Stop...And Sell the Flowers

Although the founders did not succumb to tulip mania, they did find themselves in-terested in the flower as the basis for a business. "The tulip really does have a mystical quality," Bouwman says.

All of that glamour wilts under the scrutiny of tough-minded business analysis. After examining data from the industry, inspecting growers' balance sheets, and investigating market projections, the founders learned that while Dutch firms dominate the bulb market, they aren't very profitable. "We thought that somebody in the supply chain must be making a hell of a lot of money, but it's not the Dutch," says Bouwman.

It was a classic distribution squeeze. Mail-order bulb companies, which control 30% of the U.S. market, incur enormous costs to print and mail color catalogs. Growers who sell to huge American retailers, such as the Home Depot and Wal-Mart, are pushed ruthlessly for the best price on bulbs. The stores can then offer low prices, but only on a limited selection -- just those varieties that can be produced in vast quantities for pennies a bulb.

The founders knew that they couldn't compete on price, but they saw a real opportunity to compete on quality. "Unlike the giant retailers, we know that bulbs aren't a commodity," explains Meltzer. "They are a product of nature, and there's an enormous difference in quality and size. In a typical U.S. warehouse, sellers just don't care. So suppliers will deliver smaller bulbs at lower quality because retailers want the cheapest of the cheap. And that's not our market."

The three founders thought that American gardeners would jump at the chance to buy high-quality bulbs at competitive prices, particularly if they could offer unusual varieties. Plus, the U.S. market had certain characteristics that made it more appealing than France, Germany, or Japan: Internet penetration is high, people are accustomed to using credit cards online, there is little price resistance, and there is an avid, recession-resistant interest in gardening.

Even though a supplier was selected and a group of friends and acquaintances invested, Bouwman, Meltzer, and Duurland never lost sight of their own limitations. They knew that they could handle the business side of the operation. But they were hard-pressed to tell a Tulipa "Red Riding Hood" from a Tulipa "Pimpernel," let alone give advice on whether the plants would tolerate shade or look good in a bed with narcissi. To grow TulipWorld.com into the high-end, customer-friendly site that they envisioned, they needed a world-class gardener.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Just west of the old Mint Tower, on Singel canal, is Amsterdam's floating flower market. Even in January, armloads of 50 cut tulips sell for as little as 10 euros. There's also the usual tourist kitsch: wooden-shoe key chains and canal-house refrigerator magnets, as well as an array of cannabis plants -- Hindu Kush, Purple Power, Hollands Hope -- packed for easy transport.

But Jacqueline van der Kloet is most horrified by the racks of polybagged tulip bulbs underneath a sign reading, "All year round! Flowering time -- six weeks after planting!"

"Look at these!" she exclaims. "They're moldy and already sprouting. They will never flower. This is illegal and unfair."

Van der Kloet should know. She is to Dutch-bulb gardening in the Netherlands what Julia Child is to French cooking in America. A small, quiet woman with a halo of white hair and the ruddy complexion of someone more at home with her hands in the dirt than in a nail salon, van der Kloet is one of the Netherlands' premier tulip experts. Last year, she was a chief designer at Floriade 2002, the huge Dutch horticultural exhibition held every 10 years. This year, she's designing a historical garden for the Dutch prime minister's residence.

When the founders read van der Kloet's best-selling book, Magic With Bulbs, they knew that she was the person who could give their site credibility and help them navigate through the 3,500 possible varieties of bulbs on the market. They were not the first to have that bright idea. A variety of large bulb companies had approached van der Kloet suggesting a collaboration. But she was reluctant to get involved.

"Other companies wanted to know how they could sell zillions of bulbs," she says. "I didn't like it much that way. What made TulipWorld so special was that Pim, Ollie, and Paul wanted to give a lot of information about how to grow those bulbs and to tell the story behind them. And they were willing to address people personally and allow them to come back with a bunch of questions."

For all of their popularity, tulips are, for many gardeners, considered to be a tricky crop. Van der Kloet saw TulipWorld as an opportunity to educate people and to propagate her own vision of garden design: one that has a more natural scheme, in which bulbs are integrated with ground cover and perennials, rather than planted in the old-fashioned style, with big blocks of color side by side. She agreed to join the company as a partner and consultant, working with the growers to select the array of bulbs offered on the site and consulting on the design of the database.