My dad raises grass-fed beef cattle and I help him sell it, mainly by maintaining an online presence. For a while, I kept having the most ridiculous conversations with people who I assume were marketing students. I didn't want to be rude so I'd try to let them down gently but this one guy just kept insisting that with his magical marketing skills he could grow our business.
What he could not seem to comprehend is that we could not grow our business, at least not without significant time and monetary investment. Cows take two years from pregnancy to the size that you can sell. If we buy adult cows, our margins become razor thin or even negative. Even if we somehow could acquire some cows, our barn and hay fields are already near maximum capacity. Renting another field would be relatively easy, building a bigger barn not so much.
Cows are living animals, they aren't widgets that can be produced infinitely. Besides that, many businesses inherently cannot grow, because if they do they'll become something else. The delicious bakery down the street cannot produce much more than they do, if they began mass marketing and production they'd eventually be selling the equivalent of Twinkies. We grow grass-fed, organic beef, if we expanded how long would that last? Eventually we'd become the very factor farms that we hate. Some things can only ever be made on a small scale and they are usually the best things.
But also, what are they teaching them at marketing school and how is it so disconnected from reality?
gracieabrams
theartofmadeline
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stormborns
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