“For over 20 years our core business has been the production and export of roses but we have recently decided to diversify into summer flowers,” says Yvonne Chelagat, Business Development and Marketing Manager of Sian Roses, which is now rebranding to Sian Flowers. “Due to this diversification into summer flowers, we felt it was necessary to change our brand name to Sian Flowers, to reflect our new strategic direction." The official launch of the new brand will happen on Monday August 30, 2021 at the Royal FloraHolland auction in Naaldwijk, The Netherlands.
From Sian Roses to Sian Flowers
Sian has been focusing on roses for the past three decades. Chelagat explains that they recently decided to expand their assortment. “We want to keep up with market trends and the requirements from our customers. We noticed that there was a lot of demand for other flowers besides roses, and we decided that we want to be a one stop shop for our customers. Our objective is to have a complete basket in our product portfolio that will help align ourselves to our customers' needs. Additionally, having summer flowers in our mix will also enable us to achieve our strategy of value addition where we can offer our customers packed at source bouquets.” Chelagat explains that the name Sian remains in the new brand name as it reflects on the principles of continuity and stability of the brand, while Flowers reflects the new diversity in their portfolio and represents the broad array of products they now have.
The new Sian Flowers logo
Adding 30 hectares of summer flowers
Sian Roses has experienced major growth during their 29 years of business. They started with less than 10 hectares of production and have since expanded to over 100 hectares of rose production, and have now added summer flowers. The summer flowers project, called Sololo Agriculture LTD, went into commercial production in late 2020 and has since been expanded gradually with a good array of different summer flowers and greeneries. “We have now consolidated our entire product line and we feel that it is the right time to rebrand,” says Chelagat.
Further growth in the works
Christopher Kulei, Director at Sian Roses/Flowers, adds that this expansion is due to the great demand they have been experiencing these past years. “These past years have been interesting to say the least. It’s been characterized by a myriad of challenges but we have still been able to grow and add 30 hectares in the last year. That is partly due to the interesting effect of COVID-19. At Sian, we specialize in spray roses, and it has been very encouraging to see the continued demand and growth in that line of business. And as we continue to expand, we are focusing on other varieties that will add value to our product line. Our plan is to continue our growth over the next five years, and grow even more in the years after that.”
Turning to sea freight
Even though they export their flowers to lots of countries almost worldwide, Kulei shares that they have not had many logistical issues. “We ship to a wide range of countries, many of which were able to stay open during the pandemic. Still, cargo capacity does remain a challenge. Therefore, we are doing trials of shipping via sea freight more in the future. Our goal is to have a major percentage of our flowers sent over sea, as this is better for the environment as well as significantly cheaper.”
“Keeping up with demand is the real challenge”
Other than that, keeping up with the demand has been the main challenge for Sian Flowers, which is a nice challenge to have, adds Kulei. “Furthermore, we are focusing on our future goals. We are heavily investing into our IT side of the business, in order to improve the reliability of our services. In addition, having farm to door deliveries is another one of our eventual goals that we are working on.”
For more information:
Sian Flowers
info@sianroses.co.ke
www.sianroses.co.ke