Who are the clients of the importers?
Our business started with just wholesalers. But there are bigger retail florist shops and event planners that are able to buy the volumes from the importers. More and more importers are willing to entertain smaller and smaller order sizes as the oversupply exists in the industry. The situation is only exacerbated with the current economic climate. Another problem is neither the retail florist shop nor an event planner may necessarily have the facilities to receive large trucks so they have to go alternate ways of transportation which generally means overnight courier services or passenger airlines. And, then we are faced with the cold chain management issue. Increasingly we are witnessing that more and more wholesalers are buying direct at the farm gate. Q: Why is there no auction marketplace like the Dutch auction system in the U.S. flower industry? A: The flower auction in Holland got started because of the growers in that region. At the beginning when the auction starter, flowers we
