OFI 1609: When Selling Your Product Is Marketing Your Product | FFA SAE Edition | Dallas Sills | White County High School FFA

Dallas Sills is a 2022 National Proficiency Winner in the category of Swine Production.  Dallas farms in Northeast Georgia with his father, uncle, sister and cousins on a farm that was started in the 1950's by his grandparents.  About four years ago Dallas was starting his supervised agricultural experience and also looking for what he could do on the farm that would be unique to him.  He noticed that nobody in their area were raising and direct marketing pigs, so he decided to give it a shot.

Dallas ended up driving to Athens, Georgia and purchase seven pigs from the University Of Georgia Farm that he finished and direct marketed.  Much of the feed for the pigs was grown on his farm, and he imported soybean meal and mixed his own feed rations.  Soon after, Dallas decided to start having the pigs butchered and market cuts of meat rather than whole pigs.

As Dallas got this aspect of his business going, word of mouth started to spread, and his business expanded very quickly.  One of the interesting ways in which Dallas' business grew was through selling sausage in a local grocery store.  His name and telephone number was on the packaging, and pretty soon people who bought his sausage at the store were calling him and wanting to purchase multiple pounds of it directly from him.  At the same time that Dallas was making money selling sausage, he was marketing and growing his business.  It is a brilliant and symbiotic relationship.