“Dik Turf called several times, saying he needed to speak to you urgently. And so did Huib. Can you call them back?” “I will, Julia. How was your weekend? You were going to see Mental Theo, right? How was it?” “Charly Lownoise & Mental Theo were fantastic! I still have this beep in my ears, and my legs are sore. And ‘Stars’ was completely different! I hope they’ll play this version on Radio 538 or Veronica.”
Better call Dik first. We would call him ‘horny Dik’, not for his libido, but his commercial drive. “Hope you went to the gym for an extra session this morning, Dik, you were a bit puffy in Quito.” Every time I would meet Dik at a show, I would point at his belly or chin, gesture, and ask him if he gained weight. For sure, the next morning he would be in the gym.
“You know, China holds the future, John, also for flowers, and I’m going to organize a first show there. I told you some time ago, and now the Chinese are giving the go-ahead. Are you joining?” Instantly answering expected questions, “I take care of everything: transport, stand, hotel, visa, interpreters, you name it, we’ll arrange it. All stands are 16 square meters, only 5,000 guilders, all-in for 3 days. First come, first served. Anton Speelman wants a stand next to yours. Six months from now, at the beginning of October.”
Sjef had been mentioning China regularly of late. “Everybody is talking about India, but I think that the Chinese will surprise us. You know, Witte de Wit was late in South America and Africa, let’s be the first in China.” Dré and Piet had been quite nationalistic in their market approach, but for sure, we were rapidly conquering the other continents. But Asia? Maybe it would be an idea to join Dik and Speelman, silently hoping China wasn’t ready for Witte de Wit yet.
Huib of Normad had traced the Sabatini contact. “My mum is a great tennis fan, watches all matches on TV, last week the French Open, and somehow found out Sabatini’s manager in France. I phoned him, and he gave me the name and number of the guy to talk to: Donald Dell, Vice President of ProAce Inc., Arlington, Virginia. You fly to Washington on a direct flight with KLM. I’ll fax you his telephone and fax numbers.”
This sounded better than changing planes in Hong Kong, waiting for several hours to connect to Kunming, as Horny Dik had explained earlier. Still, I only unpacked my suitcase yesterday. Touch base first.
Rosalie was at her desk in the breeding office, Radio 538 in the background, working on the slinking pile of notebooks. “Getting fed up with Seedy’s mirror hieroglyphs yet, Rosa?”
“No, on the contrary, I’m unravelling more and more of the tunnel’s secrets.” “Did you know he’s a real Renaissance fan, you know, Michelangelo, Newton, Vesalius, Leonardo Da Vinci, especially this last one?” I remembered Seedy’s stunning lecture on the history of the rose, arguing that Renaissance scientists really were the first rose breeders.
“Well, it took me a long time to decipher the words ‘Royal Collection Trust’ and ‘Galleria dell'Accademia di Venezia’. I went to the library to find out more. The Royal Collection Trust is the private art collection of the English Queen in Windsor Castle, of which I could only find a list of works, and the gallery in Venice is an art museum. Any idea what they would have in common for Seedy to write them down?” I had no clue, upon which Rosalie, our ace in puzzle solving, proudly revealed: “Both have drawings of roses by Da Vinci.”
“Wow, Rosa, that seems too much of a coincidence! Our sweaty rose-fucker has a mysterious academic side other than barkeeper. Do you want me to ask him?”
“Not yet, let me investigate further to see what I can discover. I love this. The big question remains: why would this be in his scribblers on his breeding work in the tunnel?"
Quick look in the vase life room, base of the Witte de Wit reputation for reliable varieties. With its room on the north and living room conditions, we were stricter than both auctions, testing under ideal conditions. I noticed a container in the corner, covered with plastic. Seedy and Junior walked in, on their way to the packing shed annex canteen for a coffee break with the other ‘boys. “That is our botrytis test,” Junior explained. “Simple and fast,” Seedy added. “Coming for a coffee, or do you need to hold Maurice’s hand again?”
“Don’t dare to be in a room full of fuckers. Besides, Maurice’s hands are soft and warm.” “Can I still arrange our visit to Kinsinger Brothers and then on to Sophia to look at the breeding there, Klaus?” “Any time. Sien will be happy to get rid of me for a while.”
The pot rose trials at Kinsinger in Florida would be flowering in two weeks and from there we could fly to Ecuador to check out our breeding with Sophia, especially as she indicated we lost most of the hips because of botrytis. My idea was to call Donald Dell at the end of the day and, if he was interested, offer to come to Washington. From there, I could continue to Florida, pick up Klaus, visit Kinsinger, fly from Miami to Quito, spend a few days there, and return.
Dell agreed to a meeting, sensing my seriousness by offering to come over to Arlington for this. Convinced by a positive outcome, Huib had already arranged a trip to Mülhens in Cologne. We would go in a big van, Huib and his colleagues Agnes and Dries, Sjef, Jan, and I.
My first and brief experience with the VIP world had been a year after entering Witte de Wit, when the Tulp brothers had discovered a pink mutation in their planting of Leonardo®, had it propagated, launched it as ‘Pavarotti’, then informed Uncle Piet. He then asked me to make sure we would not get into trouble with the world-famous tenor for using his name.
I was lucky. Pavarotti was scheduled to perform in Rotterdam Ahoy a month later, organized by the Dutch entrepreneur Harry Mens. The singer was to stay in the Kurhaus Hotel, Scheveningen, and the idea was to have a big bouquet put in his hotel room, accompanied by a letter asking his permission to name the rose after him.
Simple idea, complicated mission. Pavarotti’s management did not allow personal contact. The hotel management put me in touch with its private flower arranger. No flowers that could affect his voice were allowed in his suite. We agreed to supply the roses to the designer, who would use them in dinner arrangements in the hotel restaurant on the night preceding the concert. He would inform the singer and hand him the letter.
To my great surprise, the hotel contacted me a few days later to say that they had a letter waiting for me. Pavarotti felt honored to have the rose named after him, and by the way, the names of his daughters were Cristina, Lorenza, and Giulliana.
The visit to Mülhens was fascinating. Leaving in the big van was like going on a school trip. Huib led in excitement, informing of the history of the perfume company and its famous 4711 ‘eau de Cologne’.
Apparently, a Carthusian monk gave the recipe of the perfumed water as a wedding present to his then 30-year-old friend Wilhelm Mülhens. In 1792, Wilhelm introduced it as a drink, ‘Aqua Mirabilis’, miracle water with healing powers, to be drunk purely or mixed with wine. In 1810, Napoleon decided that the ingredients of all medical recipes had to be made public. Wilhelm cleverly re-labeled his product as an invigorating and refreshing fragrance to be applied externally. He also changed the medical bottle into the iconic Molanus bottle (developed by distiller Peter Heinrich Molanus) and named it ‘4711 Original Eau de Cologne’, 4711 being his house number in Cologne's Glockengasse. Though associated with elderly ladies, 4711 remains a bestseller today.
Gabriela Sabatini introduced her first perfume in 1989, for Europe through Mülhens. The perfume industry was the epitome of marketing, and we were about to enter its Walhalla.
Huib continued to explain the marketing strategy, target groups, and different Sabatini perfumes. Nothing new here for Sjef and me. We had paid careful attention during the class of my perfume-football friend. Jan, sensing his ignorance, was quiet throughout.
A year ago, the German company Welle had taken over the ownership of Mülhens, allowing it to continue its operations.
The German hosts were equally excited, continued Huib’s marketing seminar by visualizing vision through strategy into packaging, advertising on national and local levels, and retail-support. Their delegation was impressive with Managing, Commercial, Marketing and Creative Directors at the table.
We felt like a bunch of medieval marketing amateurs, but the Mülhens management was thrilled with the possibilities of combining perfume and roses. Both products appealed to emotions, and the combination would allow for joint promotions, packaging, you name it, and then there was Gabriela Sabatini herself, international tennis tournaments from Wimbledon to local Benthuizen championships. Every town has tennis courts and competitions these days.
The fact that I yet was to meet Donald Dell, persuade Sabatini herself and finalize an agreement seemed no obstacle. The MD had regular contact with Donald.
Upon return, I went to check out BCG-93015 with Piet Lek. Piet was the first-hand expert on any Witte de Wit cut rose and had his own jargon to describe specific characteristics. Growth could be ‘bonky’ or ‘horny’, pointing to ground or basal shoots, disease sensitivity could be ‘running in white’, pointing to foliage, or ‘blotty’ for flowers. Bud shapes could be ‘balls’ or ‘slender’.
“Do you know,” Piet continued about the last aspect, “we all look for slender heads for pack rate, but Toon [Big Anton] is crazy about this big white from LAVAL, and then Sjef told me to pull it out. When I told Toon, he put some plants in his garden, to discover they too had disappeared after he returned from the trip you took to LAVAL the other day.”
BCG-93015 was “somewhat bonky, healthy, a little bally,” but “a good grower and opener." Piet’s blessing was crucial for the whole Sabatini mission.
Pointing to the adjacent code in the bed, “This is the one Michiel wants to plant and have baptized ‘Royal Dutch’ at this Shell festivity.” Not long, but productive, “giving a lot of stems, 50s and 60s”. Michiel was the eldest son of Wim Tulp, pigheaded unlike his father and uncles, who had started his own nursery with a family loan, and somehow connected to a Shell manager, talked him into naming a rose after the stock exchange name of the company. I was happy Snuf was involved on behalf of Witte de Wit.
When the time came to fly to Washington, Piet supplied two big bunches of our finest roses, one for Donald and one for his secretary, for instant connection to her boss whenever I would call.
Donald managed the marketing for famous sportsmen and had basketballers, gymnasts, ice skaters, and tennis players such as Pete Sampras, Jimmy Connors, and Gabriela Sabatini in his portfolio. Big dollars. Luckily, I managed to explain the workings and margins of the flower industry and we ended with the proposal that for using her name and two days’ work for us, Sabatini would receive US $ 80,000 per year and $ 0.10 per stem sold. We would deliver roses for Sabatini at the next Wimbledon tournament, Donald would then discuss the proposal with her (though this he considered a formality) and then we would finalize at the US Open.
Arrived on UA947 in the afternoon, meeting with Donald, spent the night in Best Western Rosslyn Westpark, next morning US1757 to Fort Meyers, pick up a rental car and Seedy (who flew in from Amsterdam via Atlanta), on to a late lunch with Ann Wheely and her husband of Patent Rights International, offering more services at lower costs for Plant Patent applications. Night in Comfort Suites, Fort Myers, next morning to Kinsinger Brothers, Alva.
Jeff Backarack was expecting us; the pot roses in the quarantine area looked good and had already been multiplied. When the formal quarantine period ended, we would have a flying start, sending cuttings to our licensees in the US and Canada, and Kinsinger could start their liner production. Two years faster than J&P.
Back to the Fort Myers airport, renamed Southwest Florida International Airport (RSW) two years before, via Miami to Quito. Seedy only carried hand luggage and his regular outfit of a lumberjack shirt and slippers.
Gert and Sophia were waiting for us. For lack of car space, they had left their three big dogs in the house. After every visit, I had to get my outfit de-haired and de-drooled. Although their original plan was to leave Holland for Portugal, then for Canada to run the Keith Laver breeding after the planned Witte de Wit takeover. When this didn’t materialize, they were happy to move to Ecuador for us. I wonder if Nova Zembla would also have been an option for the adventurous couple.
Sophia, enthusiastic as ever and without any respect for possible jet lag, instantly started telling about the breeding she had started, following Seedy and Junior’s instructions after having planted the mother stock half a year earlier. They had sent varieties like Aura® that were unfit for hybridization in Holland, and they hoped the higher light intensity at the equator would help. This, Sophia affirmed, had worked, but because of the morning moisture after the cool nights, the hips would contract botrytis, shrivel, and fall off. She had also just sent a batch of pot rose cuttings to Anton’s Potrozen, following Sjef’s idea that higher light intensity would give more side shoots and flowers. Sophia, breeder by origin and daughter of a big pot plant producer, had also planted some of the pot roses herself and had started using the cuttings to set up a small production for domestic sales.
Gert had started as the General Manager of Peter Daimler’s La Tolita Investments in the Cayambe area. Big responsibility, long days, and a little frustrated that the implementation of the results of his research on rose growing was taking longer than he wished. But then, patience was not one of his key virtues.
Not to lose too much time, Sophia had organized a Dutch lunch at their house, harassed by their dogs. This was bread with cheese or ham, coffee, and go. First, a quick visit to Sophia’s own greenhouses at the back of her house, joined by their dogs. Besides mother stock for the pot roses, she was also experimenting with other types of pot plants, not ‘green’ pot plants, but all with flowers. Ecuadorians wanted flowers. They had plenty of natural foliage to look at. Gert indicated that next time he would show us his collection of orchids, which he kept in his little office in town. These two must have green blood running through their veins.
Our trial area for the Witte de Wit and LAVAL varieties at the Emerald farm was looking really good. Compliments for Sophia. For the breeding on site, the solution would be to install heating to bring up the night temperature in the breeding area, which then also needs to be closed off and insulated. That would be quite an investment. Not continuing wouldn’t be a problem for Sophia, happy to be running the trials and showcase, her own pot plant production, and living in Ecuador. Better try in Kenya, I thought.
We spent some time going through the trials, then Gert showed us the production of Premier Rouge® in which he had a few beds the ‘new Dutch way’, not in soil, but elevated beds filled with perlite, bent foliage at the bottom of the plants, and a ‘low table’ of cutting points to get longer stems. Daimler was following this closely and had even suggested importing cocopeat to replace the perlite.
We stayed in a small hotel in Cayambe. The next morning, Gert drove me back to the airport, and Sophia took Seedy back to the breeding and trials, to share production and vase life figures and take a closer look at the traditional way of growing roses, as introduced by the Colombians. Seedy would stay a few more days and take a direct flight back to Amsterdam. Gert updated me on developments in the Ecuadorian rose world. Peter Navas had left Daimler’s Tenjo Flores to set up his own rose farm and had taken on the Rosen Vorbeck representation for Colombia and Ecuador. Hans Klepper and Enrique de Guzman had had another fallout, but this time it looked final. No idea what would happen to the Terra Blanca agency. The story of a Russian buyer who, a year earlier, had come in with a suitcase full of cash and now had returned and disappeared. Some other Russians had taken over farms.
I had to connect in Miami. At the passport control in Miami, the immigration officer looked at my passport, the screen, then to me, back to the screen, repeated this a few times, and then called for a colleague who asked me to join him in a separate, big room. There were around six rows of Latinos and Afro-American travelers chained to wooden benches. I was told to sit on a bench at the side. I wasn’t chained, which irritated me, and upon my asking, the officer explained that I was ‘a different case’. Color, I thought.
The officer left with my passport, returned to call me in, take my fingerprints, and ask all sorts of questions about the names and dates of birth of my parents, their whereabouts in the last 10 years, and whether I could prove I had not been in the USA on April 5, 1984. I lived in Canada at the time and could prove this with stamps in my passport. He sent me back to my bench and a few minutes later told me I could go. I asked him for an explanation. He indicated that on that date, somebody with the same name and looks as me was arrested in Amarillo, Texas, for a firearm offense. My fingerprints and the name of my father didn’t match, and the criminal John Pouw was a few days older.
I asked if he could give me some proof of the identity mix-up, as I was travelling to the US regularly and wanted to avoid the hassle and risk of missing flights. With some documents, fingerprints and another story I made my way for the gate. Luckily, my connecting Martinair flight was scheduled to depart two hours after my timely arrival.
Sometimes planning is flawless, and adrenaline makes up for fatigue. No time for jet lag anyway.
I called Donald when I returned to the office. His secretary again thanked me for the roses and instantly put me through. Donald had spoken with Sabatini, who had agreed to the proposal and was excited to have a rose in her name and receive flowers at the next Wimbledon tournament. Laughing, he continued, “You got me into trouble with my wife when I got home with your roses.” Her reaction had been: “Or you want to make up for something you have done, or for no reason, you have been spending a lot of money!”
At the end of June, Norma met with Gabriela Sabatini in her dressing room at Wimbledon, bringing a big bunch of roses, including some flowers of BCG-93015. Sabatini would have preferred one of the pinks but understood why we selected a red to carry her name. She was excited about the idea. She went on to make it to the quarter finals. Steffi Graf won the tournament.
Unfortunately, I had to attend a CIOPORA meeting in Budapest at the time, boring, but one of the duties that I had not been able to persuade Maurice to attend. It was always good to meet fellow-breeders and Bernd Sof was always there for an evening out. He knew all the party bars, wherever we would go, Barcelona, Tel Aviv, Columbus (Ohio), and Budapest.
At the end of August, I made a blitz visit to New York for a breakfast meeting with Donald at the US Open. He had a stretch limo pick me up at Kennedy airport, drop me off at the Doral Park Avenue Hotel, where I had breakfast with Donald the next morning. Everybody happy.
Pedro, the limo chauffeur, picked me up again for a tour of the city and a visit to the US Open, where I attended the center court match of Pete Sampras, front row, VIP box, weird. Pedro dropped me off at the airport, where I found out my return flight had been cancelled, but since I had a business class ticket and only hand luggage, I could make a run to the gate to catch an earlier flight. I had two open business class tickets, one starting in Los Angeles, the other in Cape Town, and could build in all kinds of destinations and still travel more cheaply than tourist class.
Made it, and they closed the door behind me. Out of breath with a glass of champagne, I felt out of place in a different world. VIP.
In Benthuizen, many of Seedy’s rarities in the tunnel were flowering. Some colors and flower shapes I had never seen before, neither indoors nor outdoors. Seedy refused to spray, so most of the varieties had mildew or spider mite, but several, mainly the ‘amboise’ series, were spotless. The selection team of Witte de Wit, notably Maurice, Kees, Jan, and Snuf, never came in the tunnel, and, surprisingly, neither did Sjef and Big Anton. Seedy and Junior had set strict rules for selection: only the opinions of those who would fill out selection lists at times of flowering would be taken into account. Anton didn’t like lists and would do his unreported selections when he felt like it, and only discuss with Piet Lek or visiting growers he would run into. Uncle Piet would visit open days at Piet’s and Father Dré would enter the Benthuizen greenhouses on some Sundays, to avoid a house full of visitors. His ‘Dréing’ had stopped altogether.
In retrospect, Big Anton’s and Father Dré’s instinctive selections had been the secret recipe of Witte de Wit’s success. Like ‘le nez’ in the perfume industry would decide which fragrance would be commercial, Anton had the eye for the future, and Dré had mastered the art of throwing away.
In the meantime, with the candidate GS-1 growers, we had decided that the Tulp brothers would plant a few beds of the variety and would come up with a cultivation recipe, so that when 9 or 10 different farms would start producing, we would have a relatively uniform product. Not trusting the commercial propagators, the plants would be made at the pot rose division. Following their theoretical schooling and market information they had gathered from the ‘Bloemenbureau Holland’ (Flower Council Holland), the auction marketeers and Jan had produced a first draft of a marketing plan. Huib of Normad, Sjef, and I received copies, and we would discuss and decide when I would come back from China.
I discussed the planning for the ‘Bloemenvaktentoonstelling’, just two weeks after my return from Kunming, with Norma, who would then make all the appointments.
