Earth Exotics makes a splash

The last eighteen months may have been a very busy and exciting time for our operation. As we began developing our own line of vegetable products there were so many questions: What do we call our product? What products do we produce? How do we establish a retail connection? What brand will we use? How do we establish a US brand? With our strong grower connections we knew we could supply the products, but would we get beyond that stage?

A Director of Sales and marketing and a Director of Operations were hired to move our plan forward. It was July 2004 when things started to come together. We had a brand: Earth Exotic Premium Vegetables, and a strategy: going direct to the retailer. Cutting out the middleman would make us more profitable as a company.

We knew that breaking into the US retail market could be very lucrative or very detrimental to our overall business. It required a new business model and a new philosophy. As out team began to develop items, it became clear that out product line could be tremendously successful providing we built a program that was simple and easy for the retailer. Our goal was to offer our retail partners an advantage by extending shelf life and the key would be the technology we would use to package our product.

We found our unique packaging, an extended shelf life bag, from a French manufacturer who was displaying their products at Fruit Logistica in Berlin. After negotiating with a large produce company in the US who had a 20 year old exclusive contract with the manufacturer, AMS Exotic became the only other produce company in the US that has been given the ability to use the technology. It was the “missing link” in our plan to launch our product line.

Earth Exotic Premium vegetables launched in October 2004 with our first customer, a small 10 store chain in Arizona called Sprout’s farmers markets. The very next week the Arizona division of Kroger Co.: Fry’s Food & Drug stores came on board. In out first month of business in this brand new line, we shipped more than 1,700 cases of product. Although we were pleased, we would never ship that minimal amount of product again. In fact, exactly one year later, in October 2005 we shipped more than 22,000 cases: an 1100% increase in just one year, with our best months still to come; November and December.

By the end of 2005 we had shipped more than 230,000 cases. All of this was done with just 30 retail customers. Our growth potential is outstanding; Earth Exotic Premium Vegetables are now available in approximately 1000 stores. A “drop in the ocean” since there are more than 27,000 grocery stores in the US. 2006 will bring us approximately 440,000 cases and we plan to sell 750,000 cases in 2007.

What’s next? In January 2006, we installed a fully automated cleaning system customised for all of our vegetables. This, along with our HACCP program, will improve our quality as well as out shelf life. We will also be installing more than 10 acres of greenhouses in our Mexico growing region to keep up with growing demand.

February 2006 saw the launch of our new lines as “New & Improved” with new packaging that identifies our products as “Washed & Ready To Eat”. New point of sale material such as recipe cards, recipe brochures, merchandising trays and channel strips are being created as well.

Although we will continue to drive our Retail business with Earth Exotic Premium Vegetables, we will also expand and innovate with new products. In future months we will introduce Earth Exotic Organic Vegetables and Earth Exotic Dry Vegetables. Bout our most exciting new product line will be launched in April 2006: Earth Exotic Cooked vegetables. We have recently negotiated an exclusive agreement with Lunor Foods of France to develop a full line of cooked vegetables for the North American Market.

October 2006 will mark yet another first for our Los Angeles operation; we will exhibit at the Produce Marketing Associations (PMA) global convention in San Diego, California. It is our goal to have the full Earth Exotic range on display.

We are pleased to be part of the AMS family, for more information on Earth Exotic Premium Vegetables visit our website www.amsexotic.com

April 2006