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Phase: Feedback

Local: Community Market App

A digital community market that allows you to buy directly from the source.

Photo of Daniele
6 23

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Local Logo Local Logo
"According to published studies, a typical food product is handled an average of 33 times before it is ever touched by a consumer in the supermarket." USDA Economic Research Service

At Local, we strive to create stronger, happier, healthier, and economically-prosperous communities by ensuring that high quality products are grown, produced, bought, and used locally. For us, “high quality” products are those which are built to last, use non-toxic materials throughout their entire production process, and are made by companies that follow low-energy habits and have impeccable respect for the human rights of all their employees and other humans along their supply chain. To achieve these goals, we use an app and website to provide the location of companies and farmers near you, reviews of their products, and an easy and transparent payment service from bank account to bank account. This reduces the waste of extra packaging, purchases of unnecessary goods and transportation during mass production.

www.ahki.us/local

What early, lightweight experiment might you try out in your own community to find out if the idea will meet your expectations?

Since the beginning, one of our main focuses has been to meet local farmers and business owners face-to-face (especially at Farmer's Markets) and ask them what they would like to see in an App. Through surveys, questionnaires, visuals, etc. we have received enough feedback to create our first round of prototypes. We will continue to meet with farmers/small business owners in our community and beyond to ensure that our App is valuable for both them and their customers.

What skills, input or guidance from the OpenIDEO community would be most helpful in building out or refining your idea?

-Asking farmers and sustainable small business owners around you what they think about the project. -Man power! We have a big team of amazing people, but are looking for more help-- especially in Finance. -Impact investors. Anyone you may know who would be interested in hearing more about our business.

Tell us about your work experience:

We have a team of 15 people who have experience in a variety of industries. Each of us have vastly different backgrounds, but all have a common interest: changing the way our system works. Our society continues to feed the big corporations, which in turn destroys the small ones. We want to change the way we shop completely and encourage buying directly from the source.

This idea emerged from

  • A group brainstorm
  • A student collaboration
  • An Individual

How far along is your idea?

  • It was in the works before this challenge – it’s existed for 2-6 months

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This is such an incredible idea! I can't wait to use this :)

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