An Online Business Expansion Proposal Essay

Dancy’s Fancy Butter is a local, singly owned and operated butter/spread. This business is located in Jacksonville Michigan. The operation started out from a simple request from a friend who wanted to buy the Garlic butter for a party. It was then that Anna Dancy realized the family and friend’s favorite dinner addition was a possible money making venture. The actual business side was at first a bit taunting. Anna had never run her own business, nor had she worked in food service or distributing food. There was a lot to learn that went way beyond the product. She purchased a mobile kitchen unit, and started creating her butter spreads. It was not long before the Health inspector paid her a visit. She was fortunate that she was giving solid advice as to how to move forward with rules in running a food service business. The holdup was minimal and it gave her time to actually prepare for bring her product to a larger customer base then family and friends. Farmer’s markets are the primary selling place for Dancy Fancy Butter. The product is made and kept preserved in the mobile kitchen, and then Anna and family helpers travel thought out the Jacksonville region setting up at Farmers Markets. It has been a great success. Now that she has a year under her belt, and with family and friends living outside of Jacksonville and the state of Michigan Anna Dancy had decided that she wants to explore expanding her internet presences and move into selling and shipping her product to a wider market. The advantages in today’s market for placing access to your product and services online are numerous. For Dancy Fancy Butter being online will open up an opportunity for a larger population to see the products offered. There is an international customer base available into Canada with the location of the company in Michigan. The possible challenges to building an online presence for this company will be assuring there is up-keep for everything from the website through the social media outlets. The online presence is bound to bring in more clients, the significance will be made clear and the management of the online environment will align with the overall goal to be successful in this endeavor. Current Online Competition The online completers that come up in a basic search for butter, butter spread and organic are, Home Earth Balance (http://www.earthbalancenatural.com/), Melt Up! (http://www.meltdirectnow.com/), and Bryanna’s Vegan Butter (http://vegan.com/recipes/bryanna-clark-grogan/bryannas-vegan-butter/). Earth Balance is an off shoot of the Smart Balance products whose parent company is GFA Brands, Inc. so even though this is an natural butter spread, it is still a part of a large company. The website is well organized, and has several appealing features such as a Recipe section and Kitchen Tips. There is not a ecommerce or shopping cart, so the product is only available in stores. The next company Melt Up! is an organic butter spread. The website is very basic. It does have a shopping cart and ecommerce. The site offers a newsletter and runs and RSS syndication on its front page. This sight is a good set up if you are familiar with the product. The third website like or close as a competitor is Bryanna’s Vegan butter. This site is connected to Vegan.com (http://vegan.com). It is more of a blog site. If the site does allow you to buy products, however it takes you off to Amazon to complete your purchase. This websites do have similar products as Dancy Fancy butter, however they are not homegrown, home town products. The advantage to Dancy Fancy butter is it will carry a local feel to all who visit the website. Online Marketing Suggestions and Strategies Three online strategies that are planned for the rolling out Dancy Fancy Butter online expansion will be an email campaign, a Facebook group for the company and third will be content strategy of building Cooking Tips videos for the website.