SuperMarket Update #18--11/10/00
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Been quite a crazy week! As many of you know, it is really difficult to pull away from the latest news updates about the elections, but we have tried to carry on as normal.

In the "Meet our Coops" section of the web site, we have gotten the contact information and some pictures up for nearly every coop. For those of you from the cooperatives with only contact info up, hopefully this will inspire you to get us more information about what you are up to. This is your page to share whatever you would like, so send us photos and stories, etc. You can check the new material out at
http://www.supermarketcoop.com/coophome.htm

And most importantly, we are nearing the end of the test phase. Six months was the original timeline, but we have reached our initial goals and are excited about the potential holiday shopping brings.

Which goals were reached? Well if you remember from the very first "soft launch" announcement and the e-update from July, we were looking for 40 orders of $30 or more to test our system and work through many of the bugs. We also realized there would be a tremendous learning curve in this business and that a careful approach would be best at the outset.

I am happy to announce the pilot phase is coming to a close with a total of 42 orders, bringing in more than $1300 for our small-scale growers and crafters, as well as valuable feedback for our homegrown project. Through order experiences, your generous responses and our own lessons learned, the Web site we launched 20 weeks ago is a whole different animal today. Check it out http://www.supermarketcoop.com

And allowing that a flawless e-commerce site that pleases everyone may not be possible, we are preparing to move into the next phases. Those phases include more products, more cooperatives, more exposure, advertising and promotion.

That said, I remain a fan of slowly and carefully. We will begin expanding our target audience in the next couple of weeks with postcard and email announcements to our allies. We also want to maintain the online community begun through this project's growth. If you have suggestions about approaches, or friends and colleagues you would like to see included in our upcoming mailings, please let me know at rbond@ruralco.org. Our vision of a concerned consumer community will only work with your support.

Thanks!

In cooperation,
Rebecca Bond
SuperMarket Project Manager

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