The nursery business is not surrendering to the Red Zone. Pistoia is at the heart of the sector in Tuscany, a region that, by itself, produces 6% of ornamental plants in Europe. An innovative technology is being launched with the Nurseries Virtual Tour which uses 360-degree panoramic photography, to explore the Giorgio Tesi Group nurseries from a distance. An industry leader, it has 500 hectares under cultivation, over 200 employees, 23 production centers in the Pistoia area, and 4 branches in the rest of Italy. This inventive method is designed to keep in contact with over 2,500 customers worldwide and develop new business contacts, overcoming the limitations imposed by Covid19.
To log into a virtual tour, simply register on the company's website www.giorgiotesigroup.it. A map will guide visitors in choosing which production center to explore, depending on the preferences indicated from among the 1,500 varieties of plants grown by the Group and the 2.7 million plants in production. The system enables a complete examination of the nursery, thanks to the very realistic, high-quality images. At the same time, botanical and sales information on the plants and the ability to send requests to your sales contact are available. The platform can be browsed via both a PC, using one of the main browsers, and a mobile.
With 27 thousand companies valued at nearby € 3 billion, the horticultural sector employs more than 200 thousand people in Italy. If 2019 set the record for exports, with € 904 million of plants, flowers, and foliage intended for foreign markets (primarily France, Germany, and the Netherlands), 2020 promises to be particularly challenging for nursery businesses, because of the ongoing pandemic.
Giorgio Tesi Group’s general manager Marco Cappellini states, “Every year our nurseries average visits by 2,000 companies from Italy plus European and non-European countries, with the average stay in Pistoia being two days. During the first lockdown, we had already begun to look for solutions that would let us maintain contact with our customers, an advanced B2B capable of reaching people and companies directly at home. The Virtual Tour is an evolution of our catalog and offers customers the opportunity to inquire directly and buy from wherever they are located.”
For a company that exports to 60 countries around the world, this is a natural `progression, “a must for future development, regardless of the ongoing pandemic”, Cappellini adds. Innovation has deep roots at Giorgio Tesi Group, beginning with its relationship with the territory, as seen in the group’s commitment to promoting sports, social, and cultural projects, together with the bilingual magazine Naturart, sent to all of the Group’s customers for the past 10 years. This is followed by process innovation based on an agro-industrial model of eco-efficiency in keeping with international certification standards, logistics with an internal hub that optimizes transport costs and reduces their impact. The Nurseries Virtual Tour is a modern-day tool for innovating customer relationship management.
The platform will be constantly updated with periodic photo shoots to let customers see and choose directly the plants in production during each specific period of the year. Visitors will also be able to communicate directly with the sales department and consult special offers that will be available on a regular basis.
The virtual tour will be officially available to all of the Pistoiese company’s customers by December, boding well for the start of the new year. Until then, the offered reserved section can be visited on the company’s website https://www.giorgiotesigroup.it/en/virtual-tour/.
