Dear all,
Welcome to the family Agostinho Björk company.
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Something about us
We (Liliana from Portugal and Lars from Sweden) met in Iceland in January 2007 and our fantastic daughter Catarina was born in Reykjavik July 2008. Due to the Icelandic crisis we moved out of Iceland in October 2008. We lived in Portugal for 3 years until 2011.
At that time the idea for our company was allready growing and we decided to move to Sweden in 2011, since Lars got a job there. Lars has been in the tram company of Gothenborg and working full time since then. We did a market research and studied the lack of Portuguese products in the Swedish market and we saw the opportunity and created a businessplan to form our company, since we had the best of both worlds in our family, Portugal and Sweden.
Start up
In 2013 we lauched our company, Luso Trading, with high hopes and expectations because we felt that this was our mission in life and that we wanted to create something for our daughter Catarina to have a brighter future. This is very important to us.
We have been investing both money, aprox. 20.000 euro, and time (LIliana more than full time and Lars weekends and evenings next to the ordinary job) since 2013. In a short time we became Agents for 2 very good brands from Portugal and in order to become that, we visited them personally and established a good contact and good relationship.
The same we did with all the other products we sell on our site. For ex. Salmarim and Risca Grande. We searched for small but high quality producers and suppliers that have environmental concerns and are approved, as well as Corporate Social Responsibility and in that way we can also be able to stand up for them, since we have seen and tasted/tried the products on location.
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Achivements We have also managed to place Castelbel products in to a Swedish television show in SVT (non-comercial state owned TV channel) Sweden, "Stjärnorna på slottet" broadcasted in winter 2014. We are also seen in the largest wine and food magazine Vinsider, October edition (dedicated to Portuguese wine and food) in Sweden. We have also applied to be an approved supplier at ICA Sweden, aprox 1300 stores, to sell our eco, dolphinsafe, friend of the sea, pole and line catched tunafish and in an area approved by the WWF. It also has a top ranking for the most sustainable fishing by Greenpeace.
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If You also believe in this sustainable way of catching the tuna you are more than welcome with a contribution to us.
Luso Trading is also certified by the Swedish Demeter Association (Svenska Demeter Förbundet) for the oliveoil Risca Grande classic demeter we are selling.
Swedish demeter association
However, all this didn´t result in any large sales volumes yet. The competitors with Portuguese quality products in Sweden are not that many, and there is still the idea/resistance about Portuguese products that they are cheap and also low quality. This we want to change! And we allready started. Luso Trading have online sales: website, mobile webpage, moblie app and direct sales to retailers.
Luso Trading
Goals
Even though we have been visiting many stores we have noticed some difficulties to enter the market with new brands and we are still experience a low traffic to our site. So, we are in great need of contributions to be able to make a marketing campaign to expand our eco friendly business. That´s where you come in. We need immediate funds to be able to fulfill our dream about entering and filling Scandinavian stores with our Eco products and later, hopefully open our own shop.
The funds will make it possible for us to move up from a small business to become a larger more known business company.
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To be able to do all above, we are in need of
15.000 euro. This is to extend our marketing such as, online marketing to generate traffic to our site and also to be able to show up on fair stands and extend the sales for retailers. The paid marketing share has been almost 0%, so far we have used mostly free marketing products and social networks.
There hasn´t been any salary taking out of Luso Trading since day 1. We live on one salary only, from Lars daily ordinary job and that gives us no margins at the moment, to expand. We also want to point out that we have nice friends that helped us for free with many things, such as the creation of our logotype, branding, sharing our products etc. because they also believe in our business idea.
We are always researching the Portuguese market for new products to sell in the whole Scandinavian market. The language skills we allready have, on top of the platform we built, so, when the time is right, we want to make a rollout to extend our market.
If we don´t reach our entire goal, the money will first go to keep us continuing the daily business so we can stay persistant and focus on the target and then, hopefully, have a breakthrough, We believe and burn for our idea and we will never give it up since it´s a part of our life and it´s the legacy we want to leave to our daughter Catarina.
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PerksIn our current position what we can offer You is products from our store, and we will open and dedicate a new page on our site, www.luso.se, to put our contributors name, Yours, (with your permission, of course), if you have donated 50 euro or more. Please use our Perks in this case. You can also help us by buying products on our site www.luso.se. (For time being delivery in Sweden only)
Either if you can or can´t contribute with money, you are more than welcome to share our true story with everybody else, especially your friends.
Please do so and for this, you can use the Indiegogo share tools, facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube and other social networks of your choice.
Mentorship and other good ideas, to help us become more successful, are also very welcome! Please visit:
luso.se and choose: "Kontakt"- "Företag"
We want to thank You for reading and taking part of our life story and hope you will help us grow and by doing so fund a success story, thank you!
Yours truly
Liliana, Lars
& Catarina
