Last year a good friend entered into the process to acquire a local company and asked me if I would be interested to join him in a new management team, once the take over was finalized. This challenge intrigued me, and – to my own surprise – I had missed the corporate responsibility this new adventure would come with. So, since December I am with OutFront Portable Solutions as their Commercial Director.
With this step I am a bit further removed again from the greenhouse production industry. We build garden centres that are set up every early-spring and taken down and stored again in the summer. It is quite a logistical miracle that this takes place every year again, under considerable time pressures.
This phenomenon, the pop-up garden centres that almost all supermarkets and DIY stores use seasonally in their parking lots, is very common in North America, and - to my knowledge - less common in Europe. OutFront Portable Solutions sets up more than 600 garden centres nationwide every spring. We provide them with everything from merchandising display units to irrigation, and from check-out counters to the security fence around them. Why is this a success-formula in Canada and not so much in Europe? I don't know for sure, but I think it has to do with the fact that the parking lots here are much more spacious and that the gardening season is shorter and more intense.
Over the last 20 years, a mutual dependency has developed between the bedding and patio plant producers and the pop-up garden centres in the stores’ parking lots. Because so much spring product is sold by the corporate box stores that use our set-up and service, that we can’t do without each other anymore. A perfect form of “symbiosis”!
Now that I am no longer directly involved in greenhouse production, I am also saying goodbye as the writer of these columns. After having contributed with pleasure for 4 years, I am passing the pen to a new writer. From our beautiful, friendly, steadfast and sovereign Canada, thank you for reading me! Until we meet again.
Mike VanSteekelenburg
OutFront Portable Solutions - Canada
