10 years of KPR - Annual Report 2010

15th Anniversary of KPR

The KPR – Gardeners Club or in Slovak language, Klub pestovateľov rastlín, was initially established in 2000 in Slovakia in Europe, however a small number of plant enthusiastic have been trading seeds and plants in Slovakia since as early as 1998. From the beginning practically nobody knew about us, but in 2001 our first website was created. From that time, many plant lovers joined us and working together it was much easier for us to get rare plants from all around the world and even start to grow some species of pants, which were unknown in Slovakia.

Gardener's e-shop in more than 100 languages

The English website was a wonderful expansion, but that was not enough for us! Although English is a language spoken around the world, there are still many people who do not understand this language. Thus in 2005, we started to translate our website, step by step, language by language into French, Dutch, Finish, Romanian; (in 2006) Lithuanian, Polish; (in 2007) Serbian, Croatian, Italian, Hungarian, Norwegian, Swedish; (in 2008) Bulgarian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Albanian; (in 2009) Czech, Greenlandic, Asturian, Rusyn, Igbo, Afrikaans, Armenian, Kashubian, Russian, Kazakh, Tajik, Tigrinya, Uzbek, Yoruba, Slovene, Pashto, Chichewa, Tonga (Malawi), Tumbuka, Georgian, Danish, Estonian, Belarusian, Macedonian, Uyghur, Khmer, Kinyarwanda, Arabic, Japanese, Romansh, Swahili, Sinhala, Greek, Nepali, Malagasy, Mara, Punjabi, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Sakha, Bikol, Karakalpak, Mongol, Udmurt, Lower Sorbian and Upper Sorbian, Divehi, Tarar, Balochi, Bengali, Kannada, Urdu, Vietnamese, Hindko, Turkmen, Maltese, Faroese, White Hmong, Lao, Malay, Bishnupriya Manipuri, Galician, Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Icelandic, Catalan, Korean, Oriya, Farsi, Gujarati, Hebrew, Basque, Dayak Ngaju, Burmese, Indonesian; (in 2010) Capiznon, Hiligaynon, Asamese, Kikuyu, Cebuano, Gusii (Ekegusii), Latvian, Luganda, Romani, Tibetan, Zhuang, Zarma (Djerma), Shona, Zulu, Sundanese, Javanese, Erzya, Chamorro, Sama (Bajau), Minangkabau.

Before long, our website will also be available in more than 250 languages.

Information about plants in 58 languages in 63 writing versions

Our club journal Botanix, established in the Slovak language in 2000, is also issued in Polish, Hungarian and Romanian since 2008. Botanix is also available (since 2009) English, Afrikaans, French, Dutch, Swedish, Russian, Chichewa, Tajik, Italian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Belarusian, Armenian, Croatian, Macedonian, Georgian, Swahili, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Uzbek, Karakalpak, Kinyarwanda, Spanish, Kazakh, Nepali, Tatar, Norwegian, Albanian, Czech, Pashto, Vietnamese, Slovene, Bengali, Turkmen, (since 2010) Latvian, Hindko, Capiznon, Hiligaynon, Cebuao, Asamese, Malay, Gusii (Ekegusii), Welsh, Zarma (Djerma), Turkish, Indonesian, Sundanese, Thai, Moksha, Greek, Tamil, Kyrgyz, Chinese.

Presenting our website in so many languages, will mean that we will be able to create an unique project in the gardening world and with the removal of language barriers, we will be able to bring more and more gardeners together, enabling almost anybody in the world to get the plants he or she is looking for.

Besides joining gardeners with different interest fields from all over the world, we are also working intensively on expanding our Seed Bank. The Seed and Plants Bank of the KPR will be a unique place where we trust that anybody will be able to find anything they need. At present, we have 6 main branches (Slovakia, Czechia, Australia, India, Thailand, South Africa and Tanzania), as well as over 300 co-operators, and seed collectors from all over the world. In the first half of the year 2008, the number of seed collectors increased with 150%.

Become a member, get more…

In September 2007, we have lunched a section on our website, https://www.kpr-eshop.eu/members/ where anybody can become a member of KPR even if you cannot speak or understand Slovak. KPR members can enjoy all benefits of membership such as better prices when ordering, priority delivery of orders and free consultations in 11 languages. Up until 2007, most of our members were from Slovakia and Czechia. In 2008, our membership-structure changed dramatically due to an increase of members from abroad.

Member structure for the period 2000–2010

Members Structure	2000–2004	2005–2006	2007	2008	2009	2010
Slovakia	99,8%	89,4%	84,4%	64%	34,7%	26,9%
Czechia	0,1%	10,5%	15,3%	9%	13%	9,7%
Others	0,1%	0,1%	0,3%	27%	52,3%	63,4%

Now most members of the KPR as well as visitors to our webpage are from Europe due to the large gardening tradition in Europe and the fact that our website is presented mainly in European languages. However, we estimate that this proportion will radically change in 2009 because we are in the process of establishing a new language mutation in many non-European languages.

1.	Slovakia	14,74 %
2.	Czechia	8,53 %
3.	Italy	5,66 %
4.	Poland	5,57 %
5.	Croatia	4,42 %
6.	Bulgaria	4,34 %
7.	Romania	4,19 %
8.	Lithuania	3,55 %
9.	Netherlands	3,41 %
10.	Serbia	3,31 %
11.	Rest of the world	42,28 %

Whole Plant World on one stock

There are about 250 000 vascular plant species on the Earth. In 2007, we were offering merely around 3% of our plant’s treasury. Although this might not sound like a huge collection, 10 000 plant species being kept by us, is a wonderful accomplishment to us.

At the moment, well-established regions include Europe, Australia, some regions in Africa and South-East Asia. There are still a lot of white spots; however, we hope that this will not be the case for much longer!

Removing the last limitations

Our main enemy…

At the moment, our main enemy is the costly fees for international money transfers. Expensive bank fees can discourage some gardeners to place an order at the KPR and thus they cannot grow desired plant species. However, we have also solved this problem to an extend. Residents from the so-called „Euro Zone“ (all countries using the Euro currency*) can now send money to us with the same ease as doing it in their own country.

The System „SEPA“ (Single Euro Payment Area) is obligated for all banks in these countries – this means that a bank transfer from your bank account to ours, will cost you exactly the same as a transaction in your own country (usually 0 Euro)

Customers from Czechia and Slovakia can send us money using domestic payment methods right from the start.

• List of countries using Euro as a domestic currency and from where residents can send us their payments by domestic bank transfers: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Martinique, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and from 1.1.2011 Estonia.

However, people who reside "outside” could still be discouraged by the expensive banking fees. For the benefit of these clients, the KPR has decided to open banking accounts in many other countries so that you will be able to do bank transfers without paying too much. Please go to https://www.kpr-eshop.eu/en/order/ for further information.

Now you can pay us by a domestic bank transfer or make a cash deposit in your local currency directly into our bank account in the following countries: Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Germany, Hungary, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Serbia, and Slovakia.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia, we were unable to open a local bank account due to local laws, which discriminate against foreigners wanting to open and use a bank account in order to receive money from residents. Are not you satisfied with this situation? Urge your government to cancel these unnecessary laws. These laws are in fact discriminating against you personally as you need to pay much more in order to receive your order, than residents of neighboring countries.

Finally, this problem is solved for nearly all European democratic countries. We have removed the last bureaucratic barriers. Welcome to the United World of Gardeners and enjoy it!