– Good afternoon, is this Vedrana?
– Yes, it is.
– I finally got hold of you. My last ten emails are about your watermelons. People are talking about them on the plane!
This was how our conversation with the executive director of the British-Serbian Chamber of Commerce in London started, just before our trip to the IFE fair. But the tale of how our “Little Cutie from Kać” became a hot topic on a plane and later a star at the IFE stand in London began much earlier, at a fair in Madrid.
At that fair, we made our first contact with a potential buyer from Britain, unaware that just a few months later, we’d be close to having “Little Cutie from Kać” cross the English Channel. A representative from one of the largest importers for British retail chains showed interest in importing Serbian watermelons, and our “Little Cutie from Kać” caught his eye. At that moment, although flattered, we didn’t think much of it because we had no experience exporting to foreign countries, especially not to post-Brexit Britain, which had become a bureaucratic nightmare. We met the same representative again at the Berlin fair, making it seem more likely that “Little Cutie from Kać” might eventually see Big Ben. But the export problem remained. How would we handle it? Vedrana, being the true sales director of our small farm (as well as co-founder, influencer, social media manager, etc.), started asking the British-Serbian Chamber of Commerce about training and lectures on exporting to the British market.
Meanwhile, at a reception in Novi Sad organized by the Chamber, we learned about IFE in London—which seemed like a distant dream at the time. Resources, finances, visas, jobs. All these seemed like huge obstacles, so we resigned ourselves to trying another time. In the words of Del Boy from “Only Fools and Horses” – “This time next year.”
However, suddenly things started falling into place: starting from the fair in Madrid to the email we sent to the Chamber mentioning our potential buyer. Initially, we were invited first by the Chamber of Commerce of Vojvodina, and then, after our clumsy “we can’t go to London in three weeks,” we received the call mentioned at the beginning of this story.
By an extremely fortunate set of circumstances, it turned out that our potential buyer, while sitting on the plane after returning from Berlin, mentioned our watermelons to another passenger—who turned out to be an associate professor at the British-Serbian Chamber, responsible for agriculture and highly esteemed in the UK.
Although this sounds like a quick scene from a Guy Ritchie movie, where in the next cut we’re on the plane, then at the stand at IFE—this was indeed one of the happiest moments in our careers so far.
The proof that what we are doing and our story resonates and is understood even on a flight is a huge boost for us to keep going.