• It’s My Favorite Time of the Year, but…

• Hello, this is Kita from Classic’s Research and Testing Room!

  Now we have entered May, the season of fresh green.

  I have mentioned that I am not a fan of cold weather in the last blog entry. My #1 favorite is autumn, but I also like the weather around this time of the year as well, that is neither hot nor cold.

  In Japan, “the golden week,” or a week containing four national holidays, starts from 29th of April to 5th of May…  Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, in this holidays as well, we are forced to be creative and have fun in a way we will not catch or spread the virus.

  To me, May is not all about a collection of fun holidays or tender greens… May is also the beginning of the stinky season. Pardon me, but you will begin to notice the smell of raw garbage put out in the garbage station… for us who handle flowers, this means that we have entered the time of the year we must fight against the rot issues. 

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  • • Not So Motherly Mother’s Day Operationl 

Every year, I cannot help but wishing that the Mother’s Day was in the different season. The notorious Botrytis cinerea which cause gray mold becomes active even at the relatively low temperatures (15-20℃) when humidity is high.

In Japan, there is a saying that sunny weather will not last for three days in spring—the spring weather changes often and tends to get humid. This kind of environment offers favorable conditions for fungi and bacterial growth. Therefore, we must be alert to the flower damage caused by moisture not only in summer but in spring as well, particularly around Mother’s Day. 

 

• The Fight Against the Invisible Enemies 

Our eyes cannot actually see microbes such as bacteria and fungi as well as corona virus (obviously…).  It is hard for us to assume or imagine the existence of something we cannot see with our own eyes. Naturally, cleaning or killing what we cannot see does not really give us a sense of achievement. Yet we must eliminate them, so we go ahead and sanitize wherever such microbes may exist while blindly make ourselves believe that we are actually wiping them out.  

Moreover, we strengthen the focus on preventions in the fight against microbes. The funny thing about that is exactly when we succeed to prevent their growth, “nothing happens.” Our victory is invisible, too… in such cases, we could easily lose our motivation until something actually happens.

 

• • • Our Motivation

So now back to this Botrytis cinerea. This fungus is invisible to our eyes without exception— it enters inside the leaf without a trace (to our eyes), and eventually causes an infection.

At Classic, we usually open the boxes to check the quality of flowers and then repack those which pass our inspection in the temperature-controlled Narita Operation Center. However, upon the request of our customers, some flowers are shipped intact in their original packaging.

We are making every effort to achieve zero quality claim, and according to our data, we receive 50% less complaints over our repacked flowers compared to those we ship in the original box.

We check the quality and repack the flowers so that we can surely satisfy our customers in terms of quality. In other words, our operation itself is the fight against fungi and bacteria, and the aforesaid data proves it is working.

This serves as a powerful motivation for us.  We will keep making our best efforts to deliver smiles to our customers!

 

• Quality

• There is one thing I want to add about the quality claims; we do not think that receiving no quality complaints means the quality is good.  For us, quality claims are feedbacks of our customers (which they do not want to have to tell us), and we deliberately separate them from overall quality evaluation. The reason why is because we believe that our customers do not always send complaints. Even if they are not totally satisfied with our flowers, some accept our flowers anyways or give in, and decide not to say anything.

  Flowers are not a necessity, but I think they are essential to our life. Every one of us has a different sense of beauty and appreciation for flowers, so it is very hard to define the universal standard for flower quality.

  This means that we as a supplier are required to identify and provide information that are unique to each variety, and take every action to ensure the actual state of the flower matches our descriptions.  

  One of the most famous advertising slogan in Japan goes, “onedan ijou (get more than the price you paid).”  Classic Japan is aiming to provide flowers that our customers will “get exactly what they expect.”

 

And Life Goes On-

Well, considering the current state of my life, I am in no place to preach the importance of cleaning… I should clean my house first! Since sunny weather did not last for three days nowadays, my little garden had gone wild… I need to mow the grass.

I live in a countryside and drive to work, so I do not have to commute in a train full of people nor can make a little detour to a bar and enjoy conversations. Whether it is pre or post-Covid, generally, I do not often come across with the occasion that meet the criteria for three C’s or any C!

In my dear life, a single stem of flower in my house and good sake will always fill my heart.

Here’s to #class-chic life with flowers!

 

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