One Page Summary

pool.farm was created to enable collaborative shopping on a local level. It's free to use.

The motivation is to reduce the cost of sales for SMEs. 

The inspiration comes partly from the way families shop, partly from Community Supported Agriculture (CSA).
(1) families typically delegate shopping to one member; for this to work the other members communicate what they want. In other words, they share their shopping lists. This enables savings in time, money, energy. This is what pool.farm does.
(2) CSAs are organisations where individuals buy from a producer on a regular basis with a pooled delivery. pool.farm is similar, without the commitment for regularity.

In both cases, there is a community benefit : individuals delegate the shopping to one member of the group.

If we receive a grant of 30,000 EUR, our suggestion would be to

• create a German version of pool.farm (currently in English)
• create tutorials in cooperation with OekoB. Wien
• train and hire a community manager, ideally working with OekoB. Wien
  

Our motivations behind adapting pool.farm for the needs of the germanophone in general and, more specifically, Vienna, are the following

• pool.farm enables individuals to share shopping intentions, with each other. This can be done from any business they want as pool.farm does not manage the transaction, it is "only" a listing service.
• this enables efficient planning of transport by a pool member or a third party. The transport is more efficient than if pool members had organised shopping individually. In Stockholm, in the last 4 months, businesses using pool.farm saw a lower cost of transport when pooled orders were made.
• effectively, pool.farm enables small businesses to reduce the cost of selling to their end-customers, which is important if we want to maintain a diversity of products and producers.
• pool.farm is free for the users.
  

On our platform, individuals can create, join or manage "pools", which is what we call a group of people who want to buy something together.

Here is a brief description of the functionalities

• Members can start or join a "pool".
• In each pool, members create a "list" ("My list").
• The aggregation of shopping lists in a pool is a "pooled list".
• "pool admin" takes responsibility for the ordering and payment of the "pooled list".
• "pool admin" makes sure the order arrives at the meeting point, for instance his home, office or another place.
• "pool members" pay the "pool admin" for their share of the shopping, and usually collect the shopping at a place chosen by the "pool admin".
• On the "admin" page, the "pool admin" can view and edit individual shopping lists, communicate with members, keep track of payment and collection.
• Businesses can upload a catalogue on pool.farm, to make it much easier for their customers to create a shopping list.

We are told to develop sustainable consumption... we think this includes the way we shop and the way we transport. We hope that pool.farm will help make conscious consumption mainstream in Vienna!