One young Croat who inherited his grandparents’ love of the land, found his very first customers through advertising his products in Facebook sales groups, a move which proved to have been very much the correct one.
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 27th of December, 2018, alongside his steady job in a private company, twenty-four-year-old Danijel Tkalec, a trader by profession, dedicates every moment of his free time to the job he loves – working on a property he inherited from his grandparents. As this young Croat says, he has been helping them every day since he was little, and already fell in love with such work as a child, according to Agroklub.
“All of their lives until four years ago, my grandparents had, along with land, pigs and cows, but they had to sell all of their livestock because of illness and their age, and this, as they say, ended the most beautiful period of their lives. That love towards to the ground they lived from was passed on to me and I decided to continue with what they started. I had a lot of advantages at the very start – my own land and mechanisation, I only needed some good will and faith to work, I started to buy pigs, part of them I left for breeding, part of them I started fattening up for next winter, and during the first years I started with chickens too. The beginning was difficult – the space I had wasn’t really adequate, the biggest problem was that I didn’t have a market for the placement of my products, which is why the feeling of uncertainty and my fear of failure were huge,” recalls Danijel when discussing his humble beginnings four years ago.
Danijel found his first customers through advertising his products in no less than Facebook sales groups. Thanks to the recommendations of satisfied customers, his network of new and eager customers began to increase day by day. At the same time, the OPG’s revenue increased, and the first earnings the young Croat got his hands on were invested immediately straight back into the business – he placed large hanging feeders along the length of the entire space, and his capacity increased.
“After the first year, in which I first broke the ice, I began growing vegetables. Firstly, I literally started out with pretty much anything, but now I have opted for two to three crops. As a relatively small manufacturer, I don’t have the capacity to meet the needs of larger shopping facilities, and I sell my products exclusively through social networks, and when I collect the orders, I place them at the doors of my customers. My permanent customers have become like members of our family,” says Danijel, who is currently taking care of five hectares of land and all of the challenges such a task brings with it.
Online shopping and social networking has become a global trend over the last several years because, due to our increasingly busy lifestyles, many people are more likely to shop online and go to pick up their goods without losing time going to stores and markets. It was this trend that this young Croat deftly used to sell the products from his OPG, which proved to be an extremely successful move, because in just four years, the demand for his products has surpassed the offer, Agroklub writes.
Make sure to follow our dedicated business and Made in Croatia pages for more information on Croatian companies, products and services, as well as doing business in Croatia and the overall business and investment climate.
