Locally here in upstate NY. My uncle is a crop consultant who represents a small line of specific inputs for agriculture. He had been working with Vitazyme since 1995 and found it to be a very consistent and beneficial input for all agriculture. He suggested we try some in our business, which is really in the aesthetics business in regards to plants. We were not sure how an agriculture product could benefit us. We don’t grow plants for sale or harvest, in fact we don’t really want our plants to grow much anyway as we are maintainers of plants not growers. The answer we were told had to do with the look of the plant and the extended life before replacement. Both very important in what we do. So we tried a test.
We maintain a mall locally and decided to treat ½ of it with Vitazyme and ½ left as our control. Everything else in terms of fertilization, watering and care were the same. In a remarkably short time we were able to discern remarkable differences. One side was much greener, had less replacements, and the plants generally looked healthier versus the control side. There was excellent leaf development and less stretching of plants on the Vitazyme side. In short we had seen exactly what we would like to see for our plants.
From there we developed a program to add Vitazyme into our fertilization program in a cost-effective way. At that time we were offered an opportunity to help market and promote Vitazyme use and sale. There were a few people who were marketing it in the States and a couple who had taken the product abroad internationally.
As we had no connections to farmers locally and the interiorscape industry where we did have contacts is so small we decided internationally was the way to go. Both my father and I have degrees in business management, and we have both traveled outside of the States, so we felt comfortable venturing into the international arena. My father had the great idea of looking toward Ukraine as a place to start. Maybe it was just for the challenge of a non-English speaking area, but I think more so on Ukraine’s reputation as the ‘breadbasket of Europe’ and their very large area of agricultural production.
Through some great research and networking we were able to find a guy in Ukraine who is an American already networked into Ukrainian agriculture. Soon Paul became our partner and organized a trip for us to Kyiv and a large Ag show to prospect for distributors and gauge the reaction to this American product. Well, to make a long story short (and one that can be told a different day) we now have a master distributor who sells direct to farmers and also through 3 regional distributors. A research station doing extensive research on winter wheat, winter canola, sugar beets, barley, sunflower and corn. We are working with some of Ukraine’s leading growers and companies to expand usage and knowledge of Vitazyme throughout Ukraine.
With 36 million arable hectares we have a long way to go, but we are starting to get volume up to good levels. We are continually learning not only about Ukraine customs and business, but also about the agricultural systems technology and crops grown there, as well as worldwide shipping procedures, and import customs regulations. I even have been studying Russian in order to be able to better communicate and be more independent while traveling there (as well as the excellent brain exercise).
The experience has been invaluable as we have started to move forward in other areas of the world. We decided to move toward the Southern Hemisphere as an attempt to have year-round sales with opposite growing seasons to ours. First was New Zealand, where we now have established distribution. Then Australia where we are finalizing our import permit, the last step before distribution. Also in Chile we are close to finalizing a distribution agreement for full-scale launch for the 2010-2011 growing season.
We have other areas where there are trials under way like Columbia, Philippines, Brazil, South Africa and Ghana. And developments from our work in Ukraine are taking us to the eastern European arena and beyond. All of which has been extremely exciting and challenging, and also brought us new talents and abilities as we continually learn about Vitazyme and worldwide agriculture.
Recently we have opened up our web-site and offices to local US retail sales. So it is nice to be able to offer Vitazyme here now as well.
We would like to invite you to keep reading on as we add to our travels and entries. I will try to do a few catch-up entries as recently we were in Chile, then Ukraine, then New Zealand and Australia. Seems like I have not seen much of our summer here in New York (though it has not been much of one I am told). We will try to post pictures as well from our travels and pass along information learned from our experiences with Vitazyme. Both me and my father John will be making entries in the future. I encourage you to read along.
Thanks for reading! Mike Hudak
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