Custom Flower Order System Needs Better Handle On Costs To Blossom

Rosa Flora Growers Ltd.

Where based: Dunnville, Ont.
What the company does: Grows and sells flowers to floral  wholesalers

The company’s challenge:

Rosa Flora sells mass orders of fresh-cut flowers from its greenhouses to wholesalers in Canada and the United States. The 138-employee company now uses an automated system that can process just one variety of flower at a time.

That’s restrictive if clients want any kind of change to orders, such as different colours, stem lengths, numbers in bunches or other differences. Customers are increasingly seeking custom orders; for those, employees have to literally tear apart and repackage flowers that have been put together by the automated system.

To process custom orders, the company needs to develop a new system that could be programmed to do more customization automatically – and it needs to be created essentially from scratch, requiring a significant investment in research and development and new equipment.

To read the rest of the story, please go to: Globe & Mail