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Long Creek Herbs
Owners:
Jim Long & Josh Young
Editor's Note: I’m not sure exactly
when I first met Jim Long. I remember reading his newsletter,
“The Ozark Herbalist” back in the
80s and was impressed. He’s one of the most gifted writers I
know. And I think our first in-person meeting was at a Virginia
Herb Association Conference about the time I first started my
own network in 92 or 93 and we had a delightful lunch together.
Since then he’s become a regular speaker at my conferences and
we’re both members of the Garden Writers Association of
America. (Excellent resource organization). It seems he writes
most of The Herb Companion (or he’s manipulated his way onto
most the its pages :-) ) and has a wealth of stories to regale you
with.
Founded: 1987
Location: PO Box 127, Blue Eye, MO
65611
Employees: 5
Annual Sales: $250,000 - $500,000
Q: How did you start (or become owner) of
the business? I decided that an herb business would be a
good addition to my
farm. I had been in the landscaping and design business for 20
years and had evolved toward herbs. I enjoy product development
and marketing and it all seemed to fit together.
Q: What made you choose this type of
business? A back injury in 1985 that caused me to not be
able to work, not even sit at
my drafting table, for an entire season. I began writing and
publishing The Ozarks Herbalist, a quarterly herb newsletter. At
the
same time I began hosting herb festivals on my farm, and
developing my gardens and gift shop.
Q: What is your background? Landscape
architecture with a life-long love of herbs. That, combined with
my experience
in restaurant cooking from my teenage years, and emphasis in
college on public speaking, English and design.
Q: What are your biggest challenges as an
herb business? Being flexible and changing what I do and
what I market.
Q: What are the biggest rewards of being
an herb business? Working with products that give people
pleasure, both for
our customers and for our employees. It’s rewarding to have
someone telephone to say how much they enjoy something I’ve
created, either a book I’ve written, or a product I’ve invented.
And to have employees tell me this is the best place to work out
of all
the places they’ve worked before, is satisfying.
Q: What is your philosophy of customer
service? To do whatever it takes to make the customer happy.
We have special “
Jim Bucks” (dollar-bill coupons) that we send our customers. If
they’ve had to make a phone call, or have a question about an
order,
or simply reorder often, we give them a Jim Buck. Our products,
especially the Nail Fungus Soak – which is our biggest selling
product, have the guarantee included with the instructions. If
they aren’t happy, or if the product doesn’t perform like we
promise,
we give them their money back.
Q: What makes you stand out from your
competitors? Probably that we’ve been in business longer
than many other
herb businesses who do what we do. And the fact that we make our
customers part of our family, through our catalog and website.
We let our customers know who we are and what we’re about. We
even include the farm’s dog and cat and goats in several of
our publications.
Q: What plans do you have for your
business? .We’re about a year and a half into working with a
wholesale distributor who
is widening our market. We’ve purposely made the decision in the
past to not grow beyond what our capacity is for products, but
are making deliberate changes to increase production.
Q: Is your family supportive of your
business? It doesn’t really apply in this instance. I’m an
only child and my parents
are deceased; Josh has one parent living. But, no, no children
or siblings or wife/husband situation where this question would
be applicable.
Q: What do you wish you’d done differently with the
business? Hired employees earlier, rather than trying to do
everything ourselves.
Q: What do you think people starting out
should know about getting into your type of business? That
running a business
is hard work. While it looks like fun, and it can be, it
requires planning, constant promotion, staying on top of trends
and competition
and finding who your market is. I see lots of businesses begin
and fail, because they build the business on what they want to
do,
rather than what market they can fulfill.
Q: How has the internet helped/hurt your
business? I was resistant to using the internet at first.
Our website has been up
about since about 1997 and I predicted it would just sit there,
because I believed herb based products that you need to see,
smell,
feel or taste, wouldn’t sell that way. I took a chance on the
website and it has become the most important part of our
business.
We’re able to reach customers nationwide and around the world in
ways we never would have with only a paper-based
catalog. Additionally our website creates opportunities for
promotion of my books and other products. Recently I’ve given
lengthy
radio interviews for English speaking radio programs in Spain,
the Canary Islands several others in the States, places like
Anchorage, Alaska. Most of those requests come because of our
website.
Q: How long has it taken for your website
to pay off? It started paying off within the first year. I
was pleasantly surprised
that people found it quickly and used it. We make it easy for
our customers to use our secure server, as well as giving them
plenty
of other options for ordering. Some of our customer base is
elderly people, especially for our top selling product, Herbal
Nail
Fungus Soak, and they will go on our website to get information,
but then want to call and place their order, or send it by mail.
The website fulfills a service in giving those customers some
information and reassuring them that there is more to our
company
than just the ad they saw in Grit, Cappers, Mother Earth or
similar publications. We’ve found that the ads we run increases
the traffic
to our website considerably.
The biggest mistake that I see herb businesses making
when they put up a website, is not doing anything with it after
it’s
up. Having a website is like having a garden, you have to
constantly tend it and make it useful for customers. If there’s
no reason
for a customer to stay and look around, or no reason to come
back, the website doesn’t fulfill any purpose. Just to have a
website
isn’t enough, you have to use it. So many websites I visit for
plant-based or herb-based businesses, have a few pretty pictures
on
the front page, but no substance to entice the visitor to
explore further.
Q: What things have you done to promote
your website? We promote the website through all of our
literature, our ads in
various publications, our wholesale and retail catalogs, through
all of my self-published and publisher-based books. All of our
products carry the website address. Whenever I give interviews,
either TV or radio, I have the agreement in advance that there
will
be information about our website listed. For example, appearing
on the P.Allen Smith Gardens TV programs has netted links from
their show’s website to ours, along with reviews of several of
my books on their weekly newsletter.
I don’t, however, do exchange links with other
businesses – the kind where someone says, “I’ll trade a link to
your site for
your linking to mine.” It’s never worked nor been useful for us
(plus it leads people away from your site and the goal should be
to
keep people at your site as long as possible). We do list other
websites on our resources page, for places where we recommend
as sources for plants I’ve written about, as well as links to
organizations like Herbworld.com and Garden Writers of America.
But
we don’t do the exchange link thing as we’ve found it totally
nonproductive.
The other way we promote our website is through the
use of our free E-postcard service. Customers seem to enjoy our
website and when they are there, we give them reasons to stay
and look around. By going to our “Garden Tour” section, they
can choose a photo they like from our garden and send it as a
free email postcard to a friend. We’ve found that people use it
and
it brings more traffic to our site by referral from one customer
to another. (Our completely new website will be ready to launch
in about
a week – around the 25th or 26th of Sept; it’s a major change
from what we’ve had in the past and the first major change we’ve
made
to the website).
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