Exporter Montfleury: "The better growers describe their supply, the better we can buy"

Dutch exporter Montfleury supplies ready-to-sell bouquets mainly to French supermarkets. Service, market knowledge and quality products at competitive purchase prices is what the company stands for. We spoke to senior account manager Clément Mallégol about working with Floriday, responding to customer needs and the importance of good data.

Montfleury was founded in 2002 and over the past 20 years has become an expert in supplying flowers to French supermarkets, as well as customers in Spain and other southern European countries. The De Kwakel-based exporter provides customers with ready-made bouquets, plants and decorations. "Experience is everything," says Clément, who is French. "No other party has as much experience with French supermarkets as we do. Service and continuity is our strength: "We make sure we can always deliver. Even at peak times, such as Mother's Day in France, everything went smoothly. Partly as a result, we had record Mother's Day sales this year.

Obtaining information

"Getting the right information, that's what our approach is all about," says Clément. "You need to know exactly where to find which plant or flower, from whom, at what price and with what loading and sorting. This is crucial in our work. We are the eyes and ears of our customers, the intermediary here in the Netherlands.

Floriday as catalogue

Montfleury buys a lot in the short term. Some 80 per cent of flowers are sourced through the clock. The remaining 20 per cent is through clock pre-sales or direct trading through Floriday. Clément gets the information he needs to buy quality products at competitive prices from his network and from Floriday. Clément: "In the short term, it is mainly about day trading. But we also work with long-term planning. We then use Floriday mainly to get inspiration from the catalogue, find new products and make offers to our customers. I pre-select and/or make reservations with growers. A colleague then sends out the actual orders via Floriday".

From FloraXchange to Floriday

Montfleury has worked with FloraXchange and PlantConnect in the past. "FloraXchange was actually also a catalogue. Floriday offers additional features, such as grower stock insight. This is sometimes useful, but for my job as category manager it is particularly important to be able to access the range through the catalogue. Floriday works well for us and we are happy with it," Clément said.

Use of MyShop at sister company

Sister company Idea Plus Nature, which supplies wholesalers, also uses MyShop in Floriday. They allow their customers to easily make their own purchases through Floriday. In doing so, Idea Plus Nature is in control of what offerings their customers see. "It works well," says Clément. "Customers buy for themselves through MyShop and we can easily process all these individual orders. Thanks to MyShop, we keep an overview. Handling is also easy. For the supermarkets we serve with Montfleury, this works in a more complex way. Then we would have to give access to all the individual supermarkets. That's tricky. I also wonder if they are waiting for it themselves. For now, we take all their worries away from them - that's what they like.

The importance of good data

Although Montfleury enjoys working with Floriday, Clément also sees room for improvement. Especially on the supply side. "Some growers complete their offers for the whole week, others just for today. In those cases we have to call to get information, which takes time. If growers enter all the data properly, it makes our work much more efficient. For us, the trick remains buying at the right time at the right price. Floriday offers more and more opportunities for this. But it all hinges on the quality of the data. The better growers complete details about their supply, the more easily we can plan, select and buy."