Sales technique

Beekeeping & Apiculture Forum

Help Support Beekeeping & Apiculture Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Poly Hive

Queen Bee
Joined
Dec 4, 2008
Messages
14,093
Reaction score
393
Location
Scottish Borders
Hive Type
National
Number of Hives
12 and 18 Nucs
I was in one of our larger garden centres yesterday and was chatting to the manager.

I mentioned honey and her eyes lit up saying she was unable to get local honey.

I asked her if she would be interested in sale or return and said I would supply her at "X" and she could mark it up by £1-99. She instantly agreed.

Sale or return folks is a very successful tool at opening doors for you.

Just have the courage to try it and you might be very pleasantly surprised and what is the worst that can happen, a no? And so you move on to another venue.

PH
 
Go on PH,tell us what "X" is..

£2.50 - £3.00 ?
 
Given this is comb honey.

"X" = £4 per half pound.

I retail in the business here at £4-50.

Nosy so and so you are Admin... LOL

PH
 
I know I should not say it been a fellow beekeeper and honey eater, but! Who the hxll pays £5.99 for honey?

If I sell any I do it at £3 per Ib
 
Comb honey Jim,if you do it at £3.00 I will take the lot.

Its just nice PH to see what honey can be sold for to traders as I have no experience of price to the trade.

(Plus I am nosy) :sifone:
 
OK comb honey can possibley accept (only just)

I think I just have hard to sell Yorkshire folk. The expect it for nowt, or vert lest they expect you to pay THEM to take if off your hands
 
It makes me shudder honey going for that price. It is not only cutting your own throat but many others besides.

A good honey clean and well presented should achieve £5 a pound no bother.

But sadly you are not alone and always will be in the majority who misguidedly have no confidence in their product and just want to sell it..

It's just as hard to do it well as it is to do it badly, you need labels and jars. Whether crappy ones or good ones it's up to you.

People say oh but that is so expensive... and an extra 20 p on a jar and 10p on a label returns you £1-70 more seems cheap to me...

But then I took selling seriously and valued my crop highly and marketed it as a premium product which it is.

PH
 
But then I took selling seriously and valued my crop highly and marketed it as a premium product which it is.

PH


So do I !

I do use lables, laser printed, propper honey jars etc etc.

But I say what would I pay, and I think £3 is fair.

But remeber if I do sell (and remebering I dont do it for the money), it is just to friends and family.

But I think I will increase my price this year to £4
 
Last edited:
So do I !

I do use lables, laser printed, propper honey jars etc etc.

But I say what would I pay, and I think £3 is fair.

But remeber if I do sell (and remebering I dont do it for the money), it is just to friends and family.

But I think I will increase my price this year to £4

There's a huge difference..... to F&F you are giving it away/just covering costs......
If you are really selling "anything" then you need to make profit....

BTW I have given my few jars of Honey away...... but I do sell other stuff and I sell it for a "good" price or it doesn't get sold.
 
i use to grow veg for one of these hippy shops the price they payed us for the veg was high, why people pay it i dont know but rasberrys £11lb should see them about my Honey.
 
A fair percentage of my first crop I've given away....another sales technique I believe used in the some illegal trades (allegedly!), now I've got them hooked they're begging me for more...tee hee LOL
 
So do I !

I do use lables, laser printed, propper honey jars etc etc.

But I say what would I pay, and I think £3 is fair.

But remeber if I do sell (and remebering I dont do it for the money), it is just to friends and family.

But I think I will increase my price this year to £4

Jim you must have one hell of a lot of friends to sell to with 12 hives!
 
My association had a winter meeting last year with an invited guest speaker, the lady had over 80 hives in a well known estate in the south east. She explained the key is to provide what the customer wanted.

Put your honey in a cheap jar with an average label used by most bee keepers and you will only sell it for an average price. Put it in an nice jar with bespoke label you can expect more. Lastly put the honey in unusual jar with a professional looking label, ribbon and use clever wording to really hype up the product and it will deliver top price.

Presentation is everything even if the product is exactly the same in each of them. She said she can sell over 2000 lbs of honey in a given year for no less than £8-10 a jar.
 
Comb honey Jim,if you do it at £3.00 I will take the lot.

Its just nice PH to see what honey can be sold for to traders as I have no experience of price to the trade.

(Plus I am nosy) :sifone:

Oh and if its jars I will take it.... In NI locally they charge £6.50 for a 1lb jar. Now i think this is a bit much. Two years ago it was £4.50.

I think I will do mine in the 12oz hex jars which are more attractive and side by side look almost the same size. Not decided a price yet though.
 
I've been achieving £2.50 for 120g; packaged in high quality unusually-shaped jars which people like to re-use after, with good labels and quality honey. People pay the price without question, but then I am in London and we're all nuts in London :biggrinjester:
 
Our association organised a day out yesterday to visit Buckfast Abbey. In the shop they sell "Pure Buckfast Honey" for £6.50/lb. The jars looked very pretty on the shelf and obviously they have the premium brand name, location, captive tourist trade and so on.

As in all things, the market will (should) determine the price. Start high and it's easier to come down rather than trying to increase the price once your stock is depleated in the initial rush to get your cheap honey. Unless you have a pressing need to get rid of it of course.
 
oh how I dream of the day when I have even ONE jar of honey to sell.......bee-smillie
 
Last Year I was selling my first crop of Honey at £4.50 a lb, I could have sold 5 times the amount I had, this year I have just taken off my first harvest and increase to £5 a lb and in an attempt to add value and increase revenue, I have started to do smaller 4oz and 8oz jars at £2.50 and £3.50 respectively, within 24 hours all the honey I had 30lbs of it was sold and I have a waiting list for more, the next time I harvest some.

I agree with PH this is a premium product that is pure and should be treated that way and command a higher price than the 75% pure honey crap the shops sell.

I'm also going to have a go at cut comb homey this year as well.

Cheers

Mark.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top