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| The age of cooperation | |
| The concept of cooperation is beginning at last to enter ornamental horticulture. We have reached the age of Cooperation. If cooperative agreements are structured properly, everybody wins, from the grower to the consumer, especially the consumer. Value for money becomes a target rather than an attempt to obtain more than our product or effort is worth. Instead, all the people in the cooperative agreement focus their efforts to creating value for money throughout the chain, without paying to compete i.e. without adding the competition tax. With new demands placed on large retailers, direct sales and performance accountability, a cooperative spirit is substituting the norms of being highly competitive in production nurseries. Many growers find this change quite difficult despite the increasing realization that cooperation can be more profitable than competition. However it is much easier to understand pure competition than it is to work out and operate a cooperative agreement to create a win-win situation for everyone. The issues of who in the chain has the greater advantage still has to be decided. Some of these ‘partners’ will still try to win more for their part of the deal. This creates the risk that the other ‘mistreated’ partner(s) will pull out of the deal – with consequent loss for all the cooperative effort. In general, vigorous competition is still required. Some companies will cooperate in some markets while simultaneouysly competing strongly in others. It is however fundamental today to develop an alignment of interest between producer and retailer in order to reduce entrenched adversarial relationships and develop the concept of interdependence and mutially beneficial relationships. With this approach they will eventually outperform their competitors. Perhaps the same appies in a macro-sense to global integration. More should be done in Italy to promote the benefits of cooperation and interdependence between trade asssociations, foreign trade institutes and individual operators themselves. Some movement in this direction was noted at the Flormart-Miflor exhibition, September 2006. Kerry Herndon, “Floraculture International” kerryherndon@msn.com www.floracultureintl.com |
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