Our flower business started with selling flowers.   But, there is a LOT more to the business of flowers than just the flowers.

Cut flowers sold in the US used to be grown in the US.  But, changes in market conditions (higher labor cost in US and lower international transportation cost) began making international sourcing and international shipping more common and economically practical in recent decades.

Thailand produces 95% to 99% of cut dendobium orchids sold around the world.  They are cheap and easy to grow there.  Getting them from Thailand to customers in other countries requires shipping by air.  In addition, there must be usable roads (normally paved) between the farms and the airport.  Thailand is uniquely suited for this.

Thailand has benefitted greatly by being close to the US economically and politically.  (The Vietnam war contributed to this).  Thailand has been an easy to reach, inexpensive, tropical tourist destination for decades.  That translates into many passenger air flights between Thailand and other countries – especially to the US.  (Airlines make most of their money on the freight carried on passenger flights).  So, there is a simple and effective logistics channel between Bangkok and several US airports.

When we started shipping orchids from Thailand in 1999, there was a smaller, less developed International Airport (Donmuang) with limited parking, no available office space and no refrigerated warehousing at the cargo terminal.  We had to ship our flowers from there, relying on inconsistent service from the existing shipping companies.

In order to improve both the reliability of our service and the quality of our product, we opened our own international air freight forwarding company early in the develpoment of our business.

Since we could not obtain office space on the airport site, we located a three story office building to rent, just two miles from the airport.  The rent for that building was approximately the same as we later paid for a 500 square foot office next to the cargo terminal at the new International Airport (Suvarnabhumi ).  We used this building for about 3 years, until the new airport opened.

Because we owned our own freight forwarding company and our own delivery trucks, we were able to continue shipping without any schedule interruptions during two coups and the transfer from the old airport to the new airport.  Most other companies were either unwilling or unable to contnue service during these difficulties.