It started in December 2022 when we were excitedly thinking about how we could inspire our customers with our green initiative this year. We wanted to make the world a little more colorful and offer endangered wild bees more food sources. A noble idea, we thought, after all everyone enjoys flowering plants. Our idea? Sending bee-friendly flower seeds Sounds harmless, right? But we never imagined that this idea could trigger a police operation.

But let's start from the beginning:

In December '22, we decided to select bee-friendly flower seeds and send them to our customers to make the environment a little better. We had already announced the idea in our 2022 annual review , as our resolution for the coming year. The seeds were selected, the customer addresses updated, and at the beginning of April over 1,300 packages of flower seeds made their way to customers all over Germany and beyond. The feedback came quickly and the first results were sent to us in the form of photos. We even created a collage of these images for this blog. Dennis, who was responsible for this campaign, sowed seeds himself and his family helped with all their efforts. This also infected colleagues and customers, and so many flower seeds found their way into gardens and flower boxes. April and May were perfect for sowing because there was enough rain to germinate the seeds and it was warm enough so they wouldn't freeze at night. Many of our customers took part and were now able to enjoy colorful flowers and lively bee visits.

But then there was a customer who held the envelope with our seeds in his hand and became suspicious. The envelope didn’t look like business mail, and the name “OCS Spedition” didn’t mean anything to him. You could also feel that there was something thicker than just a sheet of paper inside the envelope. We had heard often enough in the news that harmless-looking mail was being used for biological attacks. Was this perhaps the case here? “Better safe than sorry,” thought the customer and took the letter to a nearby police station. Officers on site took the customer's concerns extremely seriously and took the suspicious mail to a laboratory where the contents were carefully examined. After 14 days, the good news finally came: the contents were completely harmless flower seeds. Unfortunately, the seeds still had to be destroyed because there was no suspicion of a crime and no further investigation was necessary.

When we heard about this story, we couldn't believe it at first and thought it must be a joke. But then we realized that there was something positive to be gained from this bizarre situation: the customer now knows that their safety comes first and they won't forget us any time soon. And who knows, maybe we've even inadvertently helped raise awareness about unexpected surprises in your inbox.

Note: For reasons of better readability, the language forms male, female and diverse (m/f/d) are not used at the same time. All personal names apply equally to all genders.