Lily grower A. Bakker, looking for their story and strength together

Nursery A. Bakker in Heerhugowaard is not easy to pigeonhole. The company cultivates tulip and lily bulbs and grows lily flowers from its own bulbs. Cultivation is virus-free, quality is high and the nursery invests heavily to avoid waste in the entire production process. In short: the scope is broad. But how do you properly convey that to the outside world? In conversation with director-owner Marco van Uden.

Investing in sustainability
A huge pit, a stone's throw from the nursery's office building. On the day of the interview, digging is in full swing here. About two hundred metres away is just such a well. "This is where we will soon store our heat, and there our cold," Marco points out. It is one of the big investments of recent years, he explains.

Aluminium tubes and insulated black pipes connect the nursery's various cooling and heating rooms and sheds. "We use the heat released from the cooling engines of our freezers to heat rooms and vice versa. With the wells added, we will soon store heat and cold for later use, for example in winter or just in summer. That way we don't waste anything."

Growing lilies efficiently
The greenhouses in Heerhugowaard - 34,000 square metres in total - feature bright green stems of lilies as far as the eye can see: from young shoots to full-grown stems. The lush calyxes of the flowers are still closed - because of quality and shelf life, they ideally only open when they reach the end customer. Marco: "We try to use the greenhouses as efficiently as possible. In most of them there are no walkways, but we work with rolling containers. In the growing process, the plants are automatically moved forward a bit at a time. Every ray of sun that enters here therefore falls straight onto our lilies."

High quality, loyal customers
The floriculture sector is increasingly segmented, the entrepreneur notes. Around him, he sees a division into roughly retail and wholesale. It is a division that is becoming sharper. "We focus explicitly on the higher segment. That means: quality comes first. And within that, we still try to be as sharp as possible with our price." Hence also the environmental measures, such as reusing heat and cold. Or the switch to solar panels and LED. Good for the earth, as well as for the wallet. "Everything here on the farm hooks together, like a sturdy knitted jumper," he says.

The lily bulbs are not grown in Heerhugowaard, but in Drenthe, Limburg, France and New Zealand. The 100 hectares in total is divided between 50 hectares in the northern hemisphere, and 50 in the southern part of the world. "As a result, we supply continuous quality lily bulbs year-round," he says. Most lily growers buy their bulbs elsewhere. But Marco's team uses bulbs it has grown itself. "That way we keep a grip on the whole chain. And we are good at it too. Our loyal customers come back for it."

Time for action, right now
Business is good: there are plenty of repeat customers, with some 100,000 stems rolling out the door every week. The flowers and bulbs end up with exporters and buyers in the higher segment, worldwide. Nothing more to do, you might say. But nursery Bakker did take action. The company is a member of the cooperative and trades largely through the clock.

External knowledge deployed
Marco's credo is that you stand strong together and go further. That is why nursery A. Bakker recently called in consultants from the Retail Services team at Royal FloraHolland for a study on the company's image and identity. On request, these advisers support growers and buyers with knowledge and data on, among other things, their sales strategy. They provide tailor-made advice on how to improve shelf positions at retailers, where growth opportunities lie and how to maximise these.

For nursery A. Bakker, the aim was to translate this into a strategic plan. Or, in other words: to be able to tell even more specifically about what this company does, and why. Marco: "You see that growers who tell well about who they are and why they do what they do, get more out of the market. This is an important basis for our business."

Our story on the table
Royal FloraHolland surveyed a number of loyal customers about their perception of nursery A. Bakker. The management team then defined the company's core values during a workshop. Telling off by heart what your own company stands for is difficult. You have to distance yourself from daily reality and zoom out. The creative exercises we did together with the Royal FloraHolland consultants then help. They made use of archetypes. That gave enlightening insights into our story."

Marco: "It turns out that how our customers see us and how we ourselves look at the company are pretty parallel. That is great to see. Because everyone independently wrote down which archetypes best suited the company, the common thread of our company and who we are as nursery A. Bakker became increasingly clear."

Our strength
Thus, Marco and team are always looking for new opportunities. You could easily call them innovators. But they don't talk about that. "We just do it that way. You never really think about that. For us, this is completely normal. But so it is not. It is precisely in this that our strength lies, we now know."

Now that the core values are on the table, it is time for the next step. But first, the company's leadership is taking the space to let the proceeds of last period land. "What we did together with Royal FloraHolland was valuable and smart business. We grasped the story of our company with both hands," Marco reflects.

For long-term decisions, you have to take your time, he knows. "We are taking a step back for a while with all the new insights. Until we have had a good talk about it in our nursery and it has taken some time to digest. Then we automatically know: this is how we are going to face the future."