big grower
brokers. According to Susie, after the “big three” auto makers, Raker is FedEx’s biggest customer in Michigan.
Quality is ‘Job One’ The culture at C. Raker & Sons is all about quality.
There are signs posted throughout the greenhouses with the motto, “Quality is not what we do. Quality is who we are.” You see other signs in the offi ces, in the shipping area, on employee shirts, everywhere — espousing the importance and the company’s commitment to quality.
“Our quality systems aid in training. They aid in accountability,” Susie adds. “It is the ability to walk anywhere [throughout the facility] and see where we stand for the week and be able to identify the biggest quality issue that we have [in an area],” and address those issues immediately. “We are not a high-volume, low-margin company,” Gerry says. “We are a value-added, higher-margin company. We need to know what is being valued in the marketplace and be sure we are supplying our customers with that value.” “We are not the cheapest, and we will never be the cheapest. And we will be the fi rst to say that,” adds Susie. She says the company constantly evalu- ates its products and processes to differentiate itself so growers can rely on them for the highest-quality plugs and liners.
Tuned Into Technology
Gerry has always been a big believer in and an early adopter of technology. He saw the benefi ts of computers very early on and bought his fi rst computer when his brothers didn’t think they needed one. In those days, Gerry and his team were developing computer programs for scheduling and bar coding before anyone else in the industry — and, in some cases, before there was even equipment to handle the computer programs.
He has been hooked on the technology ever since. Raker’s IT department is pretty much the nerve center for the company: “We carry a lot of overhead in the form of technical resources. We engineer, fabricate and build a lot of our equipment. We do a lot of our own development and manufacturing,” Gerry says,
“Necessity becomes the mother of invention
around here,” Susie states. And the company has used it to its competitive advantage.
Keep on Trialin’ When you approach
C. Raker & Sons Mich- igan facilities during the summer, the fi rst thing you see is the com- pany’s extraordinary trial gardens. It is quite the endeavor, and it is open to everyone, including the general public, from mid-July to early Sep- tember. This year, Raker’s trial
gardens had more than 1,000 annual and perennial varieties divided into three categories: row trials, hanging basket trials and container trials. The company trialed more than 600 varieties of annuals in rows, and more than 300 types of calibrachoa in 14-inch baskets. There is also a perennial trial garden that serves
as a “living catalog.” It’s divided into four categories: groundcover, butterfl y, fi rst-year-fl owering and shade. Raker also has 16 separate raised beds for breeders to design gardens and exhibit their best varieties. The Raker staff sows and sticks the trial garden plants
in March and April. The inputs are then transplanted into the trial gardens in April and May. They collect trial data every two weeks starting in July on traits like time to fl ower, habit, fl ower size, fl ower openness, plant height, plant spread and overall “survivability.” For more information on the gardens, visit
trialgardens.raker.com.
www.gpnmag.com
2010 Digital Resource & Buyers Guide GPN 33
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