create-or-connect-with-your-supplying-producers.md

Create or connect with your supplying producers

This page is only relevant to users who are not producers, or producers who want to sell products that come from other producers in their shop.

For such users, this step is a necessary precursor to adding your product range to your shop.

All products on the OFN must ‘belong’ to an OFN producer profile. This is an important feature on the OFN, as it enables customers to trace the origin of products. An example of how this displays in the shopfront is shown below.

So as a hub, what do you need to do before adding your products? Well, there are two possibilities, depending on whether or not your supplying producer already has an OFN profile.

How do you know if you supplying producer has an OFN profile? Go to www.openfoodnetwork.org.au/producers and search for them.

1) Supplying producer does not have an OFN profile.

If a supplying producer does not have a profile on the OFN, you can create one on their behalf. You’ll be the ‘owner’ of this profile and be able to add the producer’s products and then stock them in your shop. The new producer enterprise will be visible on your dashboard when you login to your existing account. Should the producer ever wish to take ownership of their profile, ownership can be easily transferred.

Things to consider before creating a producer profile:

Before creating a profile for your supplying producers you should contact them and let them know that you are creating a profile for them on the OFN. They may wish to be involved in the process and even take some responsibility for managing the profile and their products etc. But most commonly producers will prefer that hubs own and manage their profiles for them.

Be sure to ask the producer what information they would like shared on their profile. You can often take text and images from their existing websites or social media sites, however you should always ask permission before using any of their content. Once you have their information in front of you, a profile should take you no more than 10 minutes to create.

Before you can create a producer profile you’ll need to email us. This is a spam prevention method, but once we know you aren’t a robot, we’ll give you permission to make extra enterprise profiles
UK: hello@openfoodnetwork.org.uk
Canada: tschumilas@rogers.com
Austraila and other: hello@openfoodnetwork.org

Creating a producer profile:

You can create a new profile for a producer by clicking on **Enterprises **in the horizontal blue banner, and then clicking + New Enterprise. Remember ‘enterprise’ is a general term used for any producer or hub profile on the OFN.

This will take you to the same form that we saw in the ‘Your Profile’ section of this guide. A few things to note:

Name: Enter the name of the producer. If you get an error message saying that this name has already been taken, it means that there is already a profile for this producer. Therefore you can jump to option 2 below (Supplying producer has a pre-existing OFN profile).

**Primary Producer:**Select this box, as you are adding a supplying producer.

**Visible in Search:**You should discuss with the producer whether or not they wish to be visible on the OFN. If they wish to be invisible, their name and profile will still be shown next to their products in your shop, but they will not be searchable on the map or front-page lists.

**Email and Phone:**This email and phone number will be visible on the profile. If this producer does not wish to be contacted by the public, then place your hub’s contact details here.

**About Us:**Remember the OFN is all about putting transparency into the food system and customers are increasingly interested in where their food has come from. Therefore, it pays to add plenty of detail about your producers and what makes them unique.

**Images:**We strongly recommend that all profiles have both logo and promo images. These images make the online experience for customers more enjoyable and engaging, and also lend credibility to the enterprises.

2) Supplying producer has a pre-existing OFN profile {#supplyingproducer}

If a supplying producer already has an OFN profile, you will need to get their permission to add products to their profile (if they haven’t already) and to stock them in your shop. You will be able to find their contact details on their OFN profile. Keep in mind that the producer profile could be managed by another hub, but this is not a problem- the OFN can accommodate two hubs stocking the same producer’s products in their separate shops.

Within the OFN, Enterprise to Enterprise Permissions (E2E) are used to control the nature of trading agreements between producers and hubs. Producers can grant hubs different kinds of E2E permissions, in different combinations, to specify exactly which elements of their account the hub can interact with. At the simplest level a producer can grant a hub permission to stock their products in the hub’s shop. They may also be happy to allow the hub to create and modify their products, or edit their profile.

This page covers all of the details of the different E2E permissions available. Discuss with the producer which permissions you require. Instruction for how the producer can then then grant the agreed upon E2E permissions can be found here.

Have a suggestion for how we could improve this feature? Send us an email or join the conversation on our community forum.