Desert Farms: Dromedary Dreams

Desert Farms: Dromedary Dreams

ANALYSIS:

This case study is a good example of the hardships faced by a start-up company which has a first mover advantage. A business opportunity usually arises when there is a problem which needs to be solved. In this case, the interested consumers living in the U.S. had to directly contact the camel milk farmers informally to obtain the milk. The idea to solve this problem had created a new business. Desert Farms was the first-ever U.S. based camel milk company started by Abdul Wahab. Abdul Wahab started by finding reliable farmers from Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Missouri from whom he could source the camel milk. Since the farmers were not producing the camel milk in bulk they agreed to sell the milk for $8-10 per pint. Abdul Wahab faced many problems in operations and supply chain, as most of the farmers were not familiar with the current communications technologies and also since the farms were located 100 miles from the nearest urban centers and accessibility was a huge concern. Due to insufficient volumes the camel milk had to be sold by the pint, versus by the liter or by the gallon. Due to different practices followed by different farmers, the consistency of taste of the milk was a problem.

The product was initially focused towards the Arab-American community because they were more familiar with the product being nutritious and also since they had a nostalgic connection towards camel milk. Due to word of mouth the product attracted a different segment of market, who were the people suffering from long term conditions like diabetes, autism and autoimmune diseases like the Crohn’s disease. The new segment, later went on to become their primary customer base.

Due to growing demand for the product, Abdul Wahab and his farming partners designed a system where the farming partners would be responsible for milking the camels, processing the milk, packaging the milk with bottles and labels designed and ordered by Desert Farms, and then shipping the orders to customers and Abdul would take a role of marketing the product. Abdul Wahab delegated work to the new Chief Visionary Officer, Edrees Ahmadi was involved in handling the purchase orders, dealing with customers, and managing the contractors and interns by delegating to them their various tasks. Due to limited financial resources Abdul decided on not hiring any more full-time staff and focused on outsourcing work to experts and willing interns. Since some of the workload was distributed to Edrees Ahmadi, Abdul to focus his attention on diversifying sales channels, developing the product

line, reaching out to new suppliers, and automating the processes. Abdul came up with three product lines which were Raw camel milk, Gently pasteurized camel milk and Kefir camel milk. Since 70% of the company’s sales were from the website,