- 2023-11-04 [[]] Hi, everyone. Alicia Lovell, West Coast. We did receive our first truckload and a half order from Hydro Farm in quite some time. And it's perfect timing, since Tony and Bob will be visiting them with me next week. I have been seeing some traction on the hydroponic front, but it remains to be seen how it's going to play out with the changing landscape there, transition from outdoor to indoor growing, and just the methods of growing. So we will have to see how that pans out. Are seeing a little bit of an uptick on the RSN with modest pickup on orders and shipments as we get into spring thawing. Working on some opportunities with Rocket Farms. I'll be visiting their Half Moon Bay location next week to go over some 5 and 1⁄2 inch collect samples and questions with their production team. So fingers crossed that that will be a difficult sale, as they are a heavy importer. Nursery, very quiet still with market saturation and cheap pricing. Following up on some revised pipeline quotes, and we'll keep you guys posted. And then finally, we have been seeing some requests for Walmart looking into post-consumer recycled content in vendor containers. Not sure if this is going to be something that's going to be a mandate down the pipeline, but just want to keep an eye on it and keep you guys posted. So, all right. Thanks. Take care.
- 2023-11-04 [[]] Hello, this is Rodney coming out of California. Lighter week on the quoting front, but did land a couple of pipeline volume orders for 18 pallets of 15 and 25-gallon blow molded to Elgin Tree Farm and an additional 26-gallon order for TFD001Gs to Bloom Mountain Nursery. Also walked the annual Farm Bureau Expo, which attendance was a little higher than prior year. Didler and Kent's Vermilions was acquired by United Plant Growers. Next week scheduled customer visits into Northern Cal with Bob and Tony. Thank you. Make it a great week.
- 2023-11-05 [[]] This is Jim with his weekly updates. Highlights this week, I delivered quotes to Pleasant Valley Farms for a new spring opportunity from additional business and also to Metrolina for their firm hanging baskets for 2025. I'll be following up with both of them this coming week. Cassaverde had a spring order increase of 24 more skids which was a nice bump up and at Metrolina spoken to Art he's agreed to host an LPT trial for the new three and a half square version that we're working on. We just need to see if we can make it work for their system. Nothing else to report.
- 2023-11-05 [[]] Hey, everybody, it's Michael. Hope you had a good week. Activity on the order side is still going pretty steady. Quotes, not so much, slowing down a little bit. Seeing more customers kind of get serious about ordering containers, the late stragglers at least. So I've been resubmitting some inactive quotes from the summer, which I'm hoping and pushing to get in as soon as possible. This week, you know, my distributor Waldo, they submitted a bunch of POs, which was good to see, because I know that they're busy trying to collect as many orders as they can on the distributor side as well. Been visiting customers who grow in a competitor's four and a half inch round pots, kind of prepping them for the low profile tray, showing them the four and a quarter. It's the closest thing we have, and the feedback has been pretty positive, honestly, on it. I think the feedback has been more about, you know, at least for wholesale growers, you know, will it work with their system, their conveyors, their carts, benches, stuff like that, which is a lot better than trying to convince them, you know, if retail customers will be able to figure out the tabs or not. You know, that's not at the top of their mind. So I think it's good, too, because with a little bit of trials, they'll be able to see that it does work and it'll work great. So I'm looking for those opportunities, really looking for all available orders still out there for spring, still running into a heavy amount of grower direct, unfortunately. And I guess, you know, you wouldn't think that China competition would be so prevalent here in Ohio, but it really is. I just want to kind of share with you some of the competitive pricing I've seen over the last couple of weeks. And, you know, it just really makes me wonder how they're able to do this. As I look through the quote tool, some of these are below cost. So, you know, I know that they have labor savings. I know that they are in a different market as far as resin, but it's still pretty shocking. So real quick, I just want to share this 60 cents for a twelve or three insert and tray combination. This week, I saw less than two and a half cents on a three and a quarter back pot. They're at 10 cents on an eight by five month and black and 18 cents for a true gallon coax black. So like I said, this is just kind of what I'm seeing out there. And it's not for truckload quantities either. These are for two, three pallets. As long as the customer orders a full truckload, the freight is included in that price. Anything less like a pallet drop is around two hundred fifty dollars, I think I was told. So anyway, it's building that long list. Customers using that product for you for the future and, you know, really getting as much competitive info also for the end of this season. So fall stuff like mom's poinsettias, fall pansies, fern baskets, you know, those are all ordered first half of twenty twenty four. So, yeah, good, good stuff. Any questions? Let me know and have a great week. Talk to you soon. Bye bye.
- 2023-11-03 [[]] Allen Maxwell calling in for the week ending Friday, November the 3rd. Obviously, not very much to report this week. There's been, you know, quote activity was quite light, no competitive information, thankfully no quality issues to report either, mainly but just been simply been focused working on the files and getting ready for the presentations. Look forward to seeing everyone. Have a good week.
- 2023-11-03 [[]] Good afternoon team this is Dustin Kuykendall reporting for the week of October 30th through November the 3rd. Had a great week in the homestead market this week. Lined up some great visits with our key direct and drop ship accounts. Got some competitive pricing from Haviland and shared that with Bryce Anderson and Brian Hill. I learned that the South Florida market is super competitive on price and that there's also lots of opportunity on both the nursery and greenhouse sides in that homestead market. So I've led I had a great visit Brad's Beddings in Delray Beach and presented the low low profile trade this week and they are very excited about the product and also we're a focus pipeline greenhouse account that we've targeted and I look forward to setting up a trial with our team and this account really soon. So I look forward to next week as well. I'll be working on my presentation for Ohio along with reaching out to more key accounts in the Central Florida market. So I hope everyone has a great weekend and talk to you soon.
- 2023-11-03 [[]] Robert Nelson, part two of my territory update. My apologies, I got cut off earlier. So again, just wanted to follow up with Plan Odyssey and Guthrie Greenhouse. We're working to get their low-profile trade trials set up. Just wanted to get some dates hammered out with them. Also, Conroe Greenhouse, we're working to get some dates from them as well. My Oklahoma customers that we have set up, we met with a couple of them last week at the Oklahoma trade show. So again, just waiting to get some dates worked out with those guys. Next week, we'll be working the pipeline over in the Central Louisiana market area, nursery target-rich spot for us. So hopefully, I'll have some more information to share next week and have some good results to talk about. Thank you. Robert, no quality issues or problems to report.
- 2023-11-03 [[]] Robert Nelson, Territory Update. Hello to everyone on the call today. This week primarily was spent administrative week working in the office. Did do some follow-ups with Kenny Bonded, distribution partner as well as BWI. Happy to report that Kenny Bonded's customer country greenhouse, we had a meeting with him a couple of weeks ago. We wanted to do some follow-ups on that. They did decide to go ahead and purchase some case quantities of our import decorative items. They're gonna pot them up and show them to their customers, their IGC guys, and start trying to gain some new sales. Again, happy to report that. Good to see some of our reps. Again, we've been trying to generate some new activity, new business, things like that. As far as directs, did some follow-ups again this week with Guthrie.
- 2023-11-05 [[]] Hello, this is Tom Merce from Alberta NBC for call number 34. Some results on pricing this week with results. West Canada and EVL should have their orders in this coming week. West Canada has issues with the TCR-10406. They need flooded floors for watering and the lip on these trays does not work well with the STG-04 in this scenario. After talking with March 8th and March 8th, I'll be trying a 4.25 tray or what's meant for those pots. So we'll see how that goes for the EVL pipeline on Canadian pricing. 143 pricing was fine on the XN-S0T1G3 black bulk and same with the 169 pricing on the white bulk. However, he's hesitant to switch to HC as HC completely cancelled his order less than one year ago, right before I started. This would be approximately 30,000 Canadian if we get it. For the STP-04, $55 Canadian was quoted, but I found that McConkie is selling these for 32 cents each. So that is out of, it's not happening this year. On the TCS-18401, 690 per 1,000 worked here and that should be for approximately 50,000 Canadian. For pipeline business coming in this week, I met with CY and they provided some nursery pricing too, all in Canadian. Trade 2-gallon pots are selling out there for 39 cents each, 3-gallon pots at 76 cents each. Pricing up to 25 trade gallons, please reach out to Leanne or myself if you are interested in seeing it. That's it. Thanks.
- 2023-11-05 [[]] Hi, this is Gay Marie with your weekly update. In October, we had ship cogs at $402,000, which is only $6,000 less than September. So that was a pretty good October for us. Mark, Gavin, and Eric and I all met about the direct fulfillment program. And I'm going to be putting together a list of items that I think we should add to that program based on the margin requirements and what is happening out in Amazon, whether they're buying it or not, and whether it would be appropriate for some other online channels that we're considering. And that's this week's weekly update. Thanks. 
- 2023-11-05 [[]] Hey everyone, it's Jordan. This week, real busy on the projects we're working on with the account plan review and all of our pipeline opportunities and our low-profile trade trackers. So yeah, just kind of busy just doing all that trying to get it wrapped up so the presentation goes smoothly and all of our information that's needed is in the PowerPoint. Did have a couple pipeline opportunity quotes this week. Haven't really heard back from them on orders, but still working that system. But slow with quoting and ordering this past week. But yeah, just pretty much working on all the projects that we have going on right now. Hope you guys have a great weekend. Talk to you next week. Bye.
- 2023-11-05 [[]] Hi, it's Tina calling in. This week I worked on updating my reports along with working on my presentation. I also booked a Scotts Nursery dropship order which was for about $30,000. It was less than normal due to overstock on their end. I did work with production on getting some below-min items produced and they also placed one bulk pallet of labeled 4-inch low-profile tray on order. The only other concern or requests I had come in was regarding samples that a customer received some different versions of trays and inserts and they weren't labeled. If they were labeled they'd be able to help identify which product was which. Thanks and have a good day.
- 2023-11-05 [[]] Good morning this is Tony Landino with the weekly sales call. Starting out with Home Depot, we have started to receive the opening orders for the spring reset late this past week. Stores to be reset in their fiscal weeks 48 and 49 were activated last week and it could take up to a week to see orders once they are activated. We had a call with the merchant and their senior IPR manager on Friday to discuss the ordering logistics timing and all that good stuff. I will be reviewing with her on a weekly basis, you know, orders and quantities as they're coming in, store counts and all that detail. The new assortment is performing very well from a POS perspective in the fall refresh stores. As for the Home Depot visit, I believe we're all set and would like to thank everyone for their help. I don't expect them to arrive in Middlefield till around 1030-ish. Mark and I will be there first thing Monday morning to finish up a few loose ends. I believe also John Harris will be bringing down and setting up on a table the PCR samples we reviewed on Thursday that will be reviewed with Cameron Brown. I just as a reiteration here, the 2025 line review, the PowerPoint submission, one-page submission, is due November 12th. This includes pricing. We will receive a much larger big template along with other files, I believe the 18th, to complete and turn around in a pretty quick fashion. From a comp perspective, overall, strong double-digit overall positive week and again that is being led by Eclipse, which is on markdown, but still the other product lines are also performing. They're up positive as well. All six regions are up in comps and Midwest was the best performing from a percentage standpoint. The Pacific region and specifically California are up now ten weeks in a row, which is a good sign. Menard was also up for the week and they are also positive year to date. Thanks everyone. Have a great week.
- 2023-11-05 [[]] This is Steve Rusterburg leaving my 30-second call, weekending 11 for 2023. Very busy week, but very productive week. Bailey's order came in for four-sided printed. I did hear on the call that we will have that in before January 1st. That order is not due until February 1st, so we have some time to make sure the printer is set up right, we're doing the right thing, and maybe even get some samples off to the Bailey's team just so they know what they're getting. Faribault also came in, as well as Park County Produce, which was in the pipeline, so making some progress. Working diligently on making sure I get my presentation ready to go, so that's been taking up a majority of my time. That is my call, weekending 11 for 2023. Everybody make it a great week. Thanks.
- 2023-11-05 [[]] Hey, good afternoon. This is Bryce. I spent three days with Dustin in South Florida in the Homestead Market. Tremendous amount of opportunity down there, specifically in the bull mullet AMK 6000s and 1001s. We picked up a pretty good bit of pricing intel on Haviland and Nursery Supplies. We've got some other key specific quote intel that's supposed to be coming in this week from our Diamond Dollar Rep, Alex, at Marquez Farms. Hopefully, it sounds like he's just going to forward the quotes right on to Alex to forward to us. Hopefully, that will give us some information to go in and take some business and kind of migrate from pipeline to book the orders, protect and defend. I had a meeting with Costa. It was the first time that Dustin and I had gone in and met with them in our new roles. Brian joined us for the day, had a good meeting with them. They're going to be getting the POs for their quarter one bid opportunities to us, hopefully sooner than later. And they're going to be getting out the Q2 calendar year bids by the end of the year. They indicated, Carlo and Enzo said, hopefully sooner than later to give us time to plan, especially on the bull mullet end. A lot of Haviland direct business down there. They're coming in, kind of going around distribution and quoting direct. They've kind of gone from quoting only the large volume direct to quoting pretty much a truckload user or more direct in a lot of terms being thrown around. The most interesting thing we saw that could also be a concern for us is Daniel at Exotic Botanicals showed us the new Haviland HP2000 high hole 2.0 gallon thermal form pot. It's very pliable polyethylene. It almost feels like a blow molded pot, but it's got a raised castle drain in the bottom for high hole. And Daniel said until we have something like it, he'll never switch because it actually helps him with weed control as well. I've got some information on that. I'll send over to Jason and Brian and Rick, Eric and the team, Gavin also to see if that might help us with our high hole thermal kind of goal that we're looking towards. Appreciate everybody's support and have a good week.
- 2023-11-05 [[]] Hey everybody, it's Jamie. Hope y'all had a good week. Got early order stuff coming in, distribution-wise, show orders. We've started to see some of those come along. At least some forecasting of things like pallet specials and whatnot. So we're starting to see that. November's still a big month. There's a lot more time for that and into December. We'll see those. So if anybody has any questions with those, reach out to me or whatever. And as far as national stuff goes, we've got some orders, some nice ones. Fulfillment's probably end of December, end of January for a large majority of that. So that's just kind of sitting right there for now. And if anybody has any concerns or questions with that, happy to reach out and help figure some things out. So let me know if there's anything, any efforts you'd like to make on that. And see y'all this week. Thanks.
- 2023-11-06 [[]] Hi, this is Jacob. This week one of the highlights went up to Montana, got to visit with High Country Growers and Vista Greenhouses. So with High Country they put in an order for low-profile trays this year. They haven't actually seen samples of them when they put the order in. They just love the idea so much. So I got to talk with them about that. We went over the samples, talked about all the benefits, the ideas behind it. They're very, you know, behind that idea. They're really excited to try it out this year. Also with Vista, we kind of went over our fiber baskets that they use for Costco. They've traditionally been going with Western Pulp, but since we're more affordable than Western Pulp, they want to give us a shot this year. They're testing out, you know, a few pallets of our baskets and next year hopefully we can get their big order, which should be around $175,000. So it could be a big opportunity to expand business there. So yeah, it was really good visits and looking forward to next week. Thanks. Bye.
- 2023-11-06 [[]] Yes, hello, this is Matt Stahl in Michigan. Had a couple good wins with Alpar this past week, both of which could have been dropship orders, one being for fiber product and the other for nursery blow mold. For whatever reason, Alpar does like to bring these types of orders into the warehouse rather than dropship directly to the customer. So that's what they decided to do for these. Got a tentative order from Sawyer as well this past week for those universal trays. Thank you for everybody working on the pricing on that with me and getting the price that we needed to the customer for that win. It is hinging on the production team over there approving it. They're just going to test them out, you know, a little bit to make sure that it handles as it should for them. So hopefully that order will come through this week. Also this week, we're working on the presentation for the following week along with a few demonstrations I have in the Kalamazoo area for the low-profile tray, one being with Klosterman and the other with Kalamazoo Flower Group, both of which would be good wins. Hopefully they will sign up for trials at the least and kind of go from there. This past week, no quality issues to speak of, no delivery issues. So all good on those fronts. So for now, that's it. Thanks so much. Bye-bye.
- 2023-11-06 [[]] Hi, this is Breanne calling last week I was in contact with Renee from Terrace and she provided me with the pricing that they were quoted for Chinese nursery containers Now they were quoted by the truckload for these prices So for the AMK 06,000 they were quoted 22 and a half cents each US For the AMK 10,000 they were quoted 27 cents each and for the BM 03000 they were quoted 15 cents per container So I have submitted this information to Paul and team so they're aware and can keep track of what we're up against out there Thank you
- 2023-11-06 [[]] Dave Voto calling in with my weekly sales update for the week ending November 3rd. Starting to see a little bit of a slowdown in quoting activity due to the fact that most of my directs have booked their 2020 for business. However, still trying to chase a few of the stragglers down here and get them booked over the next week or so, chasing quotes for Sipkins Nurseries, Greyhaven Greenhouses, Old Mill Greenhouses, Sugarden Nurseries, as well as Cannondale Nurseries and a small fill and order for Westlake Greenhouses out of Jordan. Other than that, no delivery or quality issues or concerns. Thanks.