Using Direct to Customer Connections to Grow Local Business
“We highly recommend Airmart to vendors who are trying to make a human connection while selling directly to customers.”
– John Law, Founder of WildWestFish
A Tool That Hooks WildWestFish To Customers
WildWestFish, an artisanal seafood products business, has continued to provide fresh food directly to consumers all throughout the pandemic, despite the challenges of the lockdowns. WildWestFish founder John Law spent over two decades building his commercial fishing pedigree, and he and his business partner, Victoria, have passionately devoted years to growing their business one customer at a time.
Now, they’ve scaled their business not only to restaurants and food service providers, but also to individuals within different communities between Northern and Southern California. Because they pride themselves on the freshness of their catch, they use Airmart as a way to connect with customers across diverse communities.
Taking the Bait: How They Got Started Using Airmart
During the height of the pandemic, WildWestFish’s tool for managing online orders was unexpectedly shut down without prior notice. Left without a way to capture sales, co-founder Victoria urgently explored many options, hoping to prevent any loss in sales. When other grocers in her community recommended Airmart, she immediately reached out to the Airmart team to learn more.
After getting in touch with a customer success manager at Airmart, Victoria received a demo on how to use the tool and was relieved that she could always chat with a live person to get news in advance of any big changes that could impact her business, like the one she was facing at the moment. She was then able to easily get the shop set up on Airmart and start selling again to their customers, thus preventing any big loss in sales.
Reel ’Em In: Airmart’s Digital Storefront and Order Management System
As a seafood provider specializing in fish, one of the most perishable grocery items, freshness is the name of the game. Rather than focus on commercial frozen filets for mass distribution, WildWestFish is one of the rare vendors to deliver whole fish to their customers. Whether operating a restaurant or buying to cook at home, customers appreciate the whole fish as a sign of freshness and authenticity. WildWestFish relies on Airmart as their digital storefront and order management system.
Without having to own a storefront or manage a complex ecommerce operation, Airmart enables their customers to reserve products, provide delivery information, and complete payment within a single tool. When WildWestFish secures a fresh catch of specialty fish, such as rockfish, halibut, or white sea bass, they upload inventory to their Airmart shop. This digital storefront allows their customers to browse through a selection of seafood along with up-to-date inventory, special prices, delivery dates, and payment methods.
Airmart’s Customization Kudos
WildWestFish is able to offer customized sales experiences — timed flash sales with accurate details on the special offer — without losing the ability to sell at scale. Compared to a typical drag-and-drop ecommerce platform, Airmart lets them customize their offerings for specific communities, depending on the seasonality of their seafood products.
Plenty of Fish in the Sea: How WildWestFish Continues to Grow
Human connection and integrity represent the core of WildWestFish’s success. Airmart helps to facilitate this connection — the shop links are distributed in group chats among hyper localized communities, so customers who enjoy the seafood will immediately tell their friends, neighbors, and family about how good or bad the experience was. This connectivity works in WildWestFish’s favor, because they consistently deliver fresh and quality seafood without fail, which drives repeat and loyal customers.
Airmart’s Human, Community, and Digital Connections
When a customer orders through the shop link, others in the community can see how many orders have been made and how much is left, giving them the confidence to place their own orders. Through this strategy, they’ve even been able to acquire new repeated customers who’ve been skeptical of specific seafood brands. Without Airmart, WildWestFish couldn’t facilitate this type of community-driven growth in customers or maintain the necessary speed to safeguard their perishable goods.
Running a fresh seafood business is a race against the clock to ensure the freshness of whole fish. Once a fish is caught, there’s a limited time window for the fish to remain fresh without undergoing commercial preservation. With this challenge, WildWestFish relies on Airmart to reduce operational time of managing an order, by offering a limited quantity flash sale to a specific community, and enabling them to pass the goods onto the customer without the hassle of manual order management systems. This is a distinct experience from other digital commerce tools that focus on set menus, prices, and global offerings, which don’t allow support for fresh and local inventory.
Fish in a Flash: Flash Sales, No Hosting Fees, and More
One of the team’s favorite features is the ability to quickly post for flash community delivery. Compared to previous tools they’ve used, WildWestFish praises Airmart’s ability to post a flash sale in just minutes, so that they don’t need to hire a specialized marketing manager or a web developer to update product listings. Once the flash offer expires, they don’t need to worry about taking down the post or updating their page.
Airmart also hosts shops without monthly subscription fees, so they don’t need to pay for a website URL or hosting. This makes offering limited specialty items a breeze, and this is one of the unique value propositions that they offer to customers compared to other seafood brands.
Making a Splash: WildWestFish’s Future
WildWestFish is a brand that cares deeply about customer connections and strengthening communities. They face the challenge and opportunity to establish and sustain close ties with customers in a world where interactions between brands and consumers increasingly migrate online, and both sides start to become unaware of each other on both ends of transactions. Yet WildWestFish and Airmart are on a mission to change that — they believe that there’s an immense opportunity to forge human and digital connections.
In essence, WildWestFish is making a splash by growing their business in communities by delivering on their promise of impeccable quality and price transparency. From one community to the other, they’ll continue to offer the consistent experience of delicious and sustainably harvested seafood directly to customers by relying on the Airmart platform as their net for business.
You can check out John Law and Victoria’s shop here to support their business.
About Us
Airmart is a free platform to help wholesalers, small businesses, and chefs connect with their community. Airmart got its start helping minority-owned restaurants and produce wholesalers sell direct-to-consumer during the pandemic and save their businesses.
If you would like to see a 3-minute demo before launching your free shop, you can book a demo here.
