MC Solutions gave farm businesses a digital shop window

An irrigation company’s marketing can take a surprisingly long shopping list. A website. A brochure. A trade-show display. Something to send by email. Something to put outside the open house. In MC Solutions’ portfolio for Bennett & Bennett Irrigation Systems, all of those formats appear together. The humble trifold gets a place beside the custom QR code. Agriculture, it turns out, has room for both.

That collection offers a useful introduction to MC Solutions, a marketing and design business with roots in Kingsburg, California. Its work has connected practical businesses with the people who buy from them: farmers, food buyers, household shoppers and local customers. The interesting part is the variety of jobs a single client might need done before anyone makes an inquiry or walks into a store.

A farm business has more than one audience

Consider Poindexter Nut Company. In a 2014 announcement, the Selma walnut processor introduced a website designed by MC Solutions to improve information for growers, customers and buyers. Those are three audiences with different reasons to visit. A grower evaluating a processor and a buyer considering its products may arrive at the same homepage, but they bring different questions.

The announcement placed the website alongside planned retail packaging and described a business that had grown from a roadside walnut dehydrator into a third-generation processor exporting to 45 countries. That international reach belonged to Poindexter, the client. For its agency, the assignment was to make the company’s products and services easier to understand online, with social media integrated into the presentation.

The editorial lesson is straightforward: write the audience into the brief. “We need a new website” leaves a lot undecided. Naming growers and buyers immediately raises better questions about navigation, information and contact routes. MC Solutions’ agricultural work makes that distinction visible.

The woman who knew the field

Mandy Critchley, identified in contemporary reporting as MC Solutions’ owner, had a direct connection to this world. Her family business biography records an agricultural business degree, with an emphasis on sales and marketing, from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 2001. An earlier version describes her agency work with food and agricultural businesses. Agriculture was part of her working life as well as her client list.

The later biography says she owned MC Solutions for 11 years before working within the family’s companies on sales, food safety and financial tasks. Those businesses span farming and related operations. It also records her appointment as chairwoman of the California Blueberry Commission board in 2021. This is useful context for the agency’s specialization: its owner understood agricultural business from more than a marketing brief.

There was an event connection, too. AgNet West interviewed Critchley during the 2015 World Ag Expo in Tulare, introducing her as an agency owner who farmed with her husband in Fresno County. The setting fits the work: agricultural businesses meet customers on show floors as well as on screens.

The brochure and the browser belong together

Bennett & Bennett’s published portfolio is unusually helpful because it names the deliverables. Alongside a website redesign sit Facebook cover art, email blasts, trade-show graphics, a trifold brochure, advertisements, open-house collateral, signs and banners. This is what a broad agency remit looks like when reduced to things a customer can actually receive.

Each format imposes its own discipline. A sign must be legible at a glance. A brochure can carry an explanation. An email needs a reason to click. A website has to accommodate the person who wants more detail. Their connection is the practical advantage of buying coordinated design: a business can remain recognizable while changing the amount of information it presents.

MC Solutions’ service menu also included brand guides, packaging, direct mail and even corporate history books. Its digital services covered shopping carts, analytics, hosting and updates. The historical QR offering allowed a code’s destination to change and scans to be tracked. That made the printed object a route into information that could be updated later.

A goat dairy’s very sensible website

Summerhill Goat Dairy supplies a more consumer-facing example. Its July 2015 website announcement described a responsive redesign that matched a recent rebranding. Visitors could read about the milk, download recipes and find a nearby store. There is a pleasing lack of mystery about the intended journey: learn what it is, imagine using it, discover where to buy it.

Summerhill’s owner, Anneke De Jong, explained the aim in terms of accessible product facts and resources for supermarket shoppers. The dairy was supplying retailers across the western United States. The website therefore had a job beyond displaying an attractive farm: it connected the product story with the places carrying the milk.

That sequence is worth copying when it fits the product. A food brand sold through retailers needs a different path from a business selling directly online. A store finder serves the first arrangement; a shopping cart serves the second. Choosing the right destination is a strategic decision, even when the finished page makes it look obvious.

There was an app in the produce aisle

MC Solutions also worked beyond conventional agency websites. Produce Monkey launched in May 2014 with the company named as its developer. Founded by Ben Silva, the platform combined communication with produce-trading documents, including purchase orders and bills of lading. The launch report described iPhone and Android apps alongside the web platform.

Produce Monkey integrated Blue Book Services ratings and used The Produce News as its exclusive news provider. Those were relationships attached to the product. They show the kind of industry-specific information the application was trying to bring into one place: who someone was trading with, what was happening in the market and which documents a transaction required.

For the MC Solutions profile, the project establishes a concrete development credit. It also illustrates a more demanding type of assignment than promotional design. Once a tool handles business documents and outside information, its usefulness depends on the workflow and integrations holding together. A colorful interface alone cannot carry that responsibility.

Some of the work starts after launch

The California Raisin Marketing Board’s 2013-2014 annual report describes another side of MC Solutions: supporting staff with social media and maintaining LoveYourRaisins.com. The agency’s role was part of a larger marketing program. Keeping an existing website useful belongs in that story just as much as unveiling a new one.

Client testimony also points toward coordination. Family Tree Farms’ Dovey Plain said the agency helped create a more consistent marketing approach. Roger Isom, representing cotton and agricultural processing associations, described website improvements and relief from troublesome email services. Tulare Public Library’s librarian praised the balance of presentation and function, while ResCom Pest Control’s CEO dated its relationship with the agency to 2011.

“They have helped us create a more cohesive approach to marketing across multiple platforms.”

Dovey Plain · Family Tree Farms
Company-published testimonial

These are customer endorsements, rather than measured campaign results. Their vocabulary is still revealing: usefulness, responsiveness, coordination. For an organization with several communication channels, the value of outside help can be as ordinary as having someone responsible for the next update.

Small-agency work, with several disciplines

The historical team page gives that work some texture. Graphic designer Amy Benton began in event coordination, where the need for promotional materials led her toward design. Social media coordinator Kristen Benton’s biography emphasizes client service and Central Valley roots. The development description covers websites, mobile applications, databases and commerce systems.

These biographies suggest complementary roles rather than one person casually adding every service to a menu. They also explain why the agency’s portfolio moves comfortably between events, print and digital. A fundraiser, an email campaign and a website share communication problems, even when producing them requires different skills.

For a prospective client, the useful comparison is with the work arrangement it would otherwise assemble: independent designers, a website specialist, an internal employee or another regional agency. Breadth is helpful when those assignments need coordinating. A narrowly defined technical project may call for a different specialist. The scope should decide the match.

The name now points toward Omni Media

MC Solutions’ later website pages identify MC-Solutions.com as a division of Omni Media. Horizon Nut’s website carries the same credit. Some legacy MC Solutions links now lead to Omni Media, whose current offer centers on website design and social media marketing for businesses across the United States, with agriculture among its named industries.

The commercial model is service work: design and development accompanied by ongoing marketing or maintenance. Omni Media invites clients to request a tailored quote after a consultation. For buyers, that makes the scope the starting point for cost: what is being built, who supplies the content, what gets maintained and what happens after delivery.

MC Solutions’ portfolio leaves a practical question for anyone commissioning similar work. When a customer sees the sign, opens the brochure or reaches the website, is the next step clear? The goat dairy needed a route to the store. The walnut processor needed information for distinct audiences. The irrigation business needed a recognizable presence across many formats. Each assignment began with a business selling something real.