Dear Jenny,

I do not know whether you are aware, but Unwins packet seeds were sold
to the retail outlet on a "sale or return" basis. That means that they
were purchased by the shops or garden centres at the beginning of the
season, who then returned them to the producer at the end of the season
for a credit. Prior to 1993 these returned packets were then
destroyed. For various technical reasons this destruction process was
expensive, and the cost of it was naturally passed on to the consumer
by the seed companies in the price you paid the next year.

I work in Russia, and in 1993 I discovered that these returned seeds
could be exported to Russia and I managed to find purchasers for them.
I approached Unwins with this idea and they agreed. In doing this I
not only saved Unwins this destruction cost, which kept price of seeds
down to the UK consumer, it gave them an extra source of income, which
by the way was pure net profit. At the same time it also provided
Russian gardeners, on their meagre incomes, with much needed quality
seeds at prices they could afford (3 cents US per packet).
Naturally, I received a commission on the sums received by Unwins from
Russia.

Everything seemed to be going well until 1996 when accounting checks on
the corroboration documents provided to me by Unwin's threw up serious
doubts.

The bottom line is that since then my accountant found considerable
"anomalies" in Unwin's accounts, and I do mean considerable, which
directly and negatively effected my commission. In reply to my
questions on this Unwins stated that they were no longer supplying
these returned seeds to Russia, only new production. Instead they
were sorting out the old returned seeds and selling them back to the
retail outlets as new stock (where you then no doubt purchased them at
the price of new seed!). Strangely, during this period, that is 1996
to date, I was travelling to Russia, and every year I still purchased
this same returned stock from Russian shops..

Naturally I took Unwins to Court, and it took nearly 8 years to do it.
When we finally got to court their main witness stated that all the
packets purchased by me in Russia and produced in evidence were
manufactured especially for export. He demonstrated to the court how,
by looking at the packet ,how he could tell that it was not
manufactured for sale in the UK.

I knew that this was absolute bull***t, so set about looking for
examples of packets of their Economy Range (59p ?) that without doubt
had been sold in the past by retail outlets in the UK. The only way
that this could be done was by asking the people who purchased them,
you.

Regards,


Nick