Specifications

Why a specification is the whole conversation

A flower enquiry that names a colour and a quantity cannot be priced. One that names a stem length, a head size, a volume, a frequency and a destination can be.

That is not a formality. Stem length and head size drive the box count, the box count drives the freight, and the freight is a large part of what a stem costs to land. A buyer who states the specification gets a number that means something; a buyer who does not gets a range wide enough to be useless.

What is in this section

Each page here takes one part of the specification and states what it means in practice, what is genuinely standardised and what is not.

The pages fall into two groups, and the split is the order a buyer meets them in. The product is what you are specifying — stem length and head size, what determines vase life, and the summer flowers beyond roses. The paperwork and the standards is what the product must meet and carry — certification, the phytosanitary certificate, proof of origin, the false codling moth statement, and the document pack as a whole. Three certification schemes now have pages of their own: the Kenya Flower Council standard, GLOBALG.A.P. for flowers and ornamentals and MPS.

Pages are added when there is something accurate to say about a measurement buyers actually have to decide. Where a term is used loosely in the trade — "grade" is the clearest example — the page says so rather than implying a precision that does not exist.

Every term these pages use — head size, additional declaration, approved exporter — is defined once, with a link back to its evidence, in the glossary.