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Point of View: May 2009 Are Floral Holidays Still Relevant? |
| Written by Amanda Ryder | |
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With the exception of Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and Christmas, we wanted to know: are smaller floral holidays like Easter, Administrative Professionals Week, Father’s Day, Halloween or Thanksgiving still relevant to the retail florist? Are people still going to a florist for that Thanksgiving centrepiece or sending a bouquet to their favourite administrative professional? We posed these questions to several florists, who in turn shared with us their opinion. Here’s what they had to say: “Every occasion is important to the floral industry. We look at ways to be innovative and still capture that market. What probably is a hindrance to us in the floral industry is the supermarket flowers. If you’ve got a clientele that is used to coming to you and you’ve built up that trust with a customer, they still will come to you but a lot of flowers are bought when people get their groceries because they are already there.”
-Pat Shedden, owner of Among the Flowers in Welland, Ont.
“No absolutely not, they are definitely coming down. Easter for example has been taken over by the grocery stores. We are definitely focusing less and doing more valued added things like delivery and weddings.”
-Karen Rothfels, Fresh Flower Co. in Ottawa
“Easter and Thanksgiving have continually shrunk over the years but I think Christmas and Valentine’s have stayed. The other holidays, we’ve never really been in an area where Administrative Professionals Day has been popular so I can’t say that it’s shrunk – I’m still waiting for it to bloom! Halloween has never been a floral holiday for us and the same goes for St. Patrick’s Day. We might sell three shamrocks and a dozen green carnations but people don’t even ask for flowers for St. Patrick’s…so I would say maybe we’re just a little bit off the beaten track. We are in a sleepy little village by the sea and I don’t see those holidays being very much here.”
-Rob Jennings, owner of Jennings Florist in Victoria
“Thanksgiving for sure, a lot of centrepieces go out and Easter is still pretty busy…St. Patrick’s Day, not really and Administrative Professional’s Week we have a few orders but nothing huge. It would be nice to get the employers to recognize that type of thing but I wouldn’t say it’s a big holiday for us at all.”
-Fay Isaac, Three Hills Floral in Three Hills, Alta.
“Anymore Easter is a quarter of what it used to be. I used to be so busy on Easter weekend it was unbelievable and now Easter is a ripple, that’s all you can hope for…My business is still occasion driven but compared to what they used to be, we’ve lost a huge share of the market. You’re looking at the seasonal type flowers, you grab your poinsettia from the grocery store, you grab your Easter lily from the grocery store or Costco, or wherever else. I mean we still have the things that we do that nobody else does but the basic, bread and butter type stuff that we used to do for holidays has definitely gone flat. I think that in smaller towns the florists still have a bigger share but in an urban environment you definitely don’t have the same type of share.”
-Reed Russell, owner of East of Eliza in Toronto
“These holidays should be relevant. They are reasons to advertise our product. If we let them go, they will disappear after we’ve spent years developing them. I’m not sure if the reason they have become smaller for our market is the economy or our laissez-faire attitude. Without our promotion that flowers are a necessity and not a luxury item, consumption of floral products will decrease. These holidays are known to everyone and make consumers subject to our advertising if we continue to make them relevant and continue to promote them. Our shop continuously advertises. We try to remain foremost in people’s thoughts and promote the smaller holidays as much as the larger ones. If there is one holiday that should belong to the floral industry, it is Thanksgiving. It is a natural time of the year for both indoor and outdoor colour through floral product, it is not a holiday closely associated with religion and it is a time for family and friends where a central meal is served – an excellent reason for flowers on the table. Another holiday that we promote is Easter. Spring is the perfect time for fresh colour inside and out. Flowers are a natural expression of the hopeful expectation of the season and year to come.”
-Pam Goold of Goold’s Nurseries in Sussex, N.B.
Point of View appears regularly in CF and offers our readers the opportunity to hear the perspective of other industry members. If you would like to suggest a topic or be part of the Point of View column, please contact Sue at
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