"More colour - more sales"

Maurits van den Arend established the Patio Plants garden centre together with his good friend Martijn Los in 2003. The pair were sitting down enjoying a beer and contemplating their future. Suddenly they came up with the idea of setting up their own “small” company for bedding and balcony plants. They accomplished this, and initially managed an area of 1.2 hectares. They were both actually extremely satisfied with their work, because the business flourished continuously because of their skill and their high quality standard.

Product variety
Patio Plants has expanded to a useful area of some seven hectares, and has more than 60 different types of plants in its product range. About 70 percent of these are sold to Germany, 20 percent to the Netherlands and the remaining 10 percent to different European countries. The season lasts for about nine weeks. This is the period during which the company has to achieve the turnover for the entire year. “Because up to 1,200 containers per day have to be packed with plants every day during this time, which is a lot of plants”, reports Maurits van den Arend. The working day for the employees starts at 7.00 am. They are never sure when they are going to be finished, because every plant and every pot has to be cleaned by hand before delivery.

First impression counts
When they are buying plants, customers do not just pay attention to cleanliness and healthy leaves but also the colour of the flower, as Maurits van den Arend knows from experience: “Plants sell extremely well if they flower in magnificent colours, and even better if these colours are also on the plant pot. We therefore developed a creative layout together with Pöppelmann TEKU and then photographed each individual type of plant in our product range – a measure which has really proven its worth.“

Perfect printing
Maurits van den Arend is delighted with the creative collaboration between Patio Plants and Pöppelmann TEKU. The company received a visit from Pöppelmann Teku some time ago. The reason was the introduction of a new printing procedure for plant pots which guaranteed visually improved image quality. “The TEKU employees asked us whether we would be interested, and we agreed. However, this was under the condition that the pots were produced and delivered within four weeks, because this was when new plants would be arriving”, remembers Maurits van den Arend. “The timescale was therefore extremely tight - unbelievable!” However, as is usually the case at Pöppelmann, the new plant pots were ready on time – with a perfect printed image. “The collaboration was fast, professional and solution-oriented, as ever.” Or to put it another way: “Creative!”

Click here for more episodes