Big Grower April 2023 - 12

COVER STORY
LOCATION, LOCATION,
LOCATION
we're busy and we're trying to look for more
help and more labor, it's much different now
getting a good laborer and then keeping the
good labor. "
Delays in shipping have improved but are
still not back to where they used to be prepandemic.
" Supply chain issues continue to
impact our business and it has caused us to be
more proactive in our procurement of supplies,
as well as customer outreach, " Wark says.
TECHNOLOGY
Headstart uses Picas software to keep
Headstart Nursery's greenhouses located
in Gilroy, California.
The main hub in Gilroy, California, is where it
all began and where everything is still initiated
from today. " All seed is sent here to Gilroy where
it's inventoried, it's allocated, it's put into our
tracking system, and then it's also stored here
in our seed room, which is a temperaturecontrolled
environment. Even though we do
sow seed on a sow line at two or three other
locations, we still have all the seed come here
to the main hub first, " says Mel Wark, customer
service manager at Headstart Nursery.
When Headstart began selling plants to growers
farther south in the desert areas of California,
they were loading trucks and transporting
plants down often. So, in 1993, Headstart started
building greenhouses in Mecca in the Coachella
Valley. This gave them the ability to grow during
the winter months, as the desert environment
was much different than Gilroy, with higher
light and warmer temperatures year-round.
Eventually another southern location was
opened in Thermal, providing more space
to grow throughout the year and allowing
service to the southern areas of California,
Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada.
Three more locations opened in 2011 in
Castroville and Salinas. Here, the weather is
fairly mild and cool allowing for production
expansion of cool weather crops like artichoke
and gerbera. " Steve was really strategic in
the way of picking places that would be
ideal for growing conditions, " Wark says.
Being able to shift production between
locations enables Headstart the flexibility
to grow high quality plants all year long.
12
APRIL 2023
everything in sync between locations for both
ornamentals and vegetable transplants. This
is a huge help when transferring products
between the six facilities and allows the
company to track important aspects of the
business like how much it costs to transport
between locations. " That helps us to also look
at what crops could we move [to Gilroy] and
not be grown in the desert so that we could cut
some of those transfers out and save a little bit
of money, " says Wark.
" Across the board, we just put a lot of
procedures and protocols in place with our whole
company, making sure that seed is here and
available for our seed room to prepare it, get
paperwork run, labels run, make sure our crews
can get trays filled with media and ready to go,
all that the week before. We're really trying to
operate much more systematically, " she says.
As a small, family-owned business, it was
much easier 40 years ago to plant orders within
days of being placed by the customer. Today,
many questions need to be answered before
moving forward to avoid costly mistakes, says
Wark. " Do we have the manpower? Do we have
the time? Do we have the seeds? Do we have
the trays? Do we have vermiculite? Do we have
all the things? So, lead times have been a big
challenge as well, just internally, changing the
mindset of making sure that we aren't operating
off of 911s all the time. "
TRANSITIONING FOR THE FUTURE
" I remember being at Spring Trials and I would
say, 'We can do it all. We can do anything. Here
are our programs, and this is just a starting
point.' But if you have a customer who wants a
different crop or wants the same crop but in a
Big Grower April 2023

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