Advert
119 Years Strong and Still Disrupting: Farmers Combine Invests in the Island’s Future
A local organisation that’s closing in on its 120th birthday has joined forces with Gef’s green-behind-the-ears 30 Under 30 campaign to help support the island’s future by investing in its youth. Farmers Combine is partnering with the campaign’s Disruptors category for 2025.
‘I was blown away by the amount of talent involved in the campaign, all under the age of 30.’ That’s Farmers Combine’s Mark Corrin. An instantly amiable person, we bonded over our shared aversion to Zoom calls.
‘Both myself and my wife attended the Gef 30 Under 30 Winners’ Party, and I really was quite amazed at how much young talent there is on the Isle of Man. To get the future of the island building on that talent, and promoting them and helping them is brilliant. From the Combine’s point of view, we feel we should involve ourselves with promoting young people, because Farmers Combine has been around for more than 100 years, and we feel we should support the future.’
It’s a lovely (farmers) combination of a long-standing organisation with the innovative newness of up-and-comers. The ability to remain relevant is something Mark says has kept the organisation alive for so long, by continuously adapting to the ever-changing needs of locals. It’s for that reason, Mark thinks being a partner of the Disruptors category was a good fit.
‘When you look at the how long the company has been around, it has changed. It’s rebuilt in order to succeed. So, I think we fit in well with the Disruptors. At Farmers Combine, we’ve changed over the 100 odd years in various ways to build for the future, much like the Disruptors category winners. And we figure we’re building for the future by helping these young people to grow and get airtime, so others are aware of them and their work.’
Farmers Combine has made a home for itself in Ramsey and has been there for the last 119 years. (Mark, himself, has not been with Farmers Combine the entire time. Or, if he has, he looks incredible for his age). They sell a wide range of products, and when I say wide range, I mean it. There’s up to 7,000 products on their website.
‘As our motto says, “we’re not just here for farmers, we’re here for you.” The name points us down to the farmers combine, but sitting underneath that, there’s all these other products, for your house, garden, animals, horses, dogs, cats, hens, geese. One of the big things we provide is wild bird seed. It never ceases to amaze me how much of that we sell for all these people that look after the wild birds. I don’t know how they can still fly!’
The Farmers Combine website recently had some revamping work done, and was officially launched to the public at the Royal Manx Agricultural Show this month.
‘The market has changed in terms of the farming side of things, it’s not so large for us as it once was. So, we realised we needed to build on the house and home garden products. And we thought, “how are we going to do this?” So, we’ve spent several months developing this new website, which is vastly different to what our original offering was. It’s a great look and feel, you create an account, it keeps your details, then you simply order the items, pay by card, and they get delivered, which is included in the cost.’
I’ve looked at the new website, it’s very aesthetically pleasing and easy to use. And that’s coming from someone who struggles to attach a document to an email.
Bringing things back to their support of Gef 30 Under 30, I asked Mark why he thinks it’s important the island has campaigns that celebrate young people.
‘We were overwhelmed by the calibre and energy of the young professionals here on the island. So many amazing entrepreneurs in a focused group really does inspire me for the future of the Isle of Man! It is, in my opinion, time to really get behind this bevvy of amazing quality, innovative, and emerging entrepreneurs, and we are more than happy to be involved and support the Gef 30 Under 30 campaign.’
You must be logged in to post a comment.