Adapting Packed at Source Bouquets for United States of America market

In late 2010, Sam’s Club, a US subsidiary of Walmart, expressed interest in Africa Flowers. By then, a number of changes had been made to the product and business model to reflect the lessons learned, including:

• identifying new products that achieved a fairer share of risks and rewards based on the business models of the actors in the chain
• adapting the Rainforest Alliance certification to allow greater flexibility in supply
• introducing product innovation to increase its applicability to the UK consumer market.

All of these changes were further intended to ensure a positive development impact on the growers, with more consistent sourcing and more secure relationships with the retail market (meaning increased prices and stability)

Adapting the business model/product proposition

For Sam’s Club, two new products were developed:

• Bunches consisting of three to four stems of a single variety
• Bouquets packed at source in Kenya in partnership with medium-scale rose growers

Packing in the US would have added substantial costs to the initial shipments, leading to uncompetitive pricing (unlike the UK market, the US market was accustomed to receiving bouquets already packed). It was therefore necessary to bring the packing to the Kenyan side. Single variety bunches reduced market risks and added value in Kenya.

Once this supply had been proven over a number of weeks, Africa Flowers could consider producing packed-at source bouquets, which had higher technical
requirements but also higher value.

Additionally, the project considered alternative models, for example, whether to supply ASDA (which continues to be interested) during the UK’s low season, so as not to compete with bouquets from British growers.

And Africa Flowers could supply the supermarket with single stems of varieties it had readily available for incorporation into existing bouquet lines. This
high-volume, low-risk and mainstream product proposition would increase income security for the growers and strengthen the relationship between Africa Flowers and ASDA.

Once the ethical agents had come to fully understand the Africa Flowers business model, coupled with their extensive understanding and knowledge of the retail market and any flexibility therein, their role was crucial to developing new product lines that properly reflected the needs and capabilities of each business in the chain.

The new products helped the transition from supplying a wholesale ‘push’ market to supplying a retail ‘pull’ market.