Top 5 Reasons to Have a Strong Relationship with Your Growers

By Alejandro Henao, Director, The Flower Co.

Pantone Colors

 

The “new normal” has provided immense opportunities to shorten and optimize the procurement chain.

With more farms offering MIA and Origin inventory availability, wholesalers nationwide have the opportunity to make a direct impact at the source. The supply chain has evolved drastically.  Anything we saw as impossible in the past, now has potential competitive advantages that are ready for anyone to grab them.

Here 5 reasons to buy at the source.

  1. Market Price Elasticity - The floral industry is a business that still heavily relies on the supply and demand effect. By having a direct presence with respected growers, you can make them compete on your behalf.  This will get you the best bang for your buck year-round. Holidays like Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day provide the greatest benefit.
  2. Freshness - By having direct access to Origin inventories, you can be certain that only the freshest product will be shipped to your door.
  3. Logistic Efficiency - With daily consolidations from several forwarders there’s no minimum order to accomplish. You can buy 1qbx or 100…  quantity is not an issue.
  4. Transparency - The best product is the one that you can be certain was packed and shipped with the highest standards of quality and through the logistic alternative that you demand. Due to increasing airfreight rates more growers are turning to sea-containers to alleviate the excessive cost specially on Valentine’s Day.  I’m not a big fan of this alternative, however it should be your decision to make.
  5. Quality Inspections - Even though farms strive to export reliable product, every now and then things go wrong. There are several companies that make quality inspections in both farm and cargo agency.  By using this service, you minimize the risk of defective product and can replace them before they are shipped to the United States. 

Going direct also presents some challenges.   I will list a couple to let you evaluate them and make a well-informed decision.

  1. You will have to become an importer. It’s no big deal but it means that you will be responsible for airfreight and handling expenses as well as duty payments.  A major freight forwarder will do the hard work, but you’ll be paying for both costs. Paperwork will be required but nothing major.
  2. You’ll be at the hands of the airfreight and the farm will no longer be responsible for delays or carrier related damaged product. Farms sell FOB Origin Basis, meaning that their responsibility ends once the boxes are delivered at the airport. After the Pandemic, the airfreight industry has been significantly affected but it’s slowly returning to normalcy.  
  3. No American way here! Only a handful of farms offer native English-speaking sales-reps; even less have sales representative that understand the American way.  You’ll have to be patient with majority of the sales reps.  They have good intentions, but their communicational skills need to be developed.   
  4. Never take things personally. When several products are in high demand some farms will require you to buy the needed product plus many more. And they won’t ask nicely.  Don’t take it personally, they don’t know better. However, this can be a great negotiation tool for future business.

In conclusion, I believe a healthy balance between reputable MIA importers and several well-established farms is beneficial.

Below are my partners, in logistics and quality control, from Quito and Colombia.

Please contact Gus Viteri at Flora Logistics for information on logistics. You can contact him at (305) 409-9639 or gustavo@floralogistics.us

For quality assurance control, please contact High Control. The CEO is Andres Romero, and you can reach him at (786)-210-5547 or andres@highcontrolgroup.com

 

Alejandro Henao

Director at The Flower Co.

alejandro@theflowerco.us

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