Timac Agro seems to have entered the Australian market in some type of drunken dare. Where the conditions of the dare were to completely ignore any knowledge of local industry people and any common sense to business.
Their strategy was to basically to employ people who knew a lot of people and then expect them to sell unproven products at ridiculous prices to their friends. They employed anyone and quite frankly some of the people were so unqualified for the job it was embarrassing to be associated with them.
No free or even discounted samples to leading farmers/ groups and no advertising to help spread the word. We were expected to show farmers "data" from European trials. These trials were not independent and looking for any independent data was impossible. Can you imagine approaching friends and asking them to spend around $1k+ for a product they have never heard of, with no independent data and no local data to back up the claims and justify the shocking price? When all of our "contacts" were used up, we had to "cold call" farmers. You start feeling like the agricultural version of a Mormon going from house to house preaching and soon enough word spreads about you and people start hiding!
When approaches to management were made about getting funding for advertising or supplying products for demonstrations with groups. The usual response was to delay and then deny. Only once is was absolutely beyond doubt that they were failing did they agree to very minor trial work. Results were inconsistent at best and many of the demonstrations were failures to improve on the status quo. Not good enough for a products more than double the price of the usual inputs.
Managers were in some sort of bubble and refused to listen to anyone with less than glowing reports of the company's products. Middle management was a joke and could have been a major cause of the issues. But when management refuses to speak to people with negative news, the end is nigh.
Thankfully Timac is pulling out of Australia but should they ever return, do not be tempted.
