Europe Edition
Unfortunately, if you work in the fruit and vegetable sector, it's possible, and also very likely, that you have already had a problem with sales on consignment, when your customer did not respect the guaranteed minimum price, or that he unjustifiably claims quality issues to get a discount on the amount to be paid. Or you just didn't get paid.
"From now on you can register breaches of agreement or payment defaults on FruitsBusiness, the first global platform for such problems in fruit trade,” stated José Roberto Dumke, CMO of this new project.
"It is a global database managed by producers, fresh fruit exporters, distributors, and customs agents, who provide information based on their own sales experience that helps assess the reliability of a person or company. Knowing if a customer has previously behaved inappropriately, allows companies to better decide if they should or should not sell to certain customers."
This idea comes from fruit growers “who are tired of losing money unfairly,” says Dumke (pictured right). "Currently, if a customer decides to pay you what he deems appropriate for the fruit or not pay you at all, he is safe and doesn't suffer any consequences, as the affected growers and exporters usually want to avoid expensive international legal processes, which do not even guarantee payment. But with FruitsBusiness we can all prevent these issues together."
"With this initiative, we are trying to re-educate importers so that they behave better and comply with the agreements when they purchase fruit. All professionals involved in the sales operations, from logistics operators, producers, exporters, distributors, and forwarders should be united in this platform.”
What are the biggest problems facing the marketing sector?
Non-payment when submitting documents
Guaranteed minimum price not respected
Negative results in consignment sales mode
Late Payments
And there are other issues. “All of these cases and many more can be registered and viewed publicly. Before you enter into a commercial relationship with a customer, you can check whether he has broken an agreement with other users."
"At the moment version 0.1 has just been released. It includes finding and viewing incidents, posting your own incidents, seeing how many times a company has been consulted, and putting a business under watch to notify you if another user registers an incident. We will be moving to version 0.2 soon, where we will add a score counter: the more incidents a company has, the lower its score will be."
"The causes of non-payment or violation of an agreement are divided into 4 groups: 'mild', 'severe', 'fraud' and 'non-payment'. Depending on the type of cause, the incident remains in the system for a certain time and the importer's score decreases."
"We can generate statistics with all this information. For example, we can see who is a good importer, which country complies with agreements better, how much money growers lose, etc," stated José Roberto. “We know that there are customers who do not act correctly in the fresh fruit trade. We must be united to face them, so join the Fruitsbusiness platform.”
For more information:
José Roberto Dumke
FruitsBusiness
Tel.: +55 41 9244 9631
joseroberto.dumke@fruitsbusiness.com
www.fruitsbusiness.com
