Story of GeorgianLand.com Founder - Online Marketplace Selling Georgian Products in the US
GeorgianLand.com - is an online platform for selling Georgian products in the United States, which was launched 1 year ago with 15 years of experience in selling Georgian products.
The founder of the company Levan Metreveli has 17 years of experience working in the field of sales in the United States. He talks to BM.GE about the details of starting a business.
"I came to America 17 years ago, initially I started working as a bread distributor. The owner was older and decided to sell the business. Since I was a trusted person for him and I understood the case well, he decided to hand over this business to me. I became actively involved and bought the business in one year. It had stores in all five cities in New York State. I started thinking about other products, what I could offer to stores.
It was hard to gain trust, the competition was great for any product. It therefore became clear to me that I had to offer a product to the market that only I would have access to and that it would take its place on American shelves. Slowly I noticed that the product was empty on the shelves and it gave me more motivation.
Consumers gradually got acquainted with Georgian products and cuisine. However my main line was shops and restaurants. Because the business had its own line, I could not place individual orders. I started a partnership with everyone who imported Georgian products. I bought a business from some of them and today I am focused entirely on Georgian products, ”said Levan Metreveli.
This is how the online store for the sale of Georgian products was launched, which currently sells products of 5 companies in the United States and employs 5 Georgians.
"Georgians are a great force in America, Georgian cuisine has become more famous, which led to the creation of its own online store. This will make it easier for customers to access Georgian products without leaving home. A year ago we started thinking about strategy, we wanted to test how well the online service would work. Our expectations were met, today GeorgianLand.com already has many users. At this stage, the company employs five Georgians, ”said Levan Metreveli.
The value of Georgian products sold by Georgian Land in the United States exceeds $ 1 million annually, but the company's founder does not intend to stop at this figure and announces an increase in the number of Georgian companies along with the increase in the number of products.
"Our goal is to increase production by 20% annually. When you are in this business for a long time, investing finances also happens in stages. I have to make quite a decent amount of money.
Sales of Georgian products in the United States exceed one million dollars annually. We are going to work more intensively with the existing market and increase the awareness of Georgian products as much as possible. We sell products of Nena, Shirak, Kula, TMT and Baroque companies in different US states. I would like to thank the leaders and employees of these companies in Georgia for their support of us. .
I plan to visit Georgia in the near future to introduce the specifics of the American market to local entrepreneurs and offer a plan for cooperation. In my experience, in this way our cooperation and services can become more flexible, which currently hinders the import of more Georgian products. It will be advance payments, transportation, etc. "- said the founder of Georgian Land to BM.ge.