Visionary dad, equally brilliant sons Family tandem propels flower farm to success

MANILA, Philippines - For the Andaya brothers, Arnold and Dustin, Island Rose, the company that their father, Armando, started in 1983, has kept relationships alive. Island Rose sells a variety of farm fresh roses directly through their website, www.islandrose.net, and delivers the flowers to a buyers’ intended doorstep, office cubicle or anywhere in the country, as early as a day after harvest.

“We started the straight-to-farm model in the flower wholesale industry, which means you order from the Internet straight to the farm and it’s delivered to your doorstep,” says Dustin. With all the questions in logistics at that time it was an amazing thing to even conceive of the idea. “Nobody believed that it could be done. Our biggest problem was the delivery,” says Arnold.

None of the freight forwarding or delivery services wanted them as a client. As fate would have it, a friend of theirs was starting out in freight forwarding and agreed to deliver their roses. Although their friend’s business had to close a few years after, Island Rose was in full swing, receiving huge amounts of orders already.

Dustin approached the couriers once more. This time, everybody wanted in on the business. “We were able to create an e-commerce logistics system,” he says. Today, the company delivers more than six hundred thousand stems in a year plus thousands of gift items such as chocolates, stuffed toys, and jewelry.

Their father frequented Holland in business travels and would see truckloads of flowers in the airport. That was the start of his studying the greenhouse technology. “He wanted to bring the technology to the Philippines. It was visionary at that time,” says Dustin. The sons are cut from the same stem. The first objective of the farm was for export.

“We were registered with the Board of Investments — the first company to do commercial growing of cut flowers,” says Arnold. “As a pioneer,” chimes Dustin. “We were the first in the industry,” he says. In 1990’s, the bloom of wedding coordinators and tourism saw an increase in local demand. Island Rose became the number one wholesaler of cut flowers.

Arnold’s expertise in the farming technology makes him in charge of the technical side of the business. Younger brother Dustin’s brilliance in marketing and all things related online takes the lead in product development and in expanding their reach to their market. Arnold had the foresight to increase their greenhouses and modernize the methods. In 2000, Dustin saw the potential of the Internet and risked his own money to start the website. The brothers are the perfect dynamic duo in business.

The Internet and farming

When their father saw the growing demands of their market, the brothers were able to convince him to invest more and modernize the operations. Located in the cool climate of Tagaytay, the farm is an impressive site.

“With limited land, the greenhouse technology is really the way to go,” says Arnold. It provides a controlled environment so that produce is not dependent on weather or affected by pest infestation. “You remove this old mentality of agriculture. To produce our numbers, you will need hectares of open field. A greenhouse technology protects the land and saves on water,” he says.

Reliability is irreplaceable. “We outsource our hosting and our shopping cart. Our site is never down – it’s up 24/7,” says Dustin. With a nationwide delivery, Island Rose has survived even in the harshest of economic times. “When you look at website in the Philippines, it’s in pesos. If you’re abroad and you visit the site, it’s in dollars. It automatically converts,” he says.

Clients can customize their orders and gifts to go with their roses. Island Rose carries message teddy bears, chocolates, and even jewelry. But it’s really the roses that are magical. They have a way of miraculously melting a woman’s heart and for symbolically reminding the person who receives them that they are loved.

Growth and beyond

Successful businesses are built on solid relationships. “Before Plantersbank came in, we operated on internally generated cash. We were spending what we earned for the company, which made us very prudent to upgrade to a new system. Plantersbank gave us a break,” Arnold shares.

The basic structure of the website has been the same for 10 years. “We’re about to go into a new more drastic change with Plantersbank,” says Dustin. The brothers also bought the company that supplied their chocolates when their long-time partner offered it to them. Keeping relationships alive is something they learned from their clients. “We have clients who started out in the ligaw (courting) stage and who are now happily married,” says Arnold. It’s this kind of care that they put in their relationships that they apply to their business.