Swedish and French food firms share direct sales skills

LEADER’s transnational cooperation (TNC) funding provides peer-learning channels for rural Europe. A good example of TNC’s potential is seen in a Swedish project from Jämtland that adapted knowledge shared by French artisanal food producers to help their Nordic counterparts improve competences and confidence in direct sales techniques via short supply chain methods.

A ‘Knowledge transfer & information action’ budget line in Sweden’s Rural Development Programme (RDP) funded the TNC project, which emerged as a beneficial tool to help Swedish food producers connect with buyers during the COVID-19 pandemic. The aims included building awareness and capacity among small-scale food businesses to develop direct contact with customer bases. Being smaller, these rural companies were considered at higher risk of exposure to market volatility. However, their size and characteristics also provided flexibility allowing them to be animated by the CAP-funded project to react and adapt quicker than the wider food industry.

The project involved developing and producing a range of articles and films capturing examples of artisanal food production and different selling methods promoting short supply chain possibilities for the industry. These articles and films were disseminated with the aim of sharing knowledge and experiences in the field of artisanal food production and sales. A capacity building conference with lectures on different methods and techniques for improving direct sales attracted 171 participants and a study trip to France built the business capacity of its 12 participants.

Animation was integral to the TNC project process, and it was designed from project staff experience with small and artisanal businesses in the agri-food sector. This approach, based on previous evidence, indicated the need and demand for improving efficiency and profitability in the target group. More specifically, by strengthening sales technique competences through developing new ways and methods of reaching wider markets. In the long term, the project hopes that these improvements will lead to the development and creation of more job opportunities in artisanal food production in rural Sweden.

Katarina Holmberg, was a beneficiary of the TNC initiative and notes how it “gave me new insights and inspired me to focus more on selling directly to customers. I received valuable ideas that led me to change my business to focus more on a short food chain with direct contact with customers and close cooperation with other producers in the area. These insights led me to develop my business to increased profitability and greater adaptability in the event of changes, for example during the pandemic. I have also been able to inspire others to do the same, which has strengthened small-scale food production locally.”

Lessons learned

Communication was the core animation tool for the TNC project’s capacity building process delivered via publications, events, videos, and exchange visits. These were coordinated in a campaign to network expertise and boost learning exchanges between national and international peers. A TNC process of listening to EU contemporaries was organised by the project which provided its participants with an opportunity to reflect on their own activities, creating new insights and inspiring new ideas and knowledge. A study trip also gave participants an opportunity to exchange experiences and network among themselves. Such added value is the ultimate rationale for TNC which can catalyse results that wouldn’t normally happen without it.

Many useful tips, advice, approaches, and learning options were provided during a series of meetings in France that happened thanks to the project’s animation strategy. Knowledge and perspectives from French artisanal producers were captured in a video used in the RDP project’s campaigning process to develop peer awareness. 

It reflects that agri-food wholesalers and cooperatives have developed and centralised sales expertise over previous decades and encouraged farmers to concentrate on production. These practices have contributed to weakening the capacity and confidence of producers to develop their own direct sales competences and customer-bases. Addressing this underlines the importance of rural skills strategies to review the benefits of re-introducing forgotten sales skills for food producers interested in direct sales and short supply-chains.

Other TNC lessons observed the gains available from new collaborations along sales channels that can lead to stable, predictable turnover throughout the year. In the video, the Swedish producers hear how collective approaches to direct sales can be implemented through sharing workloads. Each farmer in the French example takes only a day a week to work at a group sales point and collectively these days allow each farmer to have their sales point stay open for five or more days to generate income. Further inspiring French insights for the Swedes drew attention to additional synergies from peer networking in producer groups which can collect and provide access to a large pool of specialist skills, equipment, and contacts. Marketing advice for artisanal producers included applying storytelling techniques about products to foster customer loyalty.

TNC outcomes

Speaking recently about what difference this TNC partnership has had, Project Manager Aleksandra Ahlgren, from the National Resource Center for Food Crafts, said: “The project has contributed to increased knowledge about direct sales and short food chains. It has also clearly shown the great value of various collaborations both between food artisans and actors in other industries or food artisans and consumers who have a close relationship."

“All of these variants have, in several examples that arose during the course of the project, shown great strengths and many added values ​​for the parties involved. The new collaborations and approaches in terms of sales channels that the project has shown mean for the producers a more stable and predictable turnover throughout the year and a reduced vulnerability to external factors."