sales, brand image etc".

While not being big experts on this we realised one thing from the begining: Facebook was different from website in that here (on Facebook) we should be informal to people who liked us. Unlike websites, Facebook did not look like sphere of companies but rather a sphere of individuals, people, friends. People log to Facebook to have a very informal, private chat with their friends, share funny photos and statuses, post links to various music.

So, we decided to have a page and try to post an engagable content. We also try to not post anything without relevant photo or video because we observed visual impressions are important. As someone said once: "what I saw I remember, what I heard I forgot." We did not market this a lot yet, but already have people checking in with us.



Click here to see our facebook fan page.

So, what kind of posts do we post? Here are some of examples: with our first post we put a picture of our kiwifruit being presented at one of street fruit seller's tables, and we informed our fans when we started selling and where . Then we put 4 pictures representing person (Isabel Fraser) who brought wild kiwifruit seeds to New Zealand in 1904, also a map of China, which is the homeland of kiwifruit, the picture of man after whom the most popular kiwifruit variety is named, and all these pictures were accompanied with relevant text messages. On another occasion we again put pictures of the Georgian region Samegrelo which pioneered kiwifruit into Georgia and gave a short history of kiwifruit arrival to Georgia.


We also obtained permission from New Zealand dietary expert to put her kiwifruit recipes on our fan page, published the copy of laboratory test on our kiwifruit, posted pictures from our trip to New Zealand kiwifruit growers. It is not yet about scale for us, but about using various channels to communicate that we want our consumers to be happy, and that we care for quality first and foremost.

As for the website, we decided to build this soon, to communicate with our non-consumer audience mostly such as suppliers, retailers and wholesale buyers, and other potential business partners. Coming soon.

To contact the blogger, email:
Konstantine.Vekua@nergeta.ge