With the Spinach 365 concept, our customer teams guarantee that spinach is always available.
Spinach 365
Spinach every day
Climate change and changing environmental conditions can mean that harvests are less predictable and products become scarce. Our colleagues aim to counteract this with the Spinach365 program.
You need spinach to grow big and strong – or at least that’s what children learned from Popeye, who (allegedly) got his bulging biceps solely from eating the green vegetable. Whether because of Popeye or a general trend, spinach is growing in popularity.
The challenge: Customers now expect to be able to buy the same product all year round. However, heavy rain, extreme heat or mildew infestation can soon thwart that. So how can we ensure a constant supply of spinach throughout the year? Our colleagues from the Business Unit Vegetables have come up with the Spinach365 concept.
The concept has grown as a result of the switch to customer teams two years ago. They concentrate on a particular region for a crop such as spinach – and can therefore collect more data for these key accounts and address the specific requirements even better. “We no longer focus on a specific variety,” explains René van Meijel, Global Customer Team Lead Baby & Bunching Spinach. “We ponder how we can create a complete profile for the region so that our growers have year-round solutions.” The team has developed Spinach365, a model that suggests the best varieties for each month so that supply is guaranteed 365 days a year. This also allows greater flexibility, because if one variety is not available, it can be replaced by another.
Our spinach wheel shows individually for countries such as Spain which varieties should be planted in which month.
To achieve that, the customer teams now work in a much more networked way and also cover larger regions – always with an eye on their key accounts and related products. They collect and analyze data from the relevant region throughout the year. In the end, the ideal varieties for the respective periods of the year are selected and included in the program. And success proves them right: The net sales we generated from spinach in Europe increased over 30 percent last year. “That’s a real team effort,” says René.
New approaches
KWS Vegetables has always had a very good market position in the U.S. and Asia. Focusing on Europe opens up new growth potential, says René. “The restructuring into customer teams, which can now focus more on the entire value chain, key accounts and year round programs, helped in that.”
In order to obtain an ideal setup for Spinach365, the team closely observed the value chain and found that the biggest difficulty was to deliver the same product consistently. Our colleagues first zoomed in on that problem. Sustainability also played a role: Fork-sized spinach is popular, requires less water than iceberg lettuce, for example, and can be harvested mechanically, making it all the more attractive for growers. Thanks to Spinach365, they have less rejected produce because they always plant an optimal variety – meaning there is less waste in the value chain.
René van Meijel sees the significant growth in spinach sales in Europe as a “real team effort”.
In Spain, a customer team (here: Lorena Sánchez Victoria) is establishing the newly launched direct sales channel.
Direct selling of spinach
KWS Vegetables currently has five subsidiaries. In Spain, at one of the subsidiaries, a direct sales concept was launched as from March. Our colleagues involved in spinach sales there are also part of the customer team, but form their own sales unit. As spinach is often cultivated by a small number of growers on large areas of arable land, the team in Spain looks after around 20 customers – good conditions for direct sales. “If we look at KWS’ values such as proximity, that is another step in this direction,” says René. “It doesn’t mean we’re moving to direct selling everywhere, but we want to be as direct as possible. Because we can market Spinach365 even better if we have such immediate contact”
Once the growers have opted for the program and placed their orders, they are supplied either directly from a warehouse in their country or from stocks in Andijk.
“Direct sales in Spain are a wonderful challenge that allows us to be much closer to all parts of the value chain and, therefore, better understand our customers’ needs”, says Lorena Sánchez Victoria, Account Manager Baby Spinach & Swiss Chard. “This will help us build close, transparent and long-term relationships with them, offering faster and more beneficial solutions. It also allows us to specialize a lot, so they perceive us as a safe solution for their fields.” |
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