Exciting New Marketing Website Creates Trendy Hub for Local Hand-Made & Home-Grown Products

Cape Town, South Africa, May 12, 2012 --(PR.com)-- In kitchens and on farms, in gardens and garages, quality home-made and home-grown goods are being produced throughout South Africa. “We believe that small producers have the potential to make an important contribution towards creating a sustainable future for South Africa,” says Claire Bennette, Director of Online Country Market (Pty) Ltd.

"Our vision is for www.farmgate.co.za to provide the many entrepreneurs producing quality goods on a small scale with a powerful online marketing avenue, and so increase their sales while they get on with what they do best – producing the goods," says Bennette.

There has been a huge boom in hand-made, home-grown and hand crafted produce over the last few years. From chefs to vintners, cheese-makers and bakers, potters and planters, there is a rich abundance of handmade foods, beverages and goods being made with love and attention by individual craftsmen and women.

Specialised markets have been popping up all over the cities of South Africa selling products from jams and pickles to organic meat and home baked bread, from handmade china tea sets to hand woven baskets. Home spun has become super cool! The FarmGate website showcases local, seasonal, handmade producers and their produce. It is not an e-commerce site. Instead, producers can be contacted directly and buyers get their goods right from the ‘farm gate’.

We are starting to go back to basics – back to the local sheep farmer, the artisan baker, the fig jam made from the fruit off the tree in the garden. We want to buy our goods from our neighbours, our friends and our communities, so our money goes to them and not to multinationals and big corporations. We are looking towards local foodies, cooks, craftsmen and artists for quality handmade goods, and we want to get them right ‘at the farm gate'.

We all love to buy natural products from innovative small producers. But how to find all these creative, clever creatures and their wares? FarmGate is exploring the length and breadth of South Africa in search of small producers of food, drink, plant products, arts, crafts and other handmade items. The FarmGate website provides a market place to showcase products online, to reach out to foodies and home-connoisseurs, to chefs, caterers, restaurateurs, landscapers, interior designers and gardeners, deli and gift-shop owners – in fact, anyone looking for quality local products that have been hand crafted with love and care.

For producers, FarmGate (Pty) Ltd is an online marketing site designed to give maximum exposure to listed products. Every product page is a web page in its own right, and producers build up their own individual presence on Google. Potential customers can visit their virtual market stall, view their products online, and contact producers directly for queries or orders, all while they are creating and producing. The cost is a 'no-brainer' - for less than the rental for one day at a market stall, producers can list up to 5 different products with up to 8 images each, for 6 months.