Visiting Fachjan's showroom is a real treat. From huge palms to giant figs and countless other (sub)tropical plants — they can all be found at the nursery in Honselersdijk. Those large plants are destined for zoos, swimming baths and cruise ships, etc. But also for furnishing large office buildings such as offices.
Fachjan has been working with Floriday since its inception. Those unique (sub)tropical plants, up to 14 metres tall, are available via Floriday. This allows the Honselersdijk-based grower to work a lot more effectively.
Day trading at least as important
“Our tropical plants are of course the true stars. We source these unique varieties from all over the world. We do business on every continent,” says Luc van Berkel, sales manager at family-owned Fachjan, where the third generation is now at the helm. “Those big projects where forward trading plays a big role can be a lot of fun. But we certainly have to rely on day trading as well. We sell indoor plants from 20 centimetres to 2.5 metres tall to garden centres and DIY outlets throughout Europe. Whenever possible, we prefer to sell our plants through exporters.”
Involved from the start
Luc has worked at Fachjan for four years, which these days employs around 100 people at peak times. For the sales manager it's always been the case that growers work with Floriday. “We have been involved since Floriday started,” says Luc. “I came from an exporter who hadn't yet started working with Floriday. A world opened up to me when I started here. Our software from Olsthoorn Automatisering interfaces very well with Floriday. When we edit product details on Floriday, it is matched immediately using the quick codes we work with in the software. This is important to us; we work a lot with quick codes. The link also works well when it comes to order processing. From our programme, we create auction paperwork which we link to Floriday.”
Fewer manual checks
In Luc's early days, Fachjan also worked with FloraXchange. “Back then we still had to keep track of two platforms. Work is now less onerous and more efficient. In the past, orders from end-customers always had to be approved via Florecom. We used to have to go through them line by line. But our range is so wide that sometimes as many as 50 lines would come in at once. Thanks to Floriday, we no longer have to check those lines manually item by item. Floriday approves them automatically and does this very reliably too. That saves us considerable amounts of time.”
From 4 to 2.5 FTEs
It means Fachjan needs less manpower to keep up with supply and make sales. “We used to do that with four people,” Luc says. “When someone left, we did not replace them but shared the work out better among ourselves. What we used to do with four people, we can now do with just over 2.5 FTEs. We put the time and money we save into improving our offer and service provision. This will allow us to serve our customers even better.”
More and more buyers are making the connection
Fachjan is doing more and more business through Floriday. “The big projects are very individual, they run outside Floriday. But we find that large tropical plants are also being traded more frequently via Floriday. So we now offer these on the platform. Often a customer then calls us: have you really got that plant in stock? Then we take a live photo, as all plants are unique. Once they have seen that picture, the order still goes through Floriday. Rather than by phone. That works very nicely, for both ourselves and the buyers. We find that more and more buyers are experiencing the benefits of Floriday. Once they start working with it, they are converted.”
Guidelines for buyers
Luc still sees areas for improvement. “There could be more consistency in how buyers work with Floriday. Everyone does it differently. For example, take the case of an amendment request. With some buyers, that request is automatically approved, while with others we have to wait for the request to be approved manually. This sometimes makes it difficult for us to match supply and demand perfectly. Perhaps it's a matter of educating buyers. Or could there be clearer guidelines. Like when we pointed out before some areas for improvement, such as to do with linking our Floriday stock to exporters. Those improvements were eventually adopted.”