FBN - It's a business model failure

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By Dwain Duxson

FBN - It's a business model failure -- Recently Farmers Business Network (FBN), the US base Crop Input company who opened up in Australia a couple of years ago, only to recently close the business down here. It's not one of those cases of we told you so because, well, nobody really knew if their model was going to work or not. 

They had intentions of revolutionising the Crop Input model by delivering to the Farm. Most people in the logistics game knows that the last-mile business is an extremely hard one to crack, especially when you are delivering to Farms, some quite remote and off the beaten track. 

So they failed in their attempt, but they had a go. We did the same thing six years ago when we attempted to take our Farm Tender business model to the US market under the brand of 55 Farms. After 12 months, we pulled up stumps and retreated back to our known core business here in Australia.

So these two lessons prove that you just can't pick up a business model that works in one country and take it to another expecting it to work, especially in Agriculture. Even though trading conditions seem relatively similar, as we found out, how they operate is completely different.