 |  | | Sue Adams of Mark Adams Greenhouse in Poughkeepsie, NY said an online plant exchange for wholesale buyers and sellers presents a new marketing opportunity for potted plant growers. |
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Online plant exchange links greenhouse sellers with buyers
9/25/2009
Sellers need buyers. A new online plant exchange is bringing together flower and nursery growers to facilitate sales.
Mark Adams Greenhouses grows nearly 5 million plants annually in five acres of greenhouses on part of the original Adams’ family farm established in the early 1900s in Poughkeepsie, NY. Spring through fall seasonal plants, specialty plants, and hanging baskets are wholesaled to garden centers, including Adams Fairacre Farms’ three garden centers, and to colleges, landscaping services, and parks managers throughout the Northeast.
“I am always looking for new ways to sell,” says Sue Adams. She is Mark Adams Greenhouses’ vice president and sales manager. She helped brainstorm the concept for the New York State Flower Industries Plant Exchange.
“The website is easy to use and offers growers another way to sell plants. I like to get online early in the season so people can learn who we are and what we have to sell,” Adams says.
“A couple of minutes to post a listing,” she says, “brought us a new and now repeat customer.”
Funding from the New York Farm Viability Institute helped create the site at www.nysfimarketplace.com.
The NY Farm Viability Institute is a farmer-led nonprofit group that supports applied research and outreach services to help farmers improve profitability. The Institute received funds from the New York State legislature and Department of Agriculture and Markets.
Adams’ September 2008 listing of fall mums for sale brought the new buyer located just one hour away.
“The new account is a college that returned for spring plants in 2009 and purchased mums this fall,” Adams says. “I love working with colleges because they not only buy plants, but they showcase our products on campus. Students are future customers.”
Adams has also listed spring perennials and Christmas poinsettias on the web exchange.
Growers can specify conditions of sale, such as minimum order size and delivery area. Exchange listings include annual flowers, ground covers, plugs, perennials, vegetables, herbs, and aphid banker plants for integrated pest management.
“The site helps me when I am looking for product. People can also post job openings. As more ideas evolve, Mark Adams Greenhouses is growing its use of the website,” Adams says.
She says the website can also help retailers.
“One year I learned too late that a retailer just a short distance away was long on hanging baskets. If we had had the plant exchange then, I would have called him because I know the quality of his products and that would have helped me meet a product need here,” Adams says.
Those posting listings must join the New York State Flower Industries Association which Adams, a board member, says is a great value for the $75 membership fee.
“Membership provides networking and access to research; field trials, seminars and information; and Association members can post listings to the plant exchange for free,” she says.
Karen Dean Hall, program director for the NYS Flower Industries, coordinated the growers and technical production team that developed the website. Hall says, “This online marketplace was created by the greenhouse operators to increase profitability by reducing plant surplus and loss, relieving plant shortages, and developing a statewide grower network. This is a model that other sectors of agriculture could use to create market efficiencies.”
Adams adds, “This website has great potential that will continue to benefit our industry evolve as more greenhouse, grower, nursery and retail sellers use it.”
For more information:
Mark Adams Greenhouse, http://www.adamsfarms.com/mark_adams.htm
New York Farm Viability Institute: 315-483-3523, www.nyfvi.org
New York State Flower Industries Association Online Plant Exchange: Karen Dean Hall, 716-941-3502, www.nysfimarketplace.com
- By Kara Lynn Dunn, contributing NYFVI writer
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Contact: Rebecca Schuelke Staehr, NYFVI communication specialist
T: (315) 453-3823 extension 103
E: rschuelke@nyfvi.org |