Have Dutch Bulb Exporters Gained Financial Control Of American Horticulture? (part 1)

October 13, 2008

Many inquiries have been initiated into the reasons why Foster-Gallagher, the largest direct-to-consumer marketer of horticultural products in North America, filed for Bankruptcy on July 2, 2001, after ceasing all normal business operations on June 29, 2001. Somewhere between 3000 and 4000 employees lost their jobs and retirement benefits, stock-owned equity and $100,000,000 in debt liabilities. The network of companies, owned and operating under the umbrella of Foster-Gallagher, were known by active American bulb buyers for many generations. Stark Brothers Nursery (Stark Bros.) was known and carried the prestige of customer of fruit, nut, berry, plant, grapevine, and other shade tree and vine plants, as the most respected national provider of these products in the United States. National fruit orchard growers were loyal to Stark Brothers Nursery in buying special fruit trees and vines, to plant and grow with an unshakable confidence that a healthy stream of revenue income would be harvested to support American farm families. Superior agricultural fruit products would be made available at the commercial markets with healthy, brightly colored, aromatic berries, grapes, and fruits. How then, could an American nursery with a flawless reputation for excellent quality, service, and a survival record in an extremely competitive business, become the helpless victim of failure and the unforgettable disgrace of bankruptcy? This question might be expanded to involve other Foster-Gallagher owned bulb and seed companies.

Gurneys Seed and Nursery, and Henry Fields Nursery also sold thousands of orders of fruit, nut, and shade trees, etc, like Stark Brothers Nursery, but they likewise sold to a vast market of vegetable seed buyers a market, that in itself was enormously profitable. If these companies were removed from the American markets Cui bono? Who would benefit from this demise, and emerge to replace these giants of mail order success in past history? Would the new mail order replacement companies be owned and controlled by the Dutch office located in the Netherlands?

Google search results show that Foster-Gallagher shipped 17 million packages in the year 2000. The amount of income that was generated from consumers ordering and buying 17,000,000 packages is staggering, even for a liberal mind.

Perhaps, the most specific generator of income from the 21 mail order companies owned by Foster-Gallagher resulted from primarily flower bulb sales. The nationally famous bulb companies, Michigan Bulb Company, Springhill Nursery; Brecks Bulb Company; New Holland Bulb Company; and the mysterious facilities located in the Netherlands collapsed, when the parent company, Foster-Gallagher, filed for bankruptcy on July 2, 20001. A national chaotic frenzy followed, when it was pronounced that all those people who had placed orders from Foster-Gallagher owned companies, and all those other customers expecting replacement orders the following season would not have their orders filled. The credibility of disappointed customers placing mail order sales was shattered by these reports of the cold shoulder being offered to those who had sunk their savings accounts and planting confidence into Foster-Gallagher companies.

Google search results showed that on September 2, 2001, Foster-Gallagher executives reported that the business collapsed as a result from negative media coverage and caused a precipitous drop off in business income leading to the catastrophic National bankruptcy, leaving a $100,000,000 debt liability to be sorted out in the Federal Bankruptcy Court in the State of Delaware and angry mail order customers who absorbed the bad news that their orders and payments received were undeliverable and noncollectable!

Many questions remain unanswered that point to the present year 2006, after the disintegration of many previously, American-owned businesses, 5 years after Foster-Gallagher disappeared. Have those American owned business, now gone, that represented millions and millions of dollars in sales of Agricultural seed, trees, and Dutch grown bulbs, been replaced by Dutch owned companies that control the horticultural sales that funnel American dollars to offshore moguls based in the Netherlands?

Continued in Have Dutch Bulb Exporters Gained Financial Control of American Horticulture? (Part 2)

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