Organic Pastures, a family-owned business based out of Fresno, California, is currently celebrating its 20th year of selling raw and organic dairy products from happy cows to happy customers. Kaleigh Lutz, co-owner and vice president of Marketing, is part of the second generation of owners and plays an important role in the success of the company. For the past 12 years, Lutz has been applying her marketing expertise to help grow Organic Pasture’s brand awareness and visibility amongst retailers, but it wasn’t until 2017 when the company launched nationally and started to boom in growth, that they decided to turn to RangeMe for more retail opportunities.
Raw, organic, and unique
Organic Pastures’ products are both raw and organic, and usually, the two don’t overlap. “We sell whole milk, skim milk, cream, butter, kefir, cheese, and some beef products,” says Lutz. “Those products are all raw, certified organic, kosher, Certified Humane, non-GMO, keto, and gluten-free.”
Since their products are sensitive to temperature and require inventory control, Organic Pastures decided to opt-out of partnering with a creamery to maintain complete ownership of managing everything from their cows, farmland, distribution, cold storage, logistics, getting the product to sales, marketing, and so on. And on top of quality control, they have created a culture of happiness that starts with their cows, who graze daily and whose happiness then trickles down to the team of 70 employees and the product.
Moooove over pasteurized dairy
What’s even more unique about Organic Pastures’ product line is because it is raw, they do a very unique testing program that holds their products for testing results before ever being sold.
“Unlike processed packaged dairy products that are pasteurized, homogenized, or modified and take away the nutritional value and alter the original state of the product, we test and verify the quality of the product without ever processing,” says Lutz. “This means our products are digestible and can be enjoyed by young children, elderly people, and everybody in between since it can be digested how it’s supposed to.”
Discovering RangeMe
Organic Pastures joined RangeMe when they decided to expand their accounts nationally. “We didn’t know about RangeMe until the new store accounts we wanted required us to create a profile and submit through RangeMe,” shares Lutz. “And after joining RangeMe, we unlocked a number of potential new retailers we could get into across the country since we were primarily in California before.”
Since then, Lutz upgraded to Premium and got RangeMe Verified. “Doing this has provided us with resources like Profile Insights, to slowly and steadily grow our business.” And on top of integrating Premium features like Insights, Lutz is creatively using RangeMe as a touchpoint with retailers on their Submission list. “RangeMe allows us to have a timeframe. I can go in and check how many months it’s been since we’ve reached out to a certain account and reach out again if needed,” she says.
Get creative, get results
RangeMe’s usefulness goes beyond the platform. “It wasn’t until we started utilizing RangeMe in a creative way where we were promoting RangeMe outwardly to buyers that we got results. You don’t want to be a sitting duck. Make sure that you are keeping all the information on your profile up to date and that you are mentioning RangeMe in all of your conversations off the platform when you’re cold calling, emailing directly, or setting up meetings. And at tradeshows be sure to present the RangeMe icon while promoting yourself to potential clients,” says Lutz.
Some buyers take a passive approach when it comes to finding new products and might not want to stop and talk at a trade show. If this type of buyer sees you are on RangeMe, they might want to keep tabs on your profile and see how you’re doing in other stores before reaching out. If you’re using Lutz’s strategy, RangeMe provides that opportunity for these buyers to follow your brand.
The future for Organic Pastures
Organic Pastures is growing at a pace that’s right for them and continue to use RangeMe as that added key tool to build upon their success. In January the company plans to launch three new products that were requested by their loyal customers. And of course, when they do, they’ll be updating their Rangeme profile so watchful buyers can see their continued growth.
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