The Amish among us...

[nskitts]

I live in southeastern Ohio and the Amish population has been steadily increasing in the past decade. I have noticed that the Amish have a reputation for building quality furniture among other things whether that reputation is deserved is debatable, but people associate "Amish" with quality and hard work.

My thoughts are since they shun technology they have no way to market their goods to the marketplace. You have to know where they live and then drive to see their inventory. I have an idea to have a website that centralizes the Amish businesses that would be willing to partner with me to sell their goods all over the country. I have a few obstacles to overcome and a culture to understand and reason with but I think this could work.

Basically, I would just skim a little off each of the online sales and figure out a way to fulfill the orders and ship them.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

I like the idea, definitely could see some need/value opps there. (And thread moved.)

 

[CPisHere]

Love the idea - you will have to find a way to address the fact that people might be questioning how the amish are selling online & thus assume it could be counterfeit (which is what I would assume).

Have you looked at search volumes? Are people looking for this stuff?

Personally, living somewhere there are no Amish - I've only heard about their quality & thus have never tried to find any to buy.

 

[nskitts]

Thank you for the move MJ, as a noob I am still learning the nooks.

Cparsons, I will research search volumes. One way I could ensure confidence is building a trademark or a brand and then backing that up with good copy that I have a knack for. Plus, just being honest and letting them know that the website is ran by a hillbilly that just happens to be friends with the Amish community. I have found that brutal honesty disarms peoples' suspicions a good deal of the time. Along with lots of pics on the website showing the details of craftsmanship, etc.

 

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[RazorCut]

I have a few obstacles to overcome and a culture to understand and reason with but I think this could work.

Tim Ferris recently interviewed WIRED co-founder Kevin Kelly. I think this will help with your cultural understanding.

As well as a very broad and interesting interview that lasted almost 2 hours (the interview is split into 3 sections) Kevin detailed quite a lot of information about the Armish as he spends quite a bit of time with them. I think you would benefit from listening to it as it killed some misconceptions and was very enlighting on many fronts. It answers exactly why they use horse and cart (which was not as I expected) and you will be amazed at how switched on they are.

You will find links on this page:

http://fourhourworkweek.com/category/the-tim-ferriss-show/

I think it might be the last interview, if not then the second part.

 

[MoneyDoc]

If your looking for domain names, sellamish.com and amishbay.com, are both available to register!

 

[AubreyJ]

This is a really good idea- I like the approach of building a brand and having the brand be known for authentic Amish goods, and finding a way to assure people that your products are in fact authentic.

One thing that may be difficult is scaling- because these products are made by hand, it may be hard to scale and produce large amounts of products. Unless you where to add exclusivity to the brand by openly stating that you only produce x amount of products per month, and any order over that will be wait listed. My sister recently bought a chair that was like that (it isn't even a nice chair)- it was a ridiculously overpriced chair, she was on a wait list for it for 4 months, and one of the things that drew my sister to the product was the exclusivity behind it- I'm sure that you could maybe implement the same type of thing to your site.

 

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[FionaS]

I think that'd be very cool! Each piece is unique, too, that'd be a good selling point in and of itself. Definitely a lot of hurdles, but it could be a great opportunity.

Maybe there could be an option for custom furniture, for the carpenters that are interested - you could have the customer fill out a form and they could build it and ship it off. Obviously, a lot of product control and small details there that you'd have to work out, but that's an option as well, especially if you have multiple carpenters willing to work with you.

 

[Lex DeVille]

I'm imagining an Amish Ebay.

I pulled this from a quick Google search:

Amish see threats in technologies which provide easy contact with worldly ideas and values (television, automobiles), or those which may break down the family or community, by serving as distractions or eliminating the need of relying on others in one’s community. Amish also feel that certain labor-saving technologies take more than they give, robbing their children of the ability to learn the value of hard work, for example.

So, instead of connecting them with the outside world, why not connect them with each other.

"AmishAuctions.com" or maybe something similar to Craigslist where they could quickly communicate with one another to exchange goods with other Amish people from across the country. From what I understand they have limited internet privileges, but so do students in most public schools, yet they can still access certain sites.

 

[Mike.B]

I'd be interested to see how well this would work. I can tell you from living in a heavily Amish area, they don't have many issues moving their furniture items. There are huge stores here that sell Amish furniture and they do very well.

People that know the quality love the furniture and will pay the price, which is expensive, but if you add shipping and handling it might be to much.

Also I think the logistics would be a nightmare. It wouldn't be like shipping items from IKEA.

Edit: here's one of the stores in my area http://amish-merchant.com

Maybe you can get some ideas from them ...

 

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[nskitts]

Some great info and ideas here, than you so much. I am listening to the Tim Ferris podcast right now. Of course they are known for their furniture but I was trying to think of even smaller items, like bird houses, etc. which could be well made and exclusive...and easy to ship.