British suppliers and overseas buyers of garden, leisure and petcare products who took part in the recent ‘International Meet the Buyers’ event organised by the Gardenex and Pet Quip associations have applauded the business-generating quality of the meetings.
The latest event, in December, was one of the many export initiatives organised by the associations. Garden decoration suppliers Home2 Garden say the services have helped them record a sales increase of more than 50 per cent in the past two years.
The company specialising in manufacturing and supplying wind spinners, wind chimes, hand- blown glass and innovative solar lighting products. Its creative director, Magic Henig (left), contacted Gardenex saying: “Most of the Home2Garden’s recent sales success has been due to a massive increase in export sales that has resulted either directly or indirectly from the important part played by Gardenex. As a result of Gardenex-organised ‘Meet the Buyers’ events and participation in the federation’s British groups at the spoga+gafa international trade show in Germany, we have made major inroads into many overseas markets. Following the ‘Meet the Buyers’ event held in December 2014, US distributor, Bosmere Inc has ordered 12,000 of our ceramic mushroom garden ornaments, and we are now working on the first shipment to Amazon USA and other Bosmere customers. Other business in North America that has resulted from Gardenex initiatives involves the major mail order and internet sales companies QVC, Wind & Weather and Plow & Hearth, in addition to garden centre mail order company/wholesaler, Kinsman Co.
“The QVC USA orders came as a result us supplying QVC Germany, which was business acquired directly from our participation in the British group of exhibitors at spoga+gafa. We have also secured new accounts with the German internet and mail order group, Pro Idee, and another important addition to our export customer base is the Desert Group, the garden centre retailer for Dubai. The export orders from the USA and Dubai and some of the German business would not have been forthcoming without attending the Gardenex ‘Meet the Buyers’ events. In fact, we have secured important new overseas customers from two of the last three buyer events we have attended.”
Home2 Garden is not the only British supplier to recognise the value of the ‘Meet the Buyers’ format, which the Federation has been organising for over 15 years. Chris Blackburn, sales director of Concept Research said; “We have received export orders in the past as a direct result of Gardenex ‘Meet the Buyers’ meetings and we consider them an important part of our marketing activities. I believe there is no better way to present the quality of UK manufactured products than to meet potentially interested parties face to face. The trust in any business relationship is crucial to its success and the Gardenex ‘Meet the Buyers’ meetings enables our prospective buyers to get to know us, and vice versa.”
One of the attendees at the recent ‘Meet the Buyers’ meeting was John James of James & Steel, who presented the company’s extensive range of pet accessories to Cristi Pop from the Romanian wholesaler/pet retail chain, Animax. Following the meeting John commented: "Once again I found the PetQuip ‘Meet the Buyer’ format to be very professional, yet informal, which is an ideal blend for this type of event. James & Steel has attended a number of these events with Pet Quip and we have always found them to be a very useful tool for our export market. They are very informative and have repaid the time, effort and expense many times over."
The next two Gardenex/PetQuip ‘Meet the Buyers’ events are scheduled for 25 March and 17 June 2015:
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