Buying Flowers Is More Important Now Than Ever
The images of bouquets of tulips and chrysanthemums being destroyed at the Dutch flower auction last month were an arrow through many a flower-lover's heart. "You can't order [flowers] to stop growing," Michel van Schie, a spokesman for the country's primary grower cooperative, told NPR at the time. "And it's not possible to keep them in storage when they're not sold. So they are lost."
COVID-19 continues to impact the flower industry catastrophically, as spring and summer are its most lucrative seasons. More than 350,000 weddings were set to take place in the U.S. in April and May alone; after the Center for Disease Control's advisement against gatherings of more than 10 people, those weddings have largely been postponed or significantly downsized. With other flower-heavy events such as graduation celebrations are being canceled—and Americans growing increasingly anxious about non-essential spending—flower farms, small-business florists, and even large-scale grocery store flower distributors have felt the pinch.
But not all sectors are being affected equally. In fact, some nurseries have even seen an uptick in business.
Daniel Furman, part owner of Cricket Hill Garden, a specialty plant nursery in Thomaston, CT, estimates their retail has doubled in the month of April. "People are staying at home and spending more time on their gardens," Furman says. As Cricket Hill already had a thriving online business, it didn't take much for the nursery to adjust their platform to contactless pickup—where customers arrive to find their prepaid orders labeled by last name—or to send their peony plants, fruit trees, and berry bushes across the country.
Furman acknowledges that, had they not already been set up for e-retail and shipping, it would be challenging to scale those processes under pressure. "You break a lot of plants before you figure out how to do it properly," he says. "And I think it's the same thing with flowers."
Businesses like Whimsy Hill Flower Farm in Blairsville, Georgia are doing their best to rise to this new challenge. Jennifer Logan, who co-owns Whimsy Hill with her husband, Rusty, is used to customers dropping by the farm to pick up bouquets. Pick-up, florist supply, and events constituted the bulk of their business; they'd never done delivery. But as the situation evolved, Logan became uncomfortable exchanging cash.
"I also didn't want to encourage anyone to come out of their house," she says. "But I have a greenhouse full of flowers that are just bursting into bloom."
Logan hastily wrote a post on the farm's Facebook page offering porch delivery—you leave a vase, they'll drop a $15 bouquet in it—and was overwhelmed by the response. For the first delivery round, Logan enlisted her "teenager with a Toyota that gets great gas mileage" and they drove all over town, sanitizing their hands between each stop and spraying the cash down with Lysol. They've since formalized the delivery process a bit, asking their customers to switch to cash-free money transfer options like Venmo and Paypal. While business is still down from a usual year, Logan has been heartened by the kindness of her neighbors, who have tipped generously and gifted flowers. "Some people were ordering three, four, or seven different orders for other people and giving me all these addresses," she says.
While it's understandable that Americans are anxious to spend right now, flowers shouldn't be perceived as a luxury product, says Carlos Oramas, CEO of the Gems Group, a company that sells bouquets via grocery stores like Publix and HEB. Flowers usually run from $4 to as high as $25 or $30 in a grocery store, with $15 being the average range. Their business has dropped by about 50%, as grocery stores have shifted stocking to prioritize dry goods and customers' shopping patterns have changed.
But "the $4 basic ones can last you up to two weeks," Oramas says. "Flowers exist to make people smile. And boy, we can use a lot of that right now." Oramas points to studies by researchers from Harvard, Rutgers, and other universities that find flowers in the home decrease stress levels, inspire connection, and even boost energy.
Jihyen Crowley has felt that positivity as she's been dropping bouquets outside people's apartments over the past few weeks. Crowley is the owner and design head of New York City's Gotham Florist, which makes high-end arrangements; she generally spends her time on the business and concepting side. But after a bunch of confusing orders from New York State, during which her business was first shuttered and later allowed to reopen with just one employee, Crowley has been responsible for every piece of the business—including delivery. She kept her staff on payroll, expecting that Gotham would qualify for the Paycheck Protection Program, but had to furlough everyone on April 20 after learning the shop wouldn't receive that relief. Later that same day, she attempted to apply for another loan, only to find that the website had crashed.
"I don't know a single flower shop that has received [PPP] or the New York City small business grants," Crowley says. "The millions of small businesses that are applying for these loans and grants aren't asking anyone to give us free money; we just want to be able to float for the one to three months where we're not going to be able to work at capacity." April has been rough for the shop; they're running 30% of the business they typically do and Crowley has only been able to pay partial rent on their workspace.
Chaotic and gut-wrenching as this experience has been, it has also brought her closer to her designs' recipients. "Right now, doing the deliveries myself, I knock on the door and ask them to wait 20 seconds until I'm in the elevator. And as I'm waiting for the elevator, I can hear people shout, 'Thank you so much!' I just want to turn around and hug them; it touches me," Crowley says. "People are just so happy to get something on their birthday or when I deliver flowers to nurses who are recovering [from COVID-19], I can feel the joy."
Crowley is hopeful that the floral industry will receive more support and clear direction in advance of Mother's Day, one of their busiest days of the year. "I know that the moms that are here in the city are going to be so happy to receive flowers," Crowley says. "And they can still receive flowers."
Follow House Beautiful on Instagram.
You Might Also Like
