Polish retail chains are a chance for the Dutch companies
Since several years Poland is increasing import of cut flowers and pot plants from the Netherlands. Polish retail chains are standing behind this positive trend.
Already several years ago Polish retailers put first cut flowers on their shelfs and started to used their clients to buy flowers not only on a special occasion, but to bring them home, on the regular basis, simply together with other commodities. This strategy works well as nowadays many Polish consumers are leaving grocery stores with bunch of flowers in their hands.- stressed agricultural counselor Carolien Spaans in her introduction at the webinar organized by the AIPH and the Embassy for the Dutch producers of ornamental plants and flowers interested in the Polish market.
The whole webinar organized by AIPH together with the Embassy in Warsaw and Floraculture International can be watched on demand here.
Quality is the key
This category is still an impulse purchase, therefore it is very important to put it in the right place on a shelf and take care for a proper display. Both Becky Roberts and Brigitte Hagen stressed the importance of a strategy and an attractive look of a display playing a role in selling flowers in discounts and retail chains in Poland. It is also good to learn about wishes of the potential clients in order to prepare a better offer that can meet their needs.
Therefore Brigitte Hagen from Flower Factory decided to conduct a store check in Poland to learn the needs of the Polish clients. Based on interviews with over 250 clients from 5 different Polish retail chains she noticed that Polish clients require good quality of the flower, more than anything else. Further they asked more for a ready bouquet rather than monotone arrangement. Based on this information sellers know how to arrange a flower display that will attract their customer.
But Brigitte warned from one logical mistake: even if Polish clients are very demanding on price, the seller should never start with this criterion when making new bouquets for sale: with price at the beginning never a nice arrangement can be created. There must be a certain thought and passion in every bouquet, and then one can think about the price of it.
Discounts vs hypermarkets or a garden center?
Both Polish guests of the webinar were convinced that there is space for flowers in the retail.
Mr Szacoń informed that the majority of the purchase in Poland is being done in discount chains, which are responsible for over 70% of the total FMCG market in Poland. This category is still developing very dynamic and new stores are opening almost on the daily basis in Poland. Therefore also other countries are interested to sell their own commodities via those chains in Poland. It is a challenge for the merchants and the talks with the chain can be difficult as the competition is high. Still a good offer with a rather limited assortment for a reasonable price should arouse interest among the potential buyers.
The second option are hypermarkets which aren’t developing that well, but are huge and need diversity on the shelfs. In this case the prepared offer can be wider with diverse price ranges. Hypermarkets are also interesting as there is no need to cooperate with the whole chain but to cover one network franchisee. As in most of the cases many franchisee create a network of hypermarkets in Poland.
What connects hypermarket with a garden center is one owner. And every owner has its own vision about the center. Therefore this what cannot be sold in one garden center will be sold in a second one. Also the quality and diversity of the offered material plays a huge role in a garden center as many of them have demanding and relatively well educated clients who are looking for good quality and nice range of new varieties of plants.
The whole webinar showed clearly that there are enough possibilities to find a way on the Polish market that is in accordance with own company selling strategy.
Polish people cut back on dinners out but still want to have some nice arrangement at their surroundings, therefore it seems that the market for ornamentals in Poland is not saturated yet.
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The article was made based on a webinar recorded on June 8, 2022.
Speakers and the program of the webinar can be found here.