Growers Double-Pronged App Approach: One Farmer Facing, One Ag Retail Facing

With the goal of updating and enhancing the farmer, retailer and manufacturer relationship, Growers unveils its latest apps. 

“Over the past decade, there have been multiple attempts at marketplaces, e-commerce, and omni-channel platforms in agriculture. They’ve struggled to gain widespread adoption for a variety of reasons,” says Steven Valencsin, CEO of Growers. “Often, the model threatened relationships, attempted to disintermediate multiple players in the value chain, or simply failed to build trust in a digitally enabled transaction. With the thoughtful collaboration of retailers, cooperatives, input manufacturers and farmers, I could not be more excited to deliver a solution to this market that brings all critical players to the table and unites them around the success of the farmer.” 

Growers and Growers Retail are available today for iOS on the App Store, with the Android version scheduled to be released in November.  
  
"We put a lot of work into the enhancement and redesign of this latest version of our platform. The new Growers and Growers Retail apps are the results of feedback we received over the past year from our farmer, retailer, and manufacturer customers,” said Joe Procopio, chief product officer at Growers. "We created a single location where farmers can learn about new agriculture products, browse across multiple brands and manufacturers, and make the purchase either in-person with their retailer or within the app. This transition aligns perfectly with our goal to provide a simple, easy-to-use technology solution that makes it easier for farmers and retailers to do business."

First introduced in 2022, Growers is the company’s flagship product as a free farmer-facing app. Growers connects farmers to their retailer of choice for product information, ordering and tracking. Later this year, they will introduce an agnostic rewards system for farmers and retailers where points can be accrued by making purchases, completing a profile, leaving product reviews, referring a friend, referring a retailer, and more.

Growers Retail is an app tailored to retailers to digitize their business. The app aims to provide a toolkit to connect with farmers and build strong relationships. Via the app, farmers can send product requests, to which retailers can either respond directly to the farmer's request and provide pricing or suggest an alternative or companion product to what a farmer has requested. Retailers can also use in-app advertising to market proprietary products. The purchasing process is enabled with in-app payment via ACH or credit card to input financing for farmers from reputable lenders in ag financing. 

Growers is also working to build relationships with input manufacturers to pull sales opportunities through its retail channel and educate farmers about products.