Inputs distributed on terms you can read
Tier prices, credit period and freight basis on one line of the price list. Indents go in from the dealer desk and come back with a dispatch date before they are confirmed.
The network, counted
Facts about the distribution rather than about anybody’s harvest.
What we carry
Three lines, deliberately. A distributor carrying everything is a distributor whose depot is out of the thing you need.
Seed
Certified lots with the tag number on the invoice. Where a lot is a re-bagging rather than a fresh certification, the invoice says so — which occasionally loses us the order.
Soil and nutrition
Bulk and bagged, priced ex-depot with the freight shown separately. We do not build freight into the rate, because a dealer forty kilometres away is subsidising one four hundred away when we do.
Storage and handling
Bags, liners and moisture meters. Low-margin and stocked anyway, because a dealer who can only get them elsewhere eventually buys the rest there too.
Trade terms
Four things that are the same for every dealer, whatever they buy.
Tier price, in writing
Your tier is on your dealer desk and on every quotation. It moves at the season, never mid-season, and never because of one order.
Credit, stated
Thirty days from dispatch on an approved account, and the approval is a conversation before the first order rather than a surprise after the third.
Freight, separate
Shown as its own line, ex-depot. Nothing is buried in the rate.
Returns, within the season
Unopened stock back at invoice less handling, until the season closes. After that it is ours and we say so.
What dealers actually mention
On terms and dispatch — the two things a trade counterparty judges you on.
The dispatch date comes back with the confirmation, not after it. Twice in nine years it has slipped, and both times we were telephoned before we noticed.
They took a re-bagged lot off my indent and told me why rather than shipping it. That is the reason the rest of the order goes to them.
Freight is its own line. It sounds small until you compare two quotations where one of them is not.
Before you open an account
Four answers, including the one that costs us dealers and stays where it is.
How do I become a dealer?
Telephone the depot. We will ask what you already stock, who you buy it from and roughly what you turn over — and if there is already a dealer within about fifteen kilometres we will usually say no, because two of you competing on our price helps neither of you.
What is the minimum order?
One pallet on the first indent and none afterwards. The first one is about proving the account works end to end rather than about volume.
Can I get exclusive territory?
No, and nobody has one. What you get is the fifteen-kilometre rule above, applied to you as well as to everybody else, which is the same protection without a contract that neither of us could enforce.
What happens if stock is short?
You are told before the indent is confirmed, with the date it is expected. We do not part-dispatch and invoice the balance later — a dealer who has paid for stock that is still in our depot is financing us.
Open an account for next season
Twenty minutes on the telephone settles the tier, the credit and the territory question before anybody fills a form.