Fergus x Simplitude - The story behind this collaboration!

For the past few days, we have been proud to be able to offer two baskets of organic fruits and vegetables from Fergus on Simplitude, both with the addition of fresh products deemed essential such as tofu, plant-based milk, eggs, etc. It may seem like nothing, but we have been in discussions for several months to make sure everything works well 😅

It all started with a story!

Yes, like a modern day love story ahahha!

Every Wednesday, we receive our fruit and vegetable baskets at the office. Audrey has been a loyal customer of Fergus for about two years, and Christine orders her baskets regularly.

For us, it's important to introduce you to great places, great companies that have the same mission as us: to consume better while respecting ourselves and our planet. That's why, once we received your basket, we created a story to show you what we consume, even if it doesn't come from Simplitude.

Alexandre, the Managing Director of Fergus, immediately contacted us to meet. You should have seen Audrey's eyes! First, she's a Fergus fan (haha!), second, she dreamed of one day being able to add fruits and vegetables to Simplitude, and third, Christine was on vacation in Greece. In short, a beautiful mix of excitement and stress!

So Alex and Audrey met at the Larue & Fils café on Jarry Street in Montreal (one of Audrey's favorites) and kept saying "ok, we have to do something together, our companies have the same mission, we can't miss out!" But nothing had been decided yet, there were too many opportunities!

On the way back, Audrey sent Christine a bunch of voicemails (yes, it was an emergency, we broke the rule of not talking "business" during the holidays #oops 🙈). She needed Christine... That's when you see the strength of a team ❤️

The reality of commerce

Upon Christine's return, several meetings took place (including one at Dinette Nationale , yum!) to find the best way to offer baskets of organic vegetables and fruits at reduced prices for our members. It was still a challenge because the reality of business is: as soon as you add an intermediary (in this case, Simplitude), there are additional costs (e.g. Shopify takes a commission on each sale made on Simplitude). So less margin. We won't go into detail on this subject but it is important that you know how it works in order to understand the challenge we had: Fergus offers affordable organic products to the consumer and we give more profits to our suppliers so that they can offer reduced prices to the consumer. In short, a real headache!

But we succeeded and we created two baskets for a limited time: The Vegan and the Vegetarian .

A great opportunity to test the market

On Simplitude, all the products on the site are tested. It's really important for us to be able to answer questions authentically but also to ensure that what we sell doesn't lead to overconsumption of ineffective products. As Fergus customers for years, we were confident in offering this new category of products. We certainly would have liked to offer delivery of these products to all of Quebec, but for now, let's see this collaboration as a test: do fruits and vegetables have a place on Simplitude? Should we add more fresh products?

If you think so, let us know by writing to us via live chat, in the comments below or even via Messenger! We need your opinion to know if we should take it further 😍

- Christine & Audrey