Tech Startup Grainster Has The Tools Of The Trade

Layne Fortenberry said he feels like his business has the opportunity to make history by trading grain everywhere from Bay, Arkansas to Brazil.

Fortenberry, who owns and founded the grain trading website Grainster.com, said the business has been a labor of love with an idea to match.

“I have had the idea for eight years. I worked first as an auction site but four to five years in, it was not the model I was looking for,” Fortenberry said of his idea. “It is $500 a year to trade all the grain you want.”

Although based in Little Rock, the tech startup will have potential customers all over the Arkansas Delta and far beyond. The business allows customers to buy, sell, trade and negotiate online for grain. Currently, they deal in corn, soybean, wheat and rice, Fortenberry said.

Grainster.com touts itself as a private marketplace and it’s hoping to disrupt the current way farmers and grain brokers do business. A user creates an account, edits his profile, and then has access to view offers, add offers or search for buyers or sellers of commodities.

CHANGING INDUSTRY
The grain industry has had its share of problems in recent years. In addition to prices dropping, controversy hit last year when questions about Turner Grain Merchandising emerged. Farmers who traded with the Brinkley-based company reportedly lost as much as $50 million for their crops, Arkansas Agriculture Secretary Butch Calhoun told Talk Business & Politics in November.

For his part, Fortenberry said his company gives consumers an opportunity to trade in a clear, above-board manner.

“It was kind of ironic. The situation with Turner Grain happened on a Wednesday and we went live on that Friday,” Fortenberry said of the timing.

He said he knew a lot of folks who traded with Turner Grain “who were not so lucky.” However, he said people have to check with whom they are doing business and that the industry has definitely changed.

“It was done with handshakes 100 years ago,” Fortenberry said, noting that traders often conducted business on a logistics manner. “Now, with this, you can trade in Texas or the tip of South America.”

FEEDBACK KEY
Fortenberry said his new venture has gotten support and interest from agricultural publications and officials alike.

He said the business is building itself from the ground up.

“It has been all organic on the marketing. We are getting interest on the capital and are looking for a long-term approach,” Fortenberry said, noting he is the only full-time employee. “I have the rest working 1099.”

The long-term approach also involves updating its website, planning for logistics and building more interest, he said.

Fortenberry plans to implement a 24-hour, seven-day a week call center in the future to help customers with questions. Right now, the business has a website – www.grainster.com – that allows it to help customers in a variety of ways.

The website also tracks the price of cattle – a major user of grain – as well as rice and corn among others.

And Fortenberry and his partners are adding analytics features that they say have “never before been available on such a large scale.”

“Today, farmers and traders alike look to futures prices that are based on a wide variety of data and speculation to establish what their crops are actually worth,” notes the Grainster web site. “With Grainster analytics, buyers and sellers have access to real-time cash pricing based on actual transactions worldwide.”