"The order process is different but simple", explains CEO Herman van Bon. "You click one of the categories to find all related objects. As soon as a choice is made the customer sends us an e-mail with his or her order plus contact details including street- and postal adress plus telephone number; not a cell phone number. Next we call the customer for verification and once verified we send him or her the invoice. Once we receive the deposit slip of the payment the order will be shipped and the customer notified of the tracking code".
The shop primary targets the South African market. "We see this as an experiment and we just have to see if this system will work. There have been suggestions as to station the shop on a server abroad to avoid the high bank and credit card charges and also because South Africa does not allow PayPal which is globally the widest used and accepted secure internet payment method. But Soekershof is a South African enterprise and that made us decide to keep it 'within the family' but without the extreme high additional expenses"', says Van Bon.
'Soekershof; The Shop' is based on a Wordpress blog. The different categories serve as product ranges such as 'plant hangers', 'furniture', 'seeds', 'custom build' and 'on wire art'. On the page header there are links such as 'Meet the makers', 'How to order' and 'About this shop'
Within this month Van Bon expects to put all available products including seed packs with seeds of succulent plants online. In the first few days after http://soekershofshop.wordpress.com/ went into cyberspace the shop attracted already more than 60 visitors per day. "And we still have to make a decent picture for the header".
About Soekershof:Soekershof; Private Mazes & Botanical Gardens in South Africa may locally be less known but overseas highly acclaimed by botanists/horticulturists of fame. BBC-TV garden program presentor and famous Irish landscaper Diarmuid Gavin described Soekershof as his favorite South African garden in The Sunday Times UK (January 2008) and the Swiss based International Botanists Association recommends its South Africa visiting members Soekershof as one of the four ‘must visit gardens’ in this country (next to Cape Town, Durban and J’burg botanical gardens).
What is so special about Soekershof?
Soekershof, as it is today, draws on the wealth of local history and story-telling folklore. In Soekershof – whose name means Seekers Court – you can explore the original succulent garden of Marthinus Malherbe, who is buried there, and see the oldest cactus in South Africa, which dates from 1910. The succulent gardens of Soekershof houses the largest outdoor succulent plant collection in South Africa (almost 2500 different registered species from all continents); from cute tiny ‘living stones’ to a giant Pachycereus weberii cactus of more than 10 metres high. It’s not a quick stroll through the garden but an interactive exploration in the company of people who want to provide visitors with and enjoyable and inspirational experience. The total surface of the succulent gardens is over 11,000 square metres excluding the own nursery.
The quest in the Klaas Voogds Maze (>4 kilometres path length) starts with a stone age movie in a stone age cinema after which visitors have to unraffle the mysteries of a cycling Dutchman and a womanising German. It’s not a maze in the traditional perception; this is a maze of life walking from one story to the other visualised by orietating beacons above the hedges.
Soekershof is not designated for mass tourism but focusses itself on the personal experience of each individual visitor. This too makes this venue fairly unique in a world where tourism attractions increasingly go for the numbers. Soekershof is also certified by Fair Trade in Tourism in South Africa
Contact Information:Soekershof; Private Mazes & Botanical Gardens in South AfricaKlaas Voogds West, P.O. Box 291, Robertson 6705Western Cape, South AfricaE-mail: info@soekershof.co.zawebsite: http://soekershof.com Tel: 023-6264134