I am a very happy man

Sounds good, right? That's how I opened the closing speech of the meeting and cozy lunch that we have every year with the entire Fluwel team at the end of the season last Thursday. It will probably be quite a story, but I will explain where that joy comes from.

Tulip Silk Road

A long time ago when I was young, we are talking about the early eighties, my brothers and I enthusiastically started sending flower bulbs to America.

Hard work, lots of laughter and lots of fun and little sleep, in short, busy as little bosses. Calluses on the hands, holes in the pants and always hungry. Rent a shed here, rent a bigger shed there, build a shed yourself, start a web shop, add the Land van Fluwel activity and experience park, put up a windmill, solar meadow... just tinkering away.

Tulip Silver Cloud

What I always like to mention is that back in 1982, could have been 83, we were the first in the flower bulb world to have e-mail. Terms like digital, webshop, shopify and google analytics had barely been born or even had to be invented.

But well, you go to work, you plant your flower bulbs a few times, celebrate New Year's Eve a few times and before you know it you look in the mirror and see an old geezer. That is the case now, catastrophe, fortunately we still feel young. What made me so happy is that during the meeting there were suddenly so many young people to be seen in our team.

Suzan and Linda manage Land van Fluwel, Alina helps Claudia with the promotion in Germany, Yentl and Paul help us to become more visible in the digital World Wide Web shopping street and Paulina in Helsinki who knows what the guts of a webshop look like and performs the necessary nerve-racking operations for us. Also the slightly older but still very young Vlad, IT-er but also even crazier about flower bulbs than I am. And Pien, I almost forgot Pien, daughter Pien will also be employed at Fluwel as of January 1st.

Amaryllis Beautiful Emotion

The funny thing about this meeting, in which everyone briefly told what work they were doing, was that I saw during the meeting that we, the older generation, I won't mention our names, had degenerated into old farts in a jiffy. Especially when I told the youth that we were the first bulb farmers to have e-mail, it made me realize, and tell me, that we had really degenerated into digital dinosaurs of the largest kind. Well, then I get really happy when I suddenly see that there is a whole new generation sitting in front of you, eager to get to work.

But the great thing about this Fluwel team is that I think we are capable of beautiful things with the experience of the oldies and the knowledge and enthusiasm of the youngsters. We will do our best to send as many beautiful flower bulbs as possible to all our dear loyal customers in Europe in the coming years. And we will give as many people as possible pleasure during an unforgettable day out in our adventure park Land van Fluwel.

Land van Fluwel is currently transformed into Winterland van Fluwel where a 'Magical Christmas experience' is taking place during the coming weekends in December. Great fun for children.

Now back to the order of the day; today is the last day that you can order spring flowering bulbs from us. With a very big smile I would like to take this opportunity to admonish you; you have just bought too many bulbs from us. Shame on you ☺

Every year we use the remaining flower bulbs from the web shop to plant a beautiful picking garden next to the shed. In addition to all the trial plantings of the delivered flower bulbs, we plant a few beds where visitors can pick a bunch of flowers and it looks like we barely have enough bulbs for this. Almost all the tulips have ended up in the gardens of you and other dear customers. Seriously, thank you very much for that. It amazes us every year that more and more gardening people come to shop with us every year. Also thank you very much for all the positive feedback that many of you leave in the Trusted Shop. It makes us happy and, to be honest, by doing so you also help us gain the trust of new customers.

Amaryllis Barbados

Enough chatter for this week, we will continue to sell and ship Amaryllises in our webshop, but if you still want to plant a spring flowering bulb in the garden or in a pot... today is the last day.

I'm going to stop for today, I'll be back next week. Of course I could take a week off but I like the work so much. I think I'll talk about the Grey Pea next week.