Forward

2024 was a difficult year for FamBot’s sales. After finishing 2023 with modest growth from the prior year’s downturn, I was hopeful 2024 would see another year of small gains. We went in with brand new inventory of Genesis and Genesis XL v1.7, featuring a much faster and easier setup process thanks to an all-new track design and the kits coming 90% pre-assembled for the first time. We also had plans to sunset the Express product line once we sold through our final inventory a few months into the year, allowing us to focus the business and marketing efforts on our higher-end, higher-margin Genesis line.

However, things got off to a rocky start. By the end of Q1 we were down 29% year over year due to a huge miss in revenue at the start of Spring - our busy season. By the end of Q2 things had only slightly improved to being down 27% from the same time in 2023. At this point, given our worst Q1 since 2017 and our worst Q2 since 2019, the existing cost structure of the business was unsustainable.

Looking at expenditures, the largest area we could save would be by significantly reducing our advertising budget. This had grown over the years to be between $16,000 and $18,000 per month (roughly 30% of operations) as the cost to reach people online had increased and as I strived to maintain web traffic levels despite fewer organic visitors coming through. I had always been scared of lowering our ad spend for fear that sales would dry up quickly without it; but with cashflow forcing our hand, in early July, I cut the monthly advertising budget by over 90% to just $1,500.

Along with other cost cutting measures put in place, the immediate financial stress on the company was relieved. However, with the number of monthly visitors to our website reduced from an average of 150k down to about 20k, our sales outlook was unpredictable.

The second half of the year turned out to have similarly poor performance as the first half of the year, with Q3 ending 29% down and Q4 ending 31% down compared to the same quarters in 2023. In total, we ended 2024 down 28% year over year.

Heading into 2025 feels more uncertain than perhaps at any other moment in the company’s history. It is unclear if the long-term implications of limited advertising will result in a further decline of sales, or if we will stabilize at a new normal. While lower cost advertising efforts including influencer marketing and podcasting are being explored, these avenues have yet to prove themselves as significant drivers of the top line.

On the optimistic side, we now have a significantly reduced cost structure in place, plans to move into a smaller warehouse before the middle of the year, a full focus on only our Genesis line, further cost improvements coming with Genesis and Genesis XL v1.8, and the launch of the 3D farm designer nearing.

FarmBot has always aimed to deliver better and better technology, and the coming year will be no different. While these tough times have called for us to hunker down, I am hopeful we’ll weather the storm to see new stability and a rebound in 2025.

– Rory Aronson, CEO of FarmBot Inc

Timeline

January 2, 2024 — Published a new software video tutorial, covering the FarmBot farm designer.

January 17, 2024 — Began shipping the first FarmBot Genesis and Genesis XL v1.7 kits to customers, featuring a substantially reduced setup time thanks to completely redesigned tracks and the kits coming 90% pre-assembled in the box.

January 30, 2024 — Released a new version of the FarmBot Web App, including a fully 3D interactive representation of the electronics box for more intuitive controls, publishable Lua sequences, and an improved login page.

February 1, 2024 — FarmBot was featured in The Guardian’s Inside the Mission to Grow Food in Space, showcasing Univeristy of Melbourne researchers using FarmBot as a research tool.

February 2, 2024 — Celebrated Marc’s last day at FarmBot. Marc spearheaded our customer support and sales efforts for about 5 years, helping to build our community and always offering customers and prospects friendly service. We wish him all the best in his next endeavor!

March 4, 2024 — Published a new video on the FarmBot YouTube channel showing the complete step-by-step assembly process for FarmBot Genesis and Genesis XL v1.7.

March 7, 2024 — Highlighted a case study of several FarmBot Genesis XL units used at the “Smart Farm Project” in Himeji City, Japan to provide agricultural experiences to people with disabilities.

March 14, 2024 — Previewed a fully 3D farm designer offering a more beautiful, intuitive, and immersive way of viewing and interacting with your FarmBot from anywhere.

March 27, 2024 — Highlighted what crops one can grow with FarmBot in each season of the year.

April 9, 2024 — Deployed a new version of the FarmBot Web App with various performance improvements, allowing us to cut hosting costs by approximately 45%.

April 9, 2024 — Updated our developer documenation hub with additional and improved examples for programming FarmBot with Python and Lua.

April 24, 2024 — Published extensive improvements to our API documentation and example requests to cover all available endpoints, methods, and fields.

April 28, 2024 — Published a new video on the FarmBot YouTube channel showing a laser weeding tool prototype developed by a sponsored senior design team at the Liberty University School of Engineering.

May 2, 2024 — Founder Rory Aronson was featured on The Third Angle podcast.

May 6, 2024 — Sold the final FarmBot Express and Express XL kits, marking the end of the lower cost Express product line.

May 9, 2024 — Deployed a new version of FarmBot OS with added and improved Lua helpers for using time and taking photos.

May 21, 2024 — Hired our first ever Summer intern, Juliana, to work on the “Sidecar Starter Pack” project with the goal of making it easy to control FarmBot from a separate computer system.

May 30, 2024 — Showcased a variety of customer’s gardens as shared on social media and the community forum.

August 13, 2024 — Published a new top-level marketing video to our YouTube channel, offering a a sentimental look at what the FarmBot brand and mission really stand for: bringing food back to the backyard, together.

August 21, 2024 — Highlighted one customer’s rooftop Genesis XL system.

August 29, 2024 — Founder Rory Aronson was featured on the Masters of Engineering Podcast, hosted by founder of both Onshape and Solidworks, Jon Hirschtick.

September 24, 2024 — Launched a Garage Sale section of the online shop, featuring older generation and used FarmBot kits, partial kits, and spare parts offered at steep discounts.

October 21, 2024 — Based on the Sidecar Starter Pack project developed by our Summer intern, we announced the release of farmbot-py, a fully documented, tested, and open-source library for controlling a FarmBot and making API calls from Python.

October 21, 2024 — Showcased various customer garden’s from around the world.

November 26, 2024 — Opened up pre-orders for FarmBot Genesis and Genesis XL v1.8 during our Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale.

December 17, 2024 — Offered large discounts for an end-of-year sale for our last remaining Genesis and Genesis XL v1.7 kits.

December 23, 2024 — Released a new version of the FarmBot web app, bringing DARK MODE and a major UI overhaul to our customers.

YoY revenue by product

Our revenue decreased 28% in 2024 compared with 2023. This was in part due to the run through of our final Express and Express XL inventory in the first half of the year, followed by an adjustment period of only carrying Genesis and Genesis XL going forward.

However, the Genesis line (and Genesis XL in particular) were still down year over year despite significant improvements to the product with the launch of v1.7 and being in stock for over 95% of the year.

Individual part and partial kit sales also fell, though we have intentionally been resupplying a smaller variety of parts over the last two years due to the high cost of maintaining inventory.

Shopify reports for this table: Sales by FarmBot Kit (reverse filter for part sales) and Finances (for shipping and taxes).

Shipments

With the sunsetting of the Express line and overall sales down, we saw about a 19% decrease in the number of kits shipped during 2024 compared to 2023.

To get the data for this table: Export all shipments for the year from Shipstation and import into a spreadsheet. Sort by SKU and sum the quantities of each kit sold.

Market breakdown

The following table breaks down our FarmBot sales into three main market segments based on end-use of the machine: Education, Personal, and B2B.

The Education segment includes K-12 schools, universities, and extracurricular educational programs such as 4H and robotics clubs. The Personal segment includes homeowners, families, and DIY enthusiasts who use FarmBot non-commercially. B2B includes family farms, research facilities, farm-to-fork restaurants, and other entities that are not in the business of education.

Shopify report for this table.

Total sales by country

Shopify report for this table.

Total sales by US state

Shopify report for this table.