Happy Friday!

Last Saturday, I went out to our local farmer's market and handed out cards to the various vendors so they could sign up. I talked with a few of them, and I thought I might share some of the things that they said.

Almost everyone was really excited at the promise of reko.day. They looked visibly excited at two of the main features. One is that people can pay straight through the app, and two is that it arranges pick-up locations. Several vendors bemoaned the whole back-and-forth that happens on places like FB Marketplace.

Some other interesting things were the differences between types of vendors. Fruit and vegetable vendors were the most excited, but meat vendors were more cautious. It turned out that most of the meat vendors had deliveries and other purchase options, so this would be another option for them. The fruit and vege vendors often only had farmer's markets.

Several of the vendors I talked to drove over 2 hours to set up at that market, and when I talked to them, they said that they can only be in one place so this market is the best one in the area so they have to make the drive.

That was crazy to me. They were excited that reko.day could provide some easier means to sell locally.

The biggest concern every vendor had was how much reko.day would cost. Their eyes lit up when I told them I wasn't going to charge vendors to sell on reko.day. The way I see it, and tell it, is reko.day doesn't work if farmers don't want to list what they have to sell.

I hope to get out to more local markets over the coming week and prepare to launch the app.

Meanwhile, I am planning to release the first test version this coming week. If you want to try the app out before it launches, reply to this email and tell me! If you already have, I got you. Just hang tight.

The major thing I've been working on is payments. I'm leveraging one of the largest payment processors called, Stripe for this. Stripe handles all the security and stuff around credit cards and payments. This means that my app will remain safe and secure thanks to my partnership with Stripe. It also means people will experience a familiar payment process.

Now, there are some quirks with this. If you're a seller and you sign up, you'll have to also set yourself up in Stripe as a business that collects payments. I've gone through this process about 20 times, testing things in my app, and it's really straightforward, but I also want to think about how to make this even easier. For folks that pay, you'll be able to enter payment information quickly or saved payment info if you have a Stripe account (More of you do than you realize).

Once payments are complete, I can focus on subscriptions for the app and referrals, and that will be about it, aside from an ever-growing list of small things that nobody will ever notice but me.

Watch the video!

Sincerely,

Ryan Latta