Seeded Produce adds new L.A. office, increases product line
Seeded Produce adds new L.A. office, increases product line
Seeded Produce, a Nogales, AZ-based distributor of Mexican produce items, has opened an office in the Los Angeles area and is expanding its product line to include items from Asia and Central and South America that it previously did not offer.
Omar Losolla, managing member at Seeded, told The Produce News that the company’s Nogales deal will include most of the same vegetable items it typically handles from Mexico, including zucchini, eggplant, cucumbers, hard squash and hot peppers.
This year, however, it will have increased production on some fruit items, such as its specialty Korean, Hami and Taiwan melons, black skin watermelons and yellow flesh watermelons, with the goal of providing its customers a more consistent supply.
“We’ve gotten a great response from our customers on the fruits, and we’ll continue to build that line,” he said. “It’s a niche market that requires good pricing and quality, and the retailers need the volume and consistent supply in order to put them on ads, which is why we’re increasing production.”
Overall, he said the Nogales deal got off to a slow start this year due to an abundance of rain in September and October. The result was limited volume and high markets.
“We’ve had good prices on our main commodities to start the season, but not enough product to sell,” he said. “We’re hoping prices remain strong as production transitions from Sonora to Sinaloa to Guaymas and volume starts to ramp up.”
New L.A. office
Losolla said Seeded opened a branch office in Vernon, CA, in July, where it will be doing FOB sales out of Nogales as well as handling imports from South America, Central America and Asia.
Among the items it will add to its roster are Chinese garlic, Chinese ginger, Mandarin oranges, dragonfruit, persimmons and specialty grape varieties Niabell and Khyoho. It will also work with grower-partners in Florida to offer guava and longan fruit.
Losolla said he had been considering the expansion for some time, and he is now working to install the right people to make the operation a success. So far, things are trending in the right direction.
He said a key development for the new location was the hiring of Ping Wu, who joined Seeded as vice president of sales for the L.A. office and brings a wealth of experience and contacts.
“In addition to her customers, Ping has an extensive network of suppliers in different parts of the world, which is important as we enter this growth mode,” said Losolla. “She has made an immediate impact on what we are doing and will play an important role in our expansion.”
Losolla said he met Ping while on a trip to the Vernon location earlier this year when the office first opened. She had been working at a different company in the same building, and he was immediately impressed.
“We spoke a few times and I was able to get to know her and learn more about her background, and from the start I thought she would be a great fit for what we were trying to do,” he said. “We are tremendously happy and blessed to have her on the Seeded team.”
With Ping in place as the key member of the L.A. team, Losolla is in the process of adding others to support the expansion, which is no small task. In addition to building a sales team, he said he wants to install a good administrative team and a grower relations team.
“I have been traveling back and forth a lot between Nogales and L.A. over the past six months, working to get everything in place,” he said. “We now want to align ourselves with the right people to build out the rest of the team. We have the right product and the ability to add more, and once we have the right team in place to execute this project, I am 100 percent confident that it will be a success.”
