Last week Fresh-o-Fair started its operations in Colombia integrating its flower producers aiming to increase their production targeted to floral designers. A meeting in Bogotá took place between renowned Colombian flower farms and the team of Fresh-o-Fair, a German-Ecuadorian company already working with the flower producers in Ecuador managing a direct trading platform for Europe and soon the US.
Team of Fresh-o-Fair with María Paula Córdoba and Antonina Gavrísina at Alexandra Farms in Colombia. (photo credit: Diego Zambrano)
The integration of Colombia to the peer-to-peer platform sets an important milestone for Fresh-o-Fair. Both parties are very optimistic and delighted to join forces and allow floral designers to have direct access to some of the best cut flowers of Latin American", says Denise Morgan of the company.
Current market trends suggest a clear segmentation of the cut flower industry between mass- and quality-production. The goal of Fresh-o-Fair and the associated flower farms is to give florists, who understand this difference, a direct trading channel. "Through this direct trading schema, Fresh-o-Fair aims to help producers in Latin America to maintain their quality production by giving them a fair price for it, at the other end of the value chain, Fresh-o-Fair aims to deliver these products directly to the floral designer, allowing so for a Fresher
product, which hasn’t been cool-stored or resold in between."
The integration of Colombian producers marks for Fresh-o-Fair an important milestone, not only because it's going to expand its product pallet significantly, but because it concludes the incubation period of this start-up. "Fresh-o-Fair, now having products from some of the
best farms of Colombia and Ecuador, is now ready to hit the accelerator." The rapid growth of this family run-start up has led the company to open up to venture capital investors and has initiated an investment round in order to face the challenge ahead.
Claudia Muñoz presenting the concept to Farms in Bogota, Colombia. (photo credit: Diego Zambrano)
The founders of Fresh-o-Fair have the vision to unify the Latin American producers and give floral designers among the world the transparency and appreciation that their beloved raw-material deserve. Fresh-o-Fair strongly believes that a direct trading between floral designers and the producer farms will generate benefits for both ends of the supply chain. "This direct trading ensures that the floral-designer will get the best product from the farm, because producers will be getting a Fair price for their product. By joining different farms
under the same roof, the consumer has a larger choice of variety and producers. At the same time, producers will be able to adjust and focus their production according to the real demands of floral designers, without the predefined filter set by the demands of an old infrastructure-system designed decades ago. Fresh-o-Fair actions are motivated by the motto “knowledge empowers”, bringing more transparency to the value chain is an important example of actions driven by this motto."
The process to integrate Colombian flower producers has started, and soon it will be possible to buy these products at the Fresh-o-Fair platform, all of this just in time for the wedding season.
For more information
Fresh-o-Fair
Denise Morgan
Email: dmorgan@fresh-o-fair.com
www.fresh-o-fair.com