Happy Friday!

This past week, I was at a beekeeping convention. I learned a lot of things and talked with a lot of folks, too.

In particular, I talked with all of the vendors selling honey.

I asked them the questions I ask most folks like this:

• How do you sell your honey? Is it at events like this, online, or a retail store?
• What are some of the problems you're having with selling your honey?
• What about delivery or pickup options?
• Are you in any farmers' markets, and how do those work for you?

The story was the same with everyone aside from one vendor who truly didn't care.

They wish they could sell more honey to more people, and they don't know how. Farmer's markets are a mixed thing. The events would work out great if they could plan for it. Everything else is just hard. Facebook is good, aside from having to negotiate how to fulfill orders and payments with absolutely everyone. Delivery isn't practical, and pickup would be great, but they don't want people showing up at their house.

One of them sold honey as a byproduct of running an orchard and having honeybees pollinate their apple trees. When we talked about farmer's markets, their eyes rolled because "Apples come into season right as farmer's markets stop. It kills us."

After asking questions, I'd tell them about reko.day, and they were all excited. It solves almost every problem they have for free. That's another thing. All these farmers trying to sell things are paying many fees for services they use to sell their goods. They feel like they can't get ahead.

My hope in talking with them and giving them my card is that these beekeepers will be helpful in the months to come as we grow reko.day. I'd love to hear the folks who run the apple orchard tell me that their whole business has changed now that they can sell their apples and apple products easier than ever.

I think most of us reading this are interested in buying what these folks would sell, but I thought it would be interesting to share what these farmers are going through and why reko.day makes so much sense for them, too.

Development Update

I've been focusing on notifications. Right now, I'm going to support email and push notifications. Push notifications are the messages your phone shows periodically, like, "You have a new email."

There are a few notifications I'm going to start with because they'll make a huge difference in how easy the app is to use. There are others I can do in the future and I'd love you to tell me what kind of notification you want.

• New order creation
• Refund requests
• Refund cancellation, denial, and completion
• Order pickup is skipped

These notifications are highly functional, and that's why they're first. There are others I'll add in the future, like reminding folks to mark orders as complete or additional notifications that their pickup is coming up soon.

After that, a whole other set of notifications falls more into promotion and marketing. This would be things like sending an email now and then with what's popular or new rekos. Sending a periodic message to your phone letting you know something you typically buy is available. These notifications aren't exactly functional, but they do help people remember to come back to the app.

Don't worry, though; every notification will have an option for you to turn them off. You'll be able to choose exactly the notifications you want and make the best experience for you.

Sincerely,

Ryan