Description

Dustin Hostetler is turning out to be one of the most successful young entrepreneurs in Indiana agriculture. How is he doing it? Dustin recognized that the fastest growing category of alcoholic beverages in the US was hard apple cider.  The category is where wine was decades ago. Rather than sell the finished product, Dustin has positioned himself to be the provider of the highest quality apple cider trees to cidermakers and orchards in the United States.

He is providing over 60 varieties of trees using the unique Knip-Boom process which has been a proven success for some time in Europe. Demand is off the charts! Dustin has gone from growing a few thousand trees per year to over 25,000 trees this year.

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Goal

Dustin asked The Woodhaven Group to improve upon his attempts at a website for Hostetler Farms. We did just that.  The Woodhaven team produced a new website that represented the same high quality that Dustin was supplying with his trees.

There were 2 primary goals to be achieved:  1.) educate the apple cider industry on the benefits of the Knip-Boom process and that a Knip-Boom tree should be the only type of cider tree to be purchased, and 2.) list the availability of trees by variety for the upcoming 3 years. This all had to be done in a simple clean design.

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Action Taken

The first step in delivering this project was to do independent research on the developing hard apple cider industry and on the Knip-Boom process. This included meeting with members of the wine & spirits industry as well as reading studies of the evolution of hard apple cider. Research on the Knip-Boom process included reviewing European studies on the economic benefits of this process.

We then took the following actions:

·       Created an exciting new logo for Hostetler Farms that represented a growing apple cider tree

·       Designed a unique home page header that illustrates the evolution of an apple tree over 2 years using the Knip-Boom process

·       Dedicated a page to showing the Knip-Boom process and explaining to the industry the economic benefits of using Hostetler’s Knip-Boom trees

·       Developed a Nursery page listing each variety/rootstock available for the next 3 years along with the number of trees that can be purchased by variety for each year

·       Included a Contact Us form and phone number at the bottom of each page where growers & cidermakers could easily contact Dustin to place orders

·       Utilized a Content Management System that allowed Dustin to quickly make his own content changes to the website

·       The website was designed using responsive web design making all the web pages easily readable on any kind of mobile device

·       Used Google analytics to identify number of visitors, time spent on the website and much more

·       Completed an integrated approach to Hostetler’s Internet marketing by including social media icons at the bottom of each page to easily connect to Twitter and Facebook. 

The Woodhaven Group is proud to be in on the ground floor of this very exciting agriculture business model and assisting Hostetler Farms with their Internet marketing needs. Dustin is already taking orders from across the United States for trees to be delivered 2 years from now!!