 Hello, hello everybody, welcome to the farming podcast brought to you by Private Property. My name is Mbali Moka, a farmer in Tripanyi and I'm happy that today we have a guest and I'm not writing solo because I love speaking to people in the business along the Agri Valley chain who are doing phenomenal work on the ground that we never hardly get to see their stories and hear how they started their businesses. So today's a special episode where we get to hear from a person who I know pretty much ran a senior position in a corporate job and has started her own business. She's an Agri-Panier in the agricultural sector and we're gonna hear from Pumzileh's story in terms of how she started her business, the crop box Africa and where she is now. I know she started a business during the global pandemic. So, you know, for anybody sitting at home thinking there's no opportunities out there for me, you know, it's COVID, we're in a pandemic, I can't start any business. Trust me, I think there's a lot of valuable insight and learning that you will hear from Pumzileh's story tonight. As I always say, thank you for watching and we always appreciate your support here on Private Property. Most importantly, we want you to engage with us. Crack questions for our guests. Anything that you wanna hear from our guests, please comment, share this video, like this live podcast. And if you missed it, please go back to our YouTube channel under the Private Property YouTube channel under the playlist selection where you would click on the farming podcast section. Of course, we do have other shows brought to you by Private Property with Zama coming every single day from Monday to Friday at seven o'clock, talking all things property and really going more deep in terms of property questions, needs and answering all your burning questions that you have with regards to property. 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I welcome you Pumzile, who is the CEO and founder of the Crop Fox Africa. Pumzile, how are you doing? Hi, good things. How are you doing? I'm doing awesome. I know we were speaking behind the scenes and I'm gonna put you on the spot to say the last time I saw you the last time we interacted was pretty much in a boardroom where you were working in your nine to five corporate job. And I'm surprised, the Crop Fox, like how did you start? When did this happen? When did the idea come to mind? And just tell us a bit more about your business. Yes, well, thanks for having me. Absolutely, we were literally in a boardroom and I was managing an urban agriculture program. But I think that sums up the background as to how I landed in this space. It was probably just a matter of time. I was working or rather being exposed to the industry through the urban agriculture program that I ran in corporate. And so I had an understanding of the industry and what young farmers in city centers, in and around city centers are faced with in terms of access to markets. I mean, these were the things that we were trying to introduce and to bring a solution through the program. And so I knew very well what the pain points of farmers, urban farmers and Yanuans in particular were. And I had no doubt in my mind that that's what I wanted to do as well. And I started visiting some of the farmers and just fell in love with this idea of a peckhouse facility. And that's when the corporate is so, so big on job creation and finding big job creating and transformational programs. And so job creation has always been at the top of my mind in so far as me wanting to make an impact in the development space, but also in my private life. I knew at some point that I needed a secondary income, I'm not necessarily wanting to run the business. Funny enough, I didn't see myself as a business owner anytime soon, but I knew that I wanted to have a secondary income stream and principles of creating jobs has always been there. And so I fell in love with models of peckhouse facilities where this novel idea of seeing food production right in front of my eyes and being at the very forefront of it and at the beginning of the process and feeding nations through such a peckhouse facility, that was my vision. And so I traveled, went back to my hometown of Hamanskral, where I wanted to put up a peckhouse facility at the end of 2019. And I just thought to myself that the location wasn't as right as it was in an industrial park that was dilapidated and was surrounded by manufacturing and businesses that were not conducive to food. And so I came back to job work and thought to myself, okay, let's try and spin around a little bit. I mean, there's rooftop farms in around the city center, went to one Fox to see if there's any spaces there that I can occupy. And before I knew it as I was in my research phase COVID struck. And that's where I had to pivot my model. I thought to myself, people are locked inside their houses. The show must go on in terms of the provision of food and even deeper soul in terms of food security. So how do I still maintain wanting to do what my passion point was, which was job creation and food security, but within this whole new world? And so I went through the delivery model. Right. So I know tonight's topic is basically about how to start a fresh produce supply business. So maybe let's deep dive more into the crop box. So what is your service offering and what opportunity did you see in the market? Sure. So we do three things. Firstly, we source and supply fresh produce from urban farmers in the crevice of areas, particularly mostly because that is one of the closest pair of urban areas in which crop has grown very well within and around city centers and how they. So we identify farmers that have got not only the quality of the capacity to supply what we are looking for. And we've got three markets. Firstly, bulk and wholesale. We service any and everyone who's looking for fresh produce in bulk. NGOs, we work a lot with NGOs that they've got feeding schemes going on, whether it's for the elderly or early childhood development or local communities. We then put together packages for them and literally plan and play for them insofar as beneficiaries is concerned. So we do the packing and the whole process. And lastly, we do household deliveries on a weekly basis. So we would come to your house, deliver contactless payment systems, the whole shebang. And so we sell the concept of fresh produce that has been harvested on the day of delivery and two clients who are really conscious about where food comes from and the quality of food as well. Right. So how did you go about finding customers? You know, you said you were busy in your research phase and then once you wanted to start, you know, then bam, where all of a sudden in a lockdown, the global pandemic hit. So how did you know that people like myself, maybe not as a farmer's head, but you know, who's in charge of the grocery list in my household, how do you know that people like myself have an interest in maybe buying directly from a crop box? How did you go about doing that research? Well, I think what I have definitely learned in this space as an entrepreneur and in this space, as I'm saying, is that opportunity and ideas are everywhere. You just have to be open to them at any given point in time, you know, and I think a lot of us are on social media for various reasons, mostly for entertainment reason, but there's a lot of commercial activity and business activity that actually happens on Instagram. The influences that you are following for you, you might see them at first glance being, you know, people that are entertaining you, but believe it or not, they're running businesses or they're selling products, you know, it's just so happened to be appealing. And so I found that as I was browsing on social media, I found there was a certain pool towards delivery, the delivery model, and I knew that within food, all I had to do was just convert whatever plans or ideas that I had into taking it to people as compared to people coming to take them from me. So it was just a shift in model for mode of delivery. But the concept of food deliveries was something that I had started seeing a lot on social media, and so as I started researching, especially since at the time that was all we had, you know, digital information through the lockdown. And so I shifted the model to that model, to that channel rather. And so through social media, you also get to see what people like and actually believe it or not, I started wearing my own consumer head on, you know, and can even go as far as me saying, that's how I got to put together what goes into the crop box. I thought as a customer and myself and the things that I would like to see and the things that I buy on a weekly basis insofar as fresh produce is concerned. And so the question on how I knew people wanted this, it was inevitable. That's the way that the world was going. And I was, I suppose I was in that realm of being in a business mindset. So I opened my eyes to what people are doing and then sort of, you know, tweaking my model to say, okay, I can do it like this and just like that. And I also looked at what I was preview to, you know, like I'm saying, Kruger Stop is not so far from where I stay a couple of kilometers. And so I knew we, I could allocate farmers, I knew where I can get the supply from, you know, I started putting things that are in and around me together to connect the dots. And I was very much connected to social media, staying in tune in terms of what has happened on the ground. That is fantastic Pumzire. But what goes into the selection of the items that go inside the crop box? Is it a push factor where the customers are saying, we want more cabbage, we want more Brussels sprouts, we want more spinach in the crop box, we want more pineapple, or do you then decide to say, okay, this is what I'm offering a box is X amount and it has this type of fresh produce which consists of fruits and vegetables. How are you selecting and what is inside that beautiful box that you always advertise on social media? That I'm always advertising is. It sort of is a combination of things at the same time. At the very initial stage, to be honest, I put what I knew my farmers had. So from the very get go, I was very clear on the fact that I am going to be sourcing majority of the items from farmers myself where I literally go to the farmers and I connect the orders that I had put. So I would actually tweak the menu to say, I'm going to put spinach and cucumber because I know that whoever has got spinach, whoever's got cucumber, so I was very, very uncalculative towards that. With time, I had to adapt to seasons. So whatever's in season at that particular time, for example, we've just come out of the summer season where there was your mangoes and your leeches and your peaches. And so I would adapt tweaking here and there, not fully because some things I don't want to be responsible for if they don't go right. Like for example, if the grapes are not as sweet, I'm very, very sensitive to customer feedback like that. So I calculate in terms of what's in season, but also sort of seeing the things that I can control to some point or another. But of course, you can't really forecast what something tastes like if you want. Even the farmer himself can't even necessarily forecast what something's going to taste like. So I suppose I also need to let go of that insecurity, but it has to do with whatever is in season and we just go along with also availability. For example, right now, adjusting from berries to raspberries, although it's in the berry family. And about 80% of the most consists of vegetables and 20% fruit. That's just based on my preferences as, like I'm saying as me, as putting on my content ahead. So yeah. Right, a new entrepreneur in the food and agricultural sector, how is it that you're marketing your business? What channels are you using? Social media, I can't stress enough, social media. And within social media, I know that we like throwing the word of social media out there as if it's a blanket approach. It isn't. I have to customize all of my messaging, although the isn't of the message the same, but what I put out on Instagram has to vary to what I put out on LinkedIn, what I put on my own personal page is different to what I put on my business page. So I use generally social media as a base to advertise and to also keep my customers, my clientele and also my network in the new business so far is what is happening. Some of the things that are facing me or some of the exciting things that I'm involved in, I communicate as much as possible within the various social media platforms and what they're called for. So on LinkedIn would be much more professional in trying to get that bigger commercial clientele whereas Instagram is a little bit of both and relatability as well. Mostly that, but also word of mouth. You'd be surprised how, if you put yourself out there, how much you get back. So word of mouth, you might be in a completely different industry be doing something else, but always have your own business at the back of your mind and see how you can integrate it into wherever you are. Wow. If you're watching us tonight, I'm joined by Pumzi Letifunise who is the CEO and founder of the Cropbox which is a fresh project supply business that she started pre-lockdown or during lockdown and she's just shared a bit about her story in terms of how she had done research before she quit a corporate job and at the time where she just wanted to start her business, unfortunately the global pandemic hit and just within those few months or few weeks, she really had to pivot her business and try to find a way for her to service her customers nevertheless. And right now she's just sharing her journey in terms of how she started the business, how she saw the opportunity in the market, who she's working with, which is a lot of farmers on the ground and we'll get to it right now, but most importantly, she's using social media as an avenue to advertise and market her business. And she mentioned that mostly her box consists of vegetables and fruit. And yeah, I think it's just been a great first half just to understand who she is as an individual and how she's been able to tap into a market that not many are brave to pursue. Pumazile, now I wanna get into closer to home, right? Speaking and working alongside farmers, sorry, communicating, not speaking, communicating and working alongside farmers because I know that farmers have deal with so many dynamics on a daily basis. What are the challenges or what are some of the learning experiences rather, not challenges, but what are some of the learning experiences that you have gained since starting the crop box and working directly with farmers? Sure, where do you even start with working? Speaking and working with farmers? They are an interesting breed of people. David with plum. But you're right, I think that I've got massive amounts of respect and I've had to tone down my expectations because I come from corporate and I know the value of it. Somebody calls you to say, let's do this and it needs to happen now, whereas in farmers' world, they're dealing with so many things at the very same time and you probably number 105 on that list. So I've had to change my approach and it requires you to literally get into the car and drive to whoever you want in terms of getting no supply from a farmer because it's what some of them might not have WhatsApp or if they do have WhatsApp, they only check it in the evening when they have done their full day work or guess what, they don't have network wherever they are or they're on the other side of the farm, nobody can reach them and some farmers operate differently. Once you think that you have figured out how this farmer works, you speak to another farmer and it's completely different. But some of the lessons that I've learned along the way is that you definitely need to have a network of farmers and this is something that you get to build as you go along. It's about having a black pork as a distributor, you literally have to have a black pork way. You know that you're going to be getting this from Farmer X, if this Farmer X doesn't have because either they've just sold it up to the market or to their clients or they're at the end of their harvest, you need to have an alternative. In my line of industry, it's about timing. Literally, I can get a call now for tomorrow and that's where you have to book out that black book. And so some of the lessons that I've learned along the way is knowing how to work with farmers and I like what you're saying about communicating and you have to change your approach, even if it means you going literally driving to the farm yourself, which is the majority of what happens, I mean, we are so used to getting information of Google and calling, it doesn't work all the time. In this industry, you have to be very, very hands-on and number two, you have the patients, so call, literally from half past six in the morning to whenever, call, call, call, call, call and be on their neck. Literally, don't take it personally, they literally could be dealing with so many things and so do you solve a favor instead of getting frustrated and give yourself patience and leg room? Number three, have an April of Farmers. So those are some of some of the lessons that I've learned. Wow, thank you for sharing that because I can definitely relate. There are a hundred and million things that we deal with on a daily basis. But the reason why I asked that question is because a lot of farmers talk about not having access to market and you are such an individual that is coming out into the market and saying, you know, I'm willing to assist you by buying produce directly from you. So you're earning a bit of income for all the hard work that you're doing and I'm packaging that and I'm providing a value add and I'm servicing my customers. So it's always interesting to hear from suppliers like yourself to understand really what happens on the ground when it comes to working with farmers. And similarly, I know that like we just mentioned that farmers deal with a hundred things at the end of the day, but it's also very important speaking from a farmer's perspective. It's also very important for farmers to appreciate businesses like yourself because as much as we might have contracts or relationship with other businesses that we've been supplying for 12 months or many, many years or just a few weeks, you know, it's also about giving opportunities to businesses like yours where it's a small percentage in our operations. We just never know how big that relationship might grow. So for any farmers who are watching and are just saying, oh, I know how the industry is and I know how farmers think sometimes, you know and they might be seeing the crop box and I said, okay, you know, maybe I'll just give you a bit of that but it's always important to not undermine service industries like yourself and businesses like yourself that are really assisting us when it comes to access to markets. But I don't know if you want to touch on that just what I said, or maybe do you want me to move on to my next question, yeah. Yeah, I think it's a good point for farmers to have visibility of some of the challenges that in so far as, you know, in as much as ourselves as distributors, we, as I'm saying we're used to have the patients, you know and they have a backup plan, you know, all of that. But I do feel like there is no visibility from the farmer's side to the opportunity that are missed if they themselves do not have things in track, you know. At the end of the day, you're right. We are giving business and in as much as we need a farmer's because we can't sell our services to anyone with our farmers, literally. They also can benefit from what we are giving them which is business and what we have is consistency. And of course, if you can't compare it to a commercial contract, but I mean, they step all over around informal markets, right? And so we equally hold a significant chunk of the market and so farmers need to be aware that they don't see the other end of it. I mean, some farmers only deliver exclusively to markets. And so the concept of customer service might not come top of mind whereas we see the pressures from clients. We are front facing, right? So we've got the pressure from clients who wants packaging in a certain way who wants to deliver on time in full, you know. As we are nagging, we are nagging because we have got these pressures on our side not because of anything else. You all want to feel special or anything like that. So farmers need to also have line of sight that, you know, we've got pressures on the opposite end that they might not see and they might not necessarily have experience with because that's not their business model. But I think their visibility is required as needed. Right, just touching on visibility if there's any farmers watching tonight and you don't have a social media or digital footprint, please do yourself a favor create a website for your business because a lot of people are checking online to really see if they could find a supplier with regards to whatever commodity that you're farming. So if you don't have a website, I say start with that because I know from experience as well, I sometimes can really have to turn away business because I really have enough supply, you know, but people find green terrace online and I think there's so much power with farmers just having to invest whatever it's that 5,000 Rand or 4,000 Rand to develop a website, even if it's just a landing page just as long as you're online because I know that's a big, big problem in our industry Farmers are not creating websites. Farmers are obviously not on social media. It's not everybody's business model and strategy but just to have a website or a landing page to say we're ex-farm, we're producing ex commodities and here's our contact number, that's that. And I think that's one step closer to solving the access to market issue. But you know, Pumzi, you mentioned something quite critical here that you left a corporate job and went into the crop box. And you know, right now we're in the global pandemic and you left during that time and I'm sure people could be thinking, oh my gosh, is she crazy? What a risk. So I think from my side, give us a bit of insights in terms of, you know, the importance of just starting. You know, because people always say I wanna start farming, I wanna start a business but I'm scared of this, I'm scared of that or I'm risk averse. But maybe just touch on the topic of the importance and the power of just starting because we never know, we don't know what we don't know and we never know what could happen tomorrow. But here you are a couple of months later still with the crop box. I know you have your challenges behind the scenes which you don't always, not every entrepreneur always communicates but you're still at it. So maybe just share to us that transitioning from corporate to being an entrepreneur, especially in such a risky time that we find ourselves in South Africa. Yeah. I think prior to an exit or transition from corporate to your own business is definitely having some sort of an idea or plan and you having done your groundwork to say, right, this is what I'm going to do. And I mean, I know some businesses or some business owners don't even consider leaving before they reach a certain revenue stage before they leave their corporate jobs. And so it has to be that water title well thought after because you're right, it is risky times. But because of the fact that it is risky times we find ourselves with at least eight million people being unemployed. So those that don't have a choice and it's not a matter of choosing to now start a business, you're right. There's no better decision than just starting. And I usually say, you start based on two principles. Number one, having had your plan and some people are gifted like that and then they calculated like that to say, okay, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to do A, B, C and D and they just follow their plan. Other people just find themselves in the entrepreneurial space and unfortunately that's the culture that we have in South Africa as with any other developing world. But land on things that you know and you have down to a T. If not a plan, then your skills. Leverage on what you know and what you used to do in corporate. Oftentimes we think we need to be experts that are wizards in certain areas in industries before we can start businesses but believe you me in that field that you're going to something like customer service within agriculture that is a huge asset to have. So leverage on whatever skills and expertise that you have even if you're going into an uncharted industry that you have never done before or not truly, truly averse to trust you me whatever you come with from whatever background you have is going to add value to your business. So that's going to be your differentiator in terms of what you bring on board to your business insofar as your experience is concerned. So never doubt yourself. Once you have made your decision once you have planned and prepared as to this is the business that I'm going to be running and is of course like I said you do have people that find themselves in the entrepreneurial space but as much as you can before you take that plant make sure that you at least research and see what your competitors are doing. Now I'm practicing the 80-20 where it's not always going to be perfect so I'm not going to be naive and say wait until things are fully perfect but when you do make that leap or that jump or whatever circumstance that you're in take some time to look around you to see what is happening so that you can differentiate yourself and know what is different that you're going to bring onto the table. Number two, leverage on your skills and don't take whatever skills that you come with for granted. You can be good with speaking to people you can be good at writing leverage on those things and use those skills to your advantage within your business or as you're still putting your business up maybe do that in their interim write people's concept papers or people's proposals or people's, what's the word? Blogs for example you know whatever skills that you have generate income as you probably still figuring things out so leverage on what you have and that's what I would say is key to transitioning and the last point within transitioning from hope to running your own business don't be afraid to make connections go back to the people that you used to work with and don't be afraid to start new relationships but need work as much as possible when you do find yourself within the entrepreneurial space. Awesome, thank you so much for those three very, very important especially from someone who's worked the journey like yourself from Zile but lastly before we bid good night to you and obviously thank you so much for sharing such wisdom. Where can we find a crop box? How much is the box? Is there different sizes? And where are you based? Are you only supplying in the metropolitan areas like Johannesburg, Durban, Gaetan? Are you based in Johannesburg? Just where can we find you? Which areas are you supplying to currently and what's the price of the box that we could expect? Yeah, sure. And we are on the all social media platforms Facebook and largely Instagram and through my own personal page we are on LinkedIn as well. But first things first can catch us on www.thecropbox.africa and that's where you can have a full picture of what we're about what our ethos and our principles are our business model and also got an e-commerce page on there as well. And the box itself from a household perspective it's currently 360 and it's got about 15 items fresh produce items in the box and so on the website you can see exactly what those items are even on our social media pages. On social media we are at the Cropbox Africa and on LinkedIn you can go to Ponzi Lechiefing and you'll find all of my comments with regards to the Cropbox and whatever else I'm doing. And with regards to the demographics we are specifically servicing Joe Burke and Pretoria demographics and so far as the boxes are concerned and for wholesale we deliver out all the way into Bumalanga into Lumbopo you know, we go per order so wherever you need us to be we can definitely be there as far as bulk is concerned but you can catch us on our social media pages if you want to engage with our website as well you can find those details on the social media pages. Ponzi Lechiefing thank you so much for your time this evening. I wish you all the best with the business. It's definitely a thriving brand. You've positioned yourself very well in the market and kudos for you to you coming into the market in the right time even though you might think that the pandemic might have hit you and just really shocked your business model. I really think it came at the right time and it's about also being able to pivot based on market changes and immediate demands and unknowns that we never expect. So well done on the crop box and I'm always happy to hear another female in the industry just doing amazing things you know even though we haven't reached our goals as yet or our personal goals or the business goals but the fact that we're in the industry and we're doing something because at the end of the day you really having formalized and established relationships with farmers that's just how the industry grows step by step. So wishing the crop box all the best of success and for anybody watching please check their website check their social media pages order the box and I'm sure give the feedback to Pumazila because when she gets that feedback she goes straight to the farmers and tells them to say, hey you're doing great or just increase your production or whatever the case might be but thank you so much Pumazila and I wish you all the best genuinely, yeah. You're welcome. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you. It's a pleasure. That was Pumazila Chifunise who is the CEO and founder of the crop box which is a fresh produce supply company and as we heard you can catch them on social media most importantly on Instagram that's where they are most active and currently they're supplying in the Johannesburg and Pretoria regions. So please look out on their website and they also have a WhatsApp number. So yeah, please support her business she is supporting farmers as well. So if you're buying the crop box products you're definitely buying and supporting farmers directly from the farm and this is what we talk about from farm to fork. So please check out their business page on the social media platforms that you mentioned and if you missed this live today you could watch it on our YouTube channel and feel free to comment, share, like and ask any questions but thank you so much for joining us this evening I will see you next week. Have a fantastic weekend and goodbye from the farming podcast brought to you by Private Property. My name is Mbali Mokko and I will see you next week Tuesday at eight o'clock p.m. Take care.