Fifteen or so years ago, Pamela Garcia and Alain Mottier joined forces to create their company Flor Del Caribe. The company is an import specialist in flowers and foliage from Africa, Asia and South America, especially Columbia. So much so, that it’s not just the wholesalers they sell to… The friendly and neighbourly Pamela Garcia was born in Bogota, Columbia. She grew up with her retailer mother, obtained her baccalaureate, and left for Paris at the tender age of 19 to learn French. “When I landed in 1982, I signed up at the Alliance Française language school before joining the reputed Company Management Business School. With financial backing from my father, I set up an import company in 1998, dealing in Columbian produce, and two years later I started selling flowers sourced in Columbia (the second-leading producer worldwide) on Rungis Market. And that’s when I met Alain Mottier.” Paris-born Alain Mottier (57) is son and grandson of flower wholesalers. Alain is not just friendly, he’s a real professional, having started out at the age of fourteen under his father Marcel, in the Halles de Paris. “Back at the Halles de Paris, we sold beautiful flowers from the Var department, including roses, violets, carnations, sword lily, and others. That was back before the Dutch market boomed.

We moved into Rungis in 1969; at the time there were 160 wholesalers in the C1 section. With my brother Jean-Michel and my sister Françoise, we took over the business, and haven’t looked back since. I also spent 10 years in horticulture in the Seine-et-Marne department, where I grew irises and lilies and sold them at Rungis. In the 90s, we started selling Dutch-grown flowers, then the Columbian-sourced flowers that we used to buy from Pamela. So in 1992, Pamela and I teamed up to create Flor Del Caribe. The company now employs 12 staff, and we also have a retail outlet in Hyères, in the Var . We started out with Columbian baby carnations, then broadened the range to include gypsophila, alstroemeria, and roses. Our range now boasts all kinds of sources: bird-of-paradise from Morocco, orchids from Thailand, foliage from Costa Rica, roses from Ecuador, and other exotic flowers. Cut flowers generate 80% of our sales volumes.” According to Pamela Garcia and Alain Mottier, “Rungis is an exceptional place, one of the best-known there is, but it is still losing out to competition from the Dutch market. But either way you look at it, Rungis market has a resolutely international outlook”.