When Bob Kennard returned from Africa in 1988 to farm a remote part of mid-Wales, his aim was to produce "very tasty chickens, reared in a very compassionate way". He took advice from the Meat Research Institute, and tested feed and management techniques.
Kennard decided his chickens had to live longer than conventional poultry, and be hung after slaughter, both methods of enhancing their flavour. And they had to be organic: "It was the Rolls-Royce of standards," he says. To ensure it was done properly, Kennard and his wife Carolyn did it themselves.
"We reared them, slaughtered them and processed them," he recalls.
Now, 13 years later, Graig Farm Organics has let its land to a neighbouring organic farm, so the Kennards and 15 staff can concentrate on processing and marketing £1m worth of organic food every year, including meat from 200 farms in Wales and the borders.
The quality of the firm's produce, sold through supermarkets, high street retailers, a farm shop and mail order, has propelled Graig Farm to the finals of the Soil Association's Organic Food Awards every year since 1993, and it has won several trophies.
Last year, the Kennards collected another Soil Association prize, but for their website at graigfarm.co.uk, rather than their produce. Bob Kennard opened the site in 1997, and he treats his website like he treated his poultry: he retains control.
"Bob built and maintains his website in a very personal way. It's very successful, and I think that's because it's from the heart," says Phil Trenbath, chief executive of Team Media, the new media developer that built the site's e-commerce software - the only externally built component. The website lacks the slick quality of corporate sites, and has the odd broken link. But it includes detailed information on the history, staff and location of the farm - even the history of the location, on the edge of Radnor Forest in Powys. Perhaps most importantly, it details the way the Graig Farm producer group treats its stock.
Kennard's personal touch comes across on the beef page. It points out that no organic cow has suffered from BSE, but also describes and provides pictures of the breeds the farms use, and even quotes cattle-related poetry.
"I think it's important to be telling the story," says Kennard of this style. "There's been a loss of confidence in food after BSE, so we try to offer extra confidence: we've got nothing to hide, and here are the reasons our food is better than average."
He ran into difficulties when converting the website from online brochure to order-taking. "We only got going with e-commerce in May 2001. It would have been nine months earlier, if we hadn't been let down by a so-called web developer."
He had better luck with Team Media, based half-an-hour's drive from Graig Farm, in Newtown in Powys. The first developer had been further away: "That was perhaps part of the problem," says Kennard. Team Media's closeness "meant we could jump in the car and say: get it sorted". Phil Trenbath and his staff built Kennard bespoke software, costing thousands, rather than just selling him off-the-shelf e-commerce software. "We recommended he looked at products for a few hundred pounds, and he looked at them," says Trenbath. But the purpose-built system means that orders are fed directly into the software and spreadsheets Kennard has adapted over years to run his business.
Now, a third of the home delivery orders are coming through the website, directly into Graig Farm's systems. "It's a fair bit cheaper," Kennard says. "It's very much easier to use an order from the internet, rather than from the phone or fax."
However, he rules out discounts for ordering online. "It's extra complexity. And some people don't like to use the web. A couple of percent off is not going to get them to use the web rather than the telephone." And anyway, orders through the website are doubling year on year. The specialist nature of Graig Farm's produce makes it well suited to online sales. Kennard doubts more general farms would find it as useful. "You would have to compete on such a scale," he says, if trying to attract customers through low prices.
But when trust in the product is vital - as for organic food, where the consumer pays a premium partly for things they can't see, such as animal welfare - a website can explain where the money goes. "It's all about connecting with the consumer," says Kennard.
However, the remote location of Graig Farm does lead to problems with being an e-commerce champion. Delivery costs are high, so the delivery charge is £12.34 for orders of less than £15, tapering to zero for orders of more than £45. "Most people say, I'll order £45 and freeze it," Kennard says.
But there are other problems. Next-day delivery of equipment and repair staff is rare in Powys. And as for broadband connections: "We can't get anything except bog-standard telephone lines," Kennard says. "We're surviving without it."
This isn't stopping Graig Farm from developing its web activities. It makes bulk purchases of organic inputs, such as animal feed, for its producer group, as well as processing and selling their produce. "We're looking at getting all that online," says Kennard, following a trend set by several supermarkets a
