After three phone calls on Monday, March 16 from some of the most renowned restaurants in the country cancelling their top end Wagyu beef orders, Gary Green had a huge problem. There was a tonne, literally, of highly-graded beef in his coolstore that typically would sell for upwards of $100 a steak in fine dining establishments that had virtually no customers. 

Within 24 hours, Green Agri Solutions decided it had to build a direct-to-consumer business if it was going to survive the collapse in the high-end restaurant trade resulting from the Coronavirus pandemic. The rush of activity to e-commerce and direct-to-consumer ventures - and marketing - is a key theme emerging from the COVID-19 crisis. 

Mi3 has covered direct-to-consumer models extensively, including former Google and Verizon executive Tim Armstrong establishing a DTC investment holding company DTX which is banking on a sustained DTC boom against big brands, and the global CEO of indy digital marketing group MiQ, Gurman Hundal, who predicts DTC companies will lead a new wave of brand building via programmatic advertising as social and search channels become cluttered and peak.   

But back to Gary Green and beef. Within a week of his premium Wagyu business hitting a wall, Green hastily registered a website and brandname - Mr Wagyu and wagyu2yourdoor.com.au - and cobbled together a Shopify commerce shopfront. It launched last week and Green says already he can see Mr Wagyu becoming a $30-50,000 a week business. 

"The idea was purely fly by the seat of our pants," says the Casino-born son of an Aboriginal father and and Irish-Danish mother. "We said if the restaurants are restricted in their trade and we can't move this product and we don't want to prostitute our product to the world, how do we move this product directly to people who go to high-end restaurants and steakhouses. They will still want to eat steak so how can we move the product directly to them and others who have never tried it?"  

After a week with a "pretty average" website, a Facebook and Instagram page and hustling some product to several high-profile Rugby league players to trial - all have subsequently posted rave reviews on social media - Green says he's now working on a national supply chain. Queensland and Victorian households want the product. 

"We literally bought a Shopify template - it's not pretty, it's clunky but we're working on it," he says. "I'm learning about all this stuff - shopping cart abandonment, analytics and so-on.

"We realise now that under the Mr Wagyu brand we want to build a community that we want to keep. This is an integral part of our business model now. We think it will strengthen our brand because we actually have a customer base that is educated on our product that gives us a bit of strength and power for when we do go back in and deal with the restaurants again. We can say we've got this community and it is probably outside a lof of the people who would normally go to one of those fine dining establishments. 

"I was probably old school, coming from the bush you know, where it's face-to-face. But it's amazing making money while you sleep. I wake up in the morning and there's these Shopify orders in the cart. I'm like a kid at Christmas."