A Greater Understanding- Four Star Availability

Maintaining Great Availability for You!

Four Star Greenhouse sets the industry standard for great availability. Managing such a large inventory of liners, maintaining only the highest levels of quality, and getting you the product you need when you need it the most is what we do. One of the great responsibilities we have to you, our customer, is to make it easy for you to find the product you need in 'user friendly' formats. Many different processes occur which affect our availability, so we thought it would be valuable to share some of what happens with you, hopefully making our availability easier to understand. We hope that you find this area of our web site valuable in your daily decision processes, and would love to get feedback from you regarding what works well and where we could possibly improve. We welcome your questions and comments and are here to assist.

Are you Sold Out?? Many Times... No!

Have you ever glanced at our availability reports and noticed these great big numbers, but right in the middle of all this, and ironically the week you were hoping to get product, there sits a big old 0 (zero). First thought that probably happens and honestly should 'Four Star is sold out', not always true. Let me give a hopefully quick explanation of what might be happening. Each variety we produce as liners is assigned a specific number of weeks in which it takes us to produce. (i.e.. 4,5,6,7, etc) In the beginning, prior to the season we enter numbers into our system based on what we are capable of producing. These initial numbers are based on many different factors such as Number of Stock Plants Available, Greenhouse Space, Popularity of Plants, Sales History, and more. Before we actually produce the liners, which eventually are shipped to your greenhouse, we begin by entering your orders against these potential numbers. These are the large numbers you often see that are usually 5-8 weeks away or more. The week prior to actual production, we take a look at the orders received for each variety up to that point, factor in the idea that we want to produce more than this so that we can continue to have great availability for you in upcoming weeks, and make decisions (again based on many factors) of what will actually be produced. So that we can do this and so that these numbers are not changing in the middle of our decision making process, we do what is called "A Lock Out". A lock out basically changes all of our "Potential To Produce" numbers to zero. (not allowing any orders to be booked for that production week). Please keep in mind that because this is affecting all varieties based on the week they are started, it actually affects availability based on when it is planned to be saleable - 4, 5, 6, 7, etc. weeks out, depending on the variety. If you look at our availability at this point, you will find weeks with these 0's.

Here is that point of time mentioned previously...

"Is Four Star Sold Out?"

We continue to work our magic, as mentioned earlier, we not only produce the in-house orders, but also produce enough to be able to offer great availability. As a simple example: Let's say we are capable of producing 250 tray of variety X, prior to production we receive orders for 100 trays, during the 'Lock Out' process we determine that we want to produce 200 trays, so that we can have continued availability of another 100 trays once they are actually produced. What happens on the next part of our process is that we 'Produce the Determined Number' for each variety. These numbers are uploaded into our Computer system. We go through a short process to free up the extra trays produced so that you can again see availability for those weeks Sometimes Sold Out Availability is actually true, as a general rule, if you see zeroes in the immediate upcoming several weeks, the 0 availability is accurate. If the 0 availability is between 4-7 weeks out, there is a good chance that there will be availability shortly.

Now here is a point when you might be thinking...

"When I looked at Availability Before Four Star was sold out, Now they have big numbers?"

Here are some suggestions...

If you are seeing 0 availability between 4-7 weeks out from the current date you could recheck a few days later to see if numbers have been freed up. An accurate way to determine if the variety you are needing is in lock out is to visit our Live Availability. Each variety displays the number of weeks to produce as shown in the image below. If you add that number of weeks to the week we are in (Ex: We are in week 3, the crop time is 7, week 10 may be locked out) You can place the order, assuming that the numbers will be there when we enter the actual order for you in our system. Our trained customer service staff watches for these situations and will do their best to book your order for you once the numbers are available. Call our office at 734-654-6420, our customer service staff can check the status of available product for the weeks you are wanting the product. They will assist you in completing your order and can even make valuable suggestions for alternative, top performing varieties for you when necessary.

Contact Information

You May contact us directly at (734) 654-6420,
Monday - Friday, 8 am - 4:30 pm, EST

For a complete directory and contact list, Click here

To Contact any of our Brokers Click Here

How do I find Four Star Availability?

You actually have several options for obtaining Four Star Availability

• You may look at our availability 7/24 by visiting this web site and clicking on the Availability Link on our Home Page. At that point you can select what weeks you are interested in, along with several choices from our drop down list of the product line you are looking for. This is tied directly into our system here at Four Star and is the most accurate way of looking at our current product availability.
  Here is a quick Short to go there now: Click Here

• Sign up for our E-Vailability Newsletter, you'll get direct links for downloading our upcoming 5 weeks of available product. You'll have options of downloading a user friendly format of either Microsoft Excel (.xls) , or Adobe Acrobat Reader (.pdf). You'll also be the first to find out about new programs, varieties, Hot News, and more!
  If you would like to sign up for this service today: Click Here

• You may visit the download page on our web site where we provide quick downloads in the same format provided to you from our e-vailablity newsletter. Click Here to visit this page.

• If these options do not work for you, you are welcome to call our office directly for assistance with current availability. You can contact us during regular business hours (see Contact Information above for details)

• Many of our brokers provide their own systems which are tied into our availability. You can check with your favorite broker to get details on how to utilize their system. Click Here for a list of Four Star brokers and their contact information.

Questions & Suggestions: We always appreciate feedback and understand that sometimes situations are unique and that the information above does not provide you with the answers you need. Please contact us with any specific questions, comments, or suggestions. Thank You for being our customer!