Daughter and granddaughter of traders, Eveline Tartarin spend her teenage years in the Château-Thierry region (Aisne). Having initially trained as a special needs educator, she decided to change course and focus on the sales sector which corresponded better to her feisty character. At the age of twenty years, following a spell working in a sports shop in Val de Marne, she joined a large Rungis flowers wholesaler, the starting point for her subsequent passion for flowers and plants. A few years on, she decided to set up her own business by taking over another flower shop. Eveline Tartarin came back to Rungis Market in 1990 as sales manager at the company run by Gilles Van Wymeersch, producer of cut flowers and foliage based in Soignolles-en-Brie (Seine-et-Marne), somebody she had known for a long time and who would eventually become her husband. The latter's father, Alphonse Wymeersch, established the horticultural company in 1956, and worked as a wholesaler at the Halles de Paris and then Rungis as from 1969.

"In 1997, we decided to create a sales company under the name of VWT, which is the company I run at present. Our sales mostly concern production from Soignolles-en-Brie (15 hectares of open-field floret farming) along with a second horticultural site (14 hectares) in Gironde. Having obtained her BTS in horticulture, my daughter Alexandra took over the business in the Seine-et-Marne, while my husband Gilles now runs the Gironde site. Our main products are eucalyptus foliage (5/6 varieties, 1300 bunches/day from October to March/April), open-field florets, seasonal branches (fir, holly, mistletoe, birch, etc.), peonies, viburnum, dahlias, sunflowers, amaranths, sweet peas, lupins, mock orange, foliage from the European smoketree, blackcurrant, raspberry, oak, etc. Altogether, our range includes over a hundred plant species of flowers and foliage. Our customer base includes shop-based florists and wholesalers throughout France. Our customers remain loyal because of our very wide product range, our stable prices and our delivery service. While Rungis is an effective and strategically well-placed sales hub, we do have some reservations about the incursion of Dutch production which disrupts our customers buying habits. However, this is still a very attractive market as you are sure to find the pick of the bunch of Ile-de-France production at Rungis… ".