As I mentioned in June, “Road Work Ahead” is our theme for the summer.

While some of us are boarding planes to build the partnerships critical to our business, others are refreshing and retooling our Fresh Flower Factory in Vista, California to ensure we’re ready for the busy and exciting fall harvest.

Marco and his team have filled their calendars with client visits in no less than 18 states through the end of August.  They’ll touch down and touch base in cities from Sacramento to Denver, St. Louis to Miami, Pittsburgh to Baltimore, and several other sites in between.

The goal is to listen, to understand and to make the necessary plans and investments that provide what you need to succeed.  We’ve got results from a consumer research project that we did in May that we think you’ll find interesting and informative.  We hope they’ll spark some great discussion and help us work in tandem to develop action plans for the second half of 2012.  Together we can offer the industry and the end user products and programs they won’t find anywhere else.

 

Meanwhile, back in Vista…a summer “refresh” continues on virtually all of our processes and procedures.  Equipment is being upgraded and service is being done on hardware and software alike to ensure we’re always up to snuff and state of the art.

Perhaps most exciting is what’s up downstairs.  Robin Mooney and Gabe Gill are spending most of their summer on what we’ve dubbed, at least unofficially, our “Idea Lab.”  The dream is to create a space on our lower level that invites and inspires our clients to touch and feel everything we offer, to visit at length with our design and our production team, and – this is the best part, I think – to let your imagination run wild.  What ideas do you have? What would you try if there was no risk?  What are your customers asking for that you haven’t been able to deliver?  Let’s talk about it and try “stuff” together.

Together let’s plant and nurture the seed that becomes the next “big thing.”