John Grootscholten is the new chairman of Decorum Company, a Dutch association of growers of potted plants and cut flowers. He believes we need to cooperate, now and in the future. ‘Things will get hard if we don’t. We shouldn’t compete, we should join forces.’
How is Decorum doing?
‘Quite well, actually. We have 63 members now, including round twenty flower growers. An expansion is not really a goal, but we do want to have the top 25 of the assortment. That’s not the case at the moment, so we keep searching for a way. We focus on growers that deliver the very best quality, have the same attitude as we do and that share our vision. There has to be a will to cooperate.’
And how is the will to cooperate doing?
‘We’ve been working together for seventeen years now; we have a very close group. The members don’t compete and that makes cooperation easier. There are exceptions of course but I’m convinced that individual growers face hard times without cooperation. It’s easier to market brands together and it makes growers less interchangeable. We can increase the level together, and we need to because we have to compete with the rest by using other gift items.’
And what is your part in that?
‘Decorum Company hires people that exclusively focus on the development of the product, the category management. We’re a marketing and sales organisation and want to offer our members the very best sales position. Growers are responsible for their own sales, but as Decorum Company we do work on making the product more professional. And we don’t do so on our own, we consult our partners and cooperate with them to achieve this.’
So how do you achieve a better product?
‘We have a number of Research & Development stores. These stores are used for testing. Flowers and plants represented a half percent of the turnover there at first, and we tripled this simply by tuning the offer to the demand. And we use these results to proceed further. We’re also going to do this at garden centres. It’s important that everyone knows we can make more profit with the available surface. The profit on one bottle of Coca Cola is not large, but the flowers and plants sector does offer room for extra margin.’
Other partnerships have the same goal...
‘Yes, other parties deliver items with a consumer-oriented look too. And the customers like it. We also think of the future as Decorum Company and already took our steps along this way. We will add value to plants and flowers. A plant is still just a plant when we only stick the label on the product. We want to position flowers and plants more as a gift item. We will present our new look at the FloraHolland Trade Fair. We want to become a real consumer brand.’
But weren’t you?
‘The blue Decorum colours more or less had a business-to-business look. We will leave that behind and want to change to a consumer-oriented approach. We are hoping that consumers will then choose flowers and plants earlier, so the turnover ratio will improve and the deprivation on the floor will drop. I’m convinced that we can sell more flowers and plants, but we need change for that. End customers also have to treat the product differently and make sure the quality level remains high.’
How do you check this?
‘We check the quality until the moment the product is bought by one of our dealers. We control the quality controllers. You can make or break quality; it should be top notch. You cannot control it for 100% in the open chain, all brands in the horticulture sector play a part in this. We work with a recommended sell-by date in our R&D stores so it’s clear how long we can offer products to secure freshness guarantee. This works well and it guarantees a good quality. It’s a bridge too far to implement this throughout the open chain, but it would be the ideal picture. As Decorum Company, we strive for top quality. When the product arrives at our purchaser, they have to be satisfied and the consumer should be willing to buy it again. By means of the new look, we hope to increase the inventory turnover and deliver a high-quality product to the consumer that he or she can enjoy for a long time. That’s what we do it for!’
John Grootscholten, new chairman of Decorum Company: ‘We’ve been working together for seventeen years now; we have a very close group. The members don’t compete and that makes cooperation easier.’
