How do you market stinging nettle?

I know of a thick patch of fiddleheads and nettles which spreads several acres. The fiddleheads are an easy sell but the nettles...not so much. I've only tried selling to restaurants. My strategy was to give out samples. Nobody I solicited to wanted to buy any even then.

I've seen the video where Skeeter talks about selling nettles but I'm wondering how he markets them, and who he's marketing to (too?). My impression was that selling to medicinal companies meant you get low end prices that aren't worth the trouble unless you're going extremely large scale.
 
Any tips?

Selling nettles here would be akin to selling sand in the Sahara!    I really doubt you'd have a market.

If I can find a market for dandelion, I can find one for nettles. I'm sure it grows all over the place where Skeeter lives and he seems able to sell quite a bit.

Well I guess those who sell bottled water managed the seemingly impossible - so don't let me stand in your way. 

I make nettle soup here every spring.  Love it! 

might have to go the value added route; make a nettle pesto or gnocchi

There's a woman in Colorado who runs a raw food center and makes here own local, raw green powder using nettle, dandilion, masha, and something else local to her area.  Seems like a great idea.  Make a local blend.  Needs to be dried below 116 degree F to be marketed to raw food folks but the prices can be higher.

Yeah, this is my question too! And the answers are very vague here! Let's put it more bluntly:
Skeeter, who are you selling your nettles to?
I could certainly use $480 for 60 lbs. of nettles, to get some of my debts paid off, buy seed, etc.
Are you selling them fresh, drying them? Restaurants, health food stores? Or is it a trade secret? 

Maybe you need to make up a sheet that talks about it:

1)  It is a native food.

2)  Of all the greens, picky eaters prefer nettles.

3)  How about taking a nettle dish to the restaurants and giving them a taste.

4)  I think it could be used (by a restaurant) as a publicity tool - have the restaurant offer a reporter a free sample to try it. 

5)  I think you should make a sheet that explains all sorts of interesting things about nettles and hand that out with the nettles. 

6)  An excellent thing to put in CSA boxes.

C'mon folks, that's six.  Let's see if we can collectively get to 12!

Dried nettles are used as a tea which is supposed to be especially good for women and urinary complaints.  I even sent off to *buy* dried nettles once as one of my friends was pregnant and had a bladder infection but felt nauseous when she tried the usual cure of cranberry.  She didn't want antibiotics and the local nettles had all died back for the summer, so I send off for some from a UK company called Herb Moon Hollow.

Here's a link to a whole page of nettle stuff for sale on ebay.uk

http://shop.ebay.co.uk/i.html?_nkw=nettle+leaf&_sacat=0&_odkw=nettle&_osacat=0&_trksid=p3286.c0.m270.l1313

Super High Nutritional Content Vitamins as well as minerals... Look at that Calcium Level!

Here is a link to what I was looking at:
http://skipthepie.org/ethnic-foods/stinging-nettles-blanched-northern-plains-indians/

I once heard a butterfly specialist say "Urtica dioica is our most important, widespread west of cascades butterfly host plant" - http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/NorWestLeps/message/4796

So it may be possible to farm it while also helping butterflies.

I do plan to give samples to chef's, and was considering giving recipe ideas with the samples but hadn't thought about the general info sheet idea. That'd be good to give out at markets.

We did offer it in our CSA last year but we're doing a sort of 'made to order' type of program this year so I'm not sure how many people will want to spend their credits on some. We'll see.

If only it didn't sting...

paul wheaton wrote:
Maybe you need to make up a sheet that talks about it:

1)  It is a native food.

2)  Of all the greens, picky eaters prefer nettles.

3)  How about taking a nettle dish to the restaurants and giving them a taste.

4)  I think it could be used (by a restaurant) as a publicity tool - have the restaurant offer a reporter a free sample to try it. 

5)  I think you should make a sheet that explains all sorts of interesting things about nettles and hand that out with the nettles.   

6)  An excellent thing to put in CSA boxes.

C'mon folks, that's six.  Let's see if we can collectively get to 12!

Brian has some great comments in this video about marketing stinging nettle:

Travis Philp wrote:I know of a thick patch of fiddleheads and nettles which spreads several acres. The fiddleheads are an easy sell but the nettles...not so much. I've only tried selling to restaurants. My strategy was to give out samples. Nobody I solicited to wanted to buy any even then.

I've seen the video where Skeeter talks about selling nettles but I'm wondering how he markets them, and who he's marketing to (too?). My impression was that selling to medicinal companies meant you get low end prices that aren't worth the trouble unless you're going extremely large scale.
 
Any tips?

I think Skeeter sells mostly to herbalists and other natural health care providers.

I recommend trying samples again (?) or perhaps in a different way.

I brought fresh nettles into a corporate office for a bunch of co-workers to try. We put the nettles into mugs of some squash soup - you know, the kind of soup you can buy in those aseptic boxes - and microwaved it together until it was hot and the nettles were soft. All who tried it loved it! They liked it as well or better than spinach - and these were definitely NOT the outdoorsy, hippie types. The boxed soup made it super-duper easy and it was very good.

It would be great to hear how it goes this year. Good luck!