It may sound odd, but we’re struggling with the increasing clock volume. During the past two years, clock volumes have been growing more than the volume of our intermediary services, and it looks like this trend will continue next year. Mondays and Wednesdays are still the busiest days by far.
In 2018, we expanded our gallery to a total of 450 seats and in 2020, we’re going to increase the size of our LED screen, so that we can display up to five clocks instead of the current maximum of three. We’ll continue with physical auctioning for plants, but we’re going to use product information and representative photographs, also referred to as Image Auctioning, for some of the cut flowers.
A much better solution would be to stimulate auction presale and the direct distribution of those products before the auctioning moment. Permanent sales throughout the week as it were. Wouldn’t that be much better than the current situation of two enormous peak days? We can directly distribute all products sold via auction presale to the customers, thanks to our central delivery system. Auction presale has great potential!
However, for the time being, we’re still waiting for permission from the tax authorities for the distribution of products sold via auction presale, before the auctioning moment. It’s hard to explain, but yes, we need special permission for this from the local government of our state São Paulo. We submitted our application according to all the rules last year and we’re still waiting for the go-ahead. The bureaucracy can be frustrating at times.
We’re also keeping a close eye on the developments at the various auctions in the Netherlands and Germany of course. We can learn a lot from each other. The situations are different, but the visions are similar. We’re all moving into a direction where customers can buy from stock 24/7, and immediately receive their products. The fancy word for this is order fulfilment.
We were pleased to welcome Steven van Schilfgaarde (CEO Royal FloraHolland) and Jack Goossens (President of the Supervisory Board of Royal FloraHolland) to Veiling Holambra recently. I’m sure their visit will further strengthen the relationship between the Royal FloraHolland and Veiling Holambra cooperatives. It’s a relationship that goes back more than 30 years, and personal visits always help substantiate the collaboration.
We’ve presented the annual plan 2020 to our members. A lot of speaking time was spent on our trade marketing activities, which we’re investing heavily in. We attend trade fairs to recruit more retail customers. We provide training for retailers’ employees, teaching them how to look after and present plants and flowers and how to create simple bouquets on the shop floor. We make banners for special holidays, as well as displays for flowers, hanging plants and mini plants. And we assist customers with the organisation of special sales days. All of this is covered by the auction fees paid by our members. That obliges us to give them an overview of the costs, as well as the results!
André van Kruijssen,
Veiling Holambra, Brazil
