OFA flower auction sells nationwide, digitally and in the cloud with KOSMOS

Convinced of the fact that flowers could be sold faster, more efficiently and more sustainably by digitising the auction process, the Dutch rose growers Berg Roses and Holla Roses established the Online Flower Auction (OFA) earlier this year. By auctioning from the nursery via the digital trading platform in the cloud KOSMOS, the flowers go directly from grower to buyer following the “Today for Tomorrow” principle, so without executing any logistical intermediate steps. 

By no longer presenting the flowers physically before the clock, OFA wants to respond flexibly to the market demand. Moreover, all parties save precious time, which only benefits the quality of the product. Bearing these reasons in mind, Arie van den Berg (Berg Roses) and Paul Holla (Holla Roses) worked out their innovative sales concept.   

“The clock itself was retained as the indispensable tool for price-fixing. To digitise the auction process, we needed an innovative partner with a clock system in the cloud that continuously evolves with the market. That is how we got in touch with market leader Aucxis and KOSMOS”, Arie van den Berg explains.  

“OFA was launched last June with one auction clock for 200 users. Meanwhile, KOSMOS was updated to the most recent version 22.1 in which we took into account a number of additional requirements, such as increasing the sales speed using the functionality ‘Buy with amount buttons’. Using this feature, OFA defines the number that is present of a lot and lets the highest bidder indicate directly how many pieces he wants to purchase by pushing the right button only once,” points out Patrick Bauwens, E-Trade Business Unit Manager at Aucxis.  

Great collaboration

OFA looks back on the preliminary process and deployment of KOSMOS with warm feelings. “The collaboration with Aucxis is a good example of loyal partnership”, says Paul Holla. “Thinking and moving along with us were very important values in the start-up phase, and Aucxis totally lived up to these expectations. We really appreciate the confidence in our business plan, the guidance as well as the personal attention.” 

OFA looks forward to a bright and profitable future. “Today we only auction roses from Dutch and foreign quality growers, but there is a lot of interest from other product groups as well. This is why we aim to evolve to 1 auction clock for each product group”, the auction concludes.  

OFA, the auction platform that connects the ornamental trade 

In order to realise an auction platform in the cloud that is as independent and transparent as possible, OFA selected two parties to elaborate and develop the idea with them, namely Aucxis (KOSMOS auction platform) and HortiNL for the set-up of the digital structure. 

To automate the data traffic between all parties involved as much as possible, HortiNL developed an interface layer that links the grower and buyer applications with KOSMOS.  

The supply, order and purchase messages are sent to the parties involved through the standard data protocol Floricode. The sales catalogue is exported to KOSMOS through the HortiNL interface layer and is then sold lot by lot to the highest bidders.   

Thanks to this innovative concept, the number of manual input actions is reduced to a minimum. When products are bought and sold, stocks are updated instantly in the user’s own application.