Van Hoye works is the communication & marketing officer at Floréac and Microflor, two subsidiaries of the Floré Groep, a horticultural company based in Lochristi. Initially, he was only looking for an English-speaking copywriter. But Blue Lines ended up becoming a true partner, supplying Van Hoye with translations and Dutch copy as well.
Floréac goes international
Van Hoye: “I’ve been working in horticulture for twenty years now. These past two decades, the sector has changed a great deal. Floréac distributes ready-to-sell pot plants all over Europe. At the moment, we’re most active in England, Germany and France. But there’s growing interest from the Scandinavian countries, and Poland and Hungary have also started looking our way. So we’re under increasing pressure to serve additional markets.”
Gracing magazine covers
Van Hoye: “We used to simply produce a brochure for our B2B clients, listing our products and prices. But now we produce a proper magazine: we talk about our relationship with various suppliers, write genuine editorial articles on interesting topics and publish feature portraits of our clients. We’re basically producing more and more content.”
Like a seedling, the magazine’s content and page count just kept on growing. Floréac’s Marketing department initially did all the work itself. Eventually, however, the team had to bring in a professional copywriter. Van Hoye took a course to learn more about copywriting and content creation himself. That’s when Blue Lines was recommended to him as a partner.
Van Hoye: “At that point, I was mostly looking for English-speaking copywriters, but Blue Lines instantly introduced us to a highly skilled content writer. These days, we actually employ our own copywriter who takes care of all content inhouse. But our collaboration with Blue Lines went so smoothly in those early days, we knew we’d keep turning to you to get our content translated.”
Think global, shop local
Van Hoye: “One of our key requirements is for our translations to be written by a native speaker. Floréac employs a lot of French people and a few Brits. Before our translations get published, I always ask them to check them once last time, since they’re familiar with the sector’s jargon. In the past, we almost invariably ended up rewriting most translations, because they didn’t feel ‘native’ enough. These days, we hardly have to change a word. That inspires confidence. Should we end up needing translations into Hungarian, Finnish or Polish at some point, we’ll know who to turn to.”
Van Hoye: “Our company is expanding all over Europe, but I still try to work with Belgian companies when we need to bring in external partners. For me personally, it feels 100% right to team up with a company right here in Ghent. Think global, shop local The fact that we both support Ghent’s football team, the Buffalos, is an added bonus,” he laughs.