Girls, you see this??? Misschien biologische winkels ook? Ekoplaza? Flying Tiger First
Girls, you see this???
Misschien biologische winkels ook? Ekoplaza?
Flying Tiger
First batch of questions:
Who would you consider your key stakeholders in- and outside of Treemore and E-Flora?
Inside/intercompany: sales team, fulfilment team, design team and the Dutch Flower Group. I will introduce you to the persons taking over the work of Sanne and myself before our next meeting.
Outside: suppliers of the plants and hardware, resellers (notably GiftNation, Plato Group, Greengiving, Ecomondo, Blume2000), partners (Trees for All, Justdiggit, Don Julian Coffee, Chocolatemakers, Zero2green), direct B2B clients and the planet :).
Where does the money come from currently? Sales. Has there been any profit or is it mostly investments at this stage? Treemore is debt free and has been profitable for 4 years in row. But we never had more than 2.5 FTE at once on the payroll, so pretty lean. It’s a very healthy business case but as the growth potential is hard to define, I don’t think it is wise to spend money that has not been earned yet (which is what sustainability is all about in my view). Could you share the annual reports from previous years? Annual reports we do not have and the financial results I cannot share, sorry.
What is your view on the gift giving market? Is it growing, decreasing, stabilized, saturated? I would call it stabilized for now. Are there any trends that you are aware of? Not specifically in the gifting market. I do see increased awareness about sustainability in the supply chain following the introduction of the CSRD. See for example ‘Annex 3 – Programma van Eisen’ page 8 attached. Any research that you might have here is also very welcome. We haven’t carried out research ourselves (or paid for it) but this article suggest a growing trend. Many gifting companies are just window dressing in my view. They have a few ‘eco’ products but the lion’s share of their assortment comes straight from China. ‘Sustainable’ and ‘Eco’ can be freely used for now (especially by sme’s) but I have high hopes the anti-greenwashing rule will have a positive effect on the matter.
What growth has there been since the start of the company? From 43, to 73, to 81k trees sold in 2021-2023. I’m expecting this year to be the same as 2023. What has driven that growth? Exposure via resellers and marcom efforts.
What is the business growth plan for the coming years? I guess this depends a lot on what E-Flora wants (correct there is no “new” plan yet), but in the presentation of Sanne it was mentioned wanting 10 million trees/year within the next 3-5 years by finding new sales channels and improving on existing ones (that should’ve read 1 million trees/year in the next 3-5 years. Best to keep that as the goal. I think it is possible if the big players add the trees to their assortment and if we can expand to brig and mortar retail).
What is your view on the user experience of Treemore website? There’s room to grow … (a lot). We get very little orders via the website (a few per month) because 1) we it’s not SEO optimized and 2) we do not do paid advertising. It is unclear for now what the plan for next year is. Perhaps direct ordering will be paused and visitors will be asked to get in touch for a quote and/or will be redirected.
Do you know if E-Flora has a segmentation strategy of their portfolio? Or any data on the different segments in your B2B market? I do not know, but will get back on this
The defined roles to play as Treemore in the MarCom strategy document seem more focused on communication and less on behavior. You did mention that awareness was less important to you in the meeting. If you could get people to do one thing, what would it be? I find awareness (about nature/all things sustainable) super important, don’t get me wrong, but I think that the focus on that in our communication is too technical for a large group of potential customers (both B2B and B2C). And that focusing on a very simple story like ‘growing a baby-tree/plant at home because it’s fun and rewarding’ is better. But I could be wrong. What I would like people to do is to stop buying gifts that are useless.
The next question is, why do you think they are not doing that yet? Because useless gifts are often cheap (or in the case of flowers look impressive but always disappoint after 7 days).
Do you have any other relevant data or research, such as what you would use for a business case? No, not off the shelf. We stopped half way writing the buca and decided to just go and get the product out.
Do the project deliverables of the students need to be tied to one of the social media objectives as defined in the MarCom strategy document? No, that’s not needed at all. The focus in the near term will be on getting as quickly as possible to the 1 million per year.
Second round of questions:
Regarding the financial data: will it be available at any point in time in the upcoming year? Or not? If not, is there a reason for it not being publicly available? I do not think it will be made ‘available to the public’, other than that it will be sent to the KvK at some point in time. But I don’t know the planning of that. Treemore BV will be integrated in Floremotion/e-Flora and continue as ‘a brand of’, as per January 2025 (in the same way that BloomPost is a brand within that legal entity). Please treat this information confidential until further notice, as we have not communicated to our partners yet.
What does it cost to sell one tree: cost price and wholesale price? It varies between species but for olive (the bestseller and one of the cheapest) the cost price is €2,5 ex fulfilment and €3,59 including fulfilment (folding box and packing the tree, infobooklet and preparing for shipment). The €3,59 reflects the costs for getting the product (including info booklet) ready for shipping in Aalsmeer. Overhead and marketing costs are not part of that. The wholesale price is €6,59 (including the €1,09 for fulfilment). This too is confidential information, so please do not share numbers outside the student team.
What percentage of the overall sales go through what sales channel? In terms of number of trees, about 75% is intercompany (plantje.nl, Bloompost and other resellers of e-Flora) and 25% is resellers of Treemore and direct sales of Treemore. In terms of turnover that is probably 65-35. Greengiving is performing better than Plato, but Plato has more international exposure that might lead to direct sales as well.
Could you provide a list of your suppliers? The most relevant suppliers are:
BATO for the pots
MTB3D for the caps
Dependens and Buitengoed Dorrepaal/Middin for plants
Klingele for the cardboard boxes
Opmeer for the booklets
In the list of resellers, you did not mention bloempost or plantje.nl. You did mention them in the client meeting. Is it correct that these are indeed important resellers? Yes correct, see above, they are driving the business to a large extent.
The students would like to reach out to the resellers to ask them about 4 general questions about the market, which can be done through a survey. Can they forward the survey to you so you can forward it to them? Or can they contact them directly? It would be: giftnation, plantje.nl, bloempost, plato group, greengiving, ecomondo and blume 2000. Please forward the survey to me and I will reach out to the resellers.
Is there a contact person they can reach out to from the partnerships you have for later in the process? (for example, just digit, etc.). In January (after we communicated the organizational changes externally) I’m happy to share contact details.
As we do not know the contact person from E-Flora yet, we were wondering if it would be possible to have an explorative interview with anybody from E-Flora to get to know the company a bit further, their portfolio and the different segments they play in. It doesn’t matter if this person will not be the contact person in the end. à Nadine, she is available for an interview before the 19th of December or from the second week of January.
Re your previous message: Do you know if E-Flora has a segmentation strategy of their portfolio? Or any data on the different segments in your B2B market? Not specifically something that can be shared off the shelf. We do use similar web to see traffic volumes of partners and competitors. With a free account you can already find quite a lot but e-Flora also has a paid account and Nadine can potentially help to dive deeper in the data.