Once the poop is scooped and everyone is happy I am heading off to Grants pass and Adorabella Alpacas home of Paula and Larry Vellozzi.

Larry is on the board of SOJAA with me and was the founding member of SOJAA some years ago.

Larry has been in the business about 16 years and has about 20 alpacas on his alpaca ranch at the moment plus some more that are being boarded at his ranch.

The main purpose of the visit is to talk about alpaca marketing and exactly what our affiliate SOJAA can do to help generate sales for the member farms.

Its very easy in the alpaca industry to get drawn into doing a great deal of generic marketing for alpacas. This is best left to AOBA in my opinion together with the larger farms. To be effective as a small farmer you need to be getting people to your ranch who have already done some research and are fairly serious about getting into the alpaca business. If you don't do this you can end up becoming the unofficial and therefore unpaid alpaca industry education resource. Which is very admirable but does nothing for your profitability.

Adrian Stewart