Sales staff at AEON Co.’s flower shop in Shinagawa, Tokyo, manages flowers sold under the five-day quality assurance system introduced in mid-October.
Since the middle of this month, AEON Co., Ltd. began selling cut flowers with five-day quality assurance in 270 stores nationwide. It is attracting attention of flower growers and other retailers as the first such attempt by a major nationwide supermarket chain.
When selling cut flowers, the stores will offer customers a small bag of quality preserver and explain appropriate ways to take care of them, including keeping water and vases clean. If the flowers wither within five days from purchase, the stores will either pay back the money or replace the flowers.
Masahiko Kakitsubata, director of gardening greenery products department at AEON, says they hope to seek new customers by establishing the image that AEON’s flowers last long.
18 varieties, including roses, gerberas and lilies, are selected for the quality assurance system which promises that the flowers maintain freshness for five days. The varieties passed the quality durability experiments at flower wholesale companies’ laboratories.
Such flowers occupy half of the varieties sold at AEON stores, and the company plans to increase the varieties subject to the system to roughly 80 percent of the cut flowers. The company is yet to decide whether to continue the system between June and September when the temperature rises.
In introducing the system, the company created a video to teach sales staff about the system, and 40 buyers visited the stores to teach them how to manage flowers using quality preservers instead of only water. Pull dates are printed on cellophane paper used to wrap the flowers, to make it easier for them to manage flowers.
AEON also asks flower processing firms to conduct thorough quality management, from water temperature, room temperature, the amount of quality preservers to the timing of conducting treatments to improve water uptake and disinfecting scissors and other equipment. Buyers will visit them once in three months for inspection.
As for flowers whose quality durability is independently tested in growing areas instead of at wholesalers’ laboratories, AEON will take into consideration the data compiled in each region. Kakitsubata says AEON wants growing areas having their own experiment data to approach them individually for future transactions.
Quality assurance system for cut flowers is gradually spreading among flower shop chains and Yaoko Co., a supermarket chain in the Kanto area. Wholesalers say other supermarket chains started considering introducing the system, following AEON’s move.
(Oct. 25, 2013)