May is a busy month- besides the final spring shows, ending with Nationals end of May/early June, there is shearing in our part of the country and this year, something new.
For consecutive weekends in May, there have been three different open houses/marketing events south of Denver alone. All of them for the first time. All of them held by several small breeders working together. And breeders are working together in new ways. They are offering package discounts together, a choice of herdsires across all participants regardless of which dam you purchase, in addition to the usual free seminars. Some of this cross-breeder cooperation is specific to the event itself, but some breeders are working together to make these permanent options. The message is: “if you buy from one of us, you buy from all of us with all the benefits”.
I really admire creative ideas and when breeders take the initiative to drive their businesses forward…especially when someone comes up with something that makes me think, “Darn, why didn’t I think of that?” It’s especially brave to entangle your sales with another’s, but these are tough times and it calls for extra effort. It really reminds me of Survivor in some ways and I mean that without any derogatory tone at all. After all, the winner of Survivor achieves that distinction through careful choices and one of those choices is the nature of their alliances – who, what, and when.
Nobody gets into the alpaca business to be part of a co op or a complicated set of business relationships that require a team of attorneys. It’s reality that moves us into partnerships and co-sales. We do , however, join the community of alpaca breeders gladly and cherish the friends we make. The alpaca business, more than many other industries, is intensely relationship driven. These are not transactional sales, after all. So alliances in this industry are less about contractual obligations than where your trust lies.
So what do I think about this trend? I think it’s inevitable and promising. Especially if these efforts extend into joint efforts for hay buying, marketing, and fiber products. For all that breeders have clamored for action from the national association (AOBA), it seems that change in this industry has always been driven from the bottom up, from a consensus of effort from multiple small breeders.
I’m not sure where I fit in this. I recognize that I have a tendency to the quiet and in an increasingly competitive market, it pays to be louder. Will I drag myself, stumbling and protesting, out of my comfort zone or stick to what I’d prefer it to be and let it stand or fall on those tenets? No answer to that yet. Luckily, unlike Survivor, there can be more than one winner.
The Pacablogger 