This transcript is AI generated; there may be mistakes.
We're in such a neat industry with so many interesting people, and the thing that gets me up in the morning is that we create all these products that make the world a better place, a prettier place, and we make people's lives better.
I love being a part of an industry that colors the world.
I'm Bob Dickman with Dickman Farms in central New York.
We're right in the heart of the Finger Lakes.
I'm the general manager and also the fifth generation in our family business since 1903.
We've been a supplier for Ball since 1979, so 45 years.
In 1997, we became a rooting station, a gold supplier.
We've been able to grow to about 1,500 line items, focusing on annual vegetative cuttings, geraniums, and garden mums.
We serve a lot of different markets, from small mom-and-pop growers up to big mega growers, but we're finished growers ourselves.
We have a wholesale division at our company as well as a garden retail here.
It gives us the opportunity to really see our products from young plants go all the way up through our chain and into our finished retails.
I think that gives us an advantage because we can see our products work all the way through wholesale, through retail.
My dad Jim, he still oversees transplanting finished production, so the trays that I ship to our Ball Seed customers are the same trays that I use for my own internal production.
So it allows us to say the biggest critic of our product is my father.
When we have problems or we see issues, my dad can communicate those back to us on the young plant division, which gives us a competitive advantage so that we can make sure that our products work for our customers at Ball Seed.
I'm Caroline Blackman.
I am the business manager for Dickman Farms Greenhouses.
To order fill, it's a lot of work, and then it's a lot of rework.
And I think the biggest part of it is teamwork and communication because it starts when the unrooted cutting comes through the door.
You know, it starts off at our unpacking crew.
Then it goes to our production crew, our plant maintenance crew, our grower staff, our shipping crew.
Everybody plays quality control.
We have the best customer service department, you know, hands down, and that's our, you know, I can, so proud of them.
Our customers, whether it's the four-tray customer or the 400-tray customer, they feel like they are the golden customer.
Always starts with the people.
Quality product is going to start with our staff.
We have a lot of tenured staff here.
Over 50% have been here for over 15 years.
We've been able to grow a great product because of the dedicated staff that we have.
Our grower staff walking product every single day, ensuring that the right PGR applications, fungicide applications, pinching methods are being done in a timely fashion.
The product we ship, we want to ship the same quality product week after week after week to our customers.
And all that has to do with really the dedicated staff that works at Dickman Farms.
I'm Lindsay Vogt from Dickman Farms.
I'm the propagation manager.
Every morning we have a grower meeting where all the growers gather and get together and kind of come up with our plan for the day, what everyone's going to be doing.
To improve quality throughout the greenhouse, we have VPD in all of our growing ranges for all of our propagation.
And every year we add more VPD for more bays and we have more heated floor and concrete poured and we add more shade cloth and more heat cloth to our facility to continue the best environment possible for all of our propagation material.
For product efficiency, we currently run four AutoStix machines.
We have the most amount of AutoS tix machines in North America.
And we really focus in on that because we want to get production stuck quickly and also help our staff move into other departments to become more efficient at growing the products.
You know, from the business manager point of view and our office, you know, we are constantly working to improve our software.
You know, we have a great team, a great background that, you know, we have conversations like, oh, wouldn't it be nice if we had this?
And our in-house facility manager and IT guys, what we call them, like he takes that idea and he cogitates on it for days and then he comes back, you know, like, how about we try this?
We've given them a lot of ideas, you know, to improve our software.
Since we've been using this newer software, our inventory is 99.5% accurate.
Like if somebody asked me if a tray is in the facility, I can look at our inventory and I'm very confident that, hey, there's a tray here, you know, it's in this location, you know, we're going to find it.
Dave carries out all the logistics, the president of the company, and we know that logistics is the most important piece for a lot of customers because they want their products delivered on time, not frozen, not tumbled, and in a box.
So oftentimes we'll say we have a trucking company that grows plants.
We know it's really important.
And Dave works really well with the logistics team at Ball Seed Company, as well as the sales reps to ensure that we're doing the best thing for the customer and the best thing for the plants.
We're boxing them, palletizing them.
They're going on our own fleet temperature-controlled trucks and we're taking them to a hub.
And we go to seven different hubs in the United States.
We drop them off there in a pallet so they haven't been jostled around.
And then FedEx delivers them usually within the next day.
It always comes back to the people with Order Fill.
Our employees making sure that we're communicating with our supplier relations department at Ball to make sure that we have enough buffer products here so that we can do patch and repair and get 100% trays.
We're going to continue to expand and we still want to grow our company.
The neat thing about my dad, Jim, and my uncle Dave, who are still owners of the company, they still want to continue to grow.
It's like I'm 39 years old and they still act that way, which is neat.
We always want to create more products and create better products.
And because of that, we've been able to grow our business over the last 10 years and we really see no end in sight of where we want to be and how much we want to grow.
We value Ball so much.
They're a family to us.
We've been doing business since 1979.
They've always treated us as true partners.
Their values line up with our values.
It's always been a very strong family relationship.
That's really important to us as a business.
We're a family-owned business with family values and ours and Ball's always have lined up.
We always coin George Ball's phrase, all the best and nothing else.
And that's what Ball stands for and that's what Dickman stands for.