Blog with the Bee
Rose Prices and Valentine's Day
by Bloom'in Bee on 02/04/10
We would like to start of our blog with a quick discussion around rose prices, specifically in the weeks preceding the Valentine's holiday. Like many other products and services, rose prices are also driven by simple supply and demand economics. Many consumers are with the understanding that local florists are in a regular practice of price gouging when in fact they are just responding to economic conditions.
To better explain, it all starts with the growers, many of which are in South America. One must understand that roses grow on bushes year round. Most people think the simple resolution would be to simply plant more roses to accommodate the Valentine's holiday. Since the demand for roses during the month of February far exceeds the demand of any other month of the year this would completely saturate the market with an excess glut of roses during the other months of the year that would not sell and would end up on the garbage causing excessive economic losses to both the growers and florists. Therefore there has to be some sort of reasonable "happy medium" to satisfy the average demand throughout the year.
In the days and weeks preceding the Valentine's holiday, the growers are forced to hire extra help to cut and ship the roses to be sent to the many wholesalers around the country in a timely manner. This of course leads to increased shipping and transportation costs, in getting the products to the wholesalers.
Once the fresh cut roses arrive at the wholesalers, the increased demand is then placed on the wholesalers, who also need to increase staffing levels to accommodate the increase in their business during this time period.
By time the roses arrive at the real local florists, they have already increased in cost at the two previous levels. Next the florists need to account for their increased costs. It's extremely common for most florists to staff up with extra floral designers, delivery drivers, rent or lease extra delivery vehicles, and in many cases even rent extra storage facilities, or refrigeration coolers to store the product. All of this is done in a huge specially coordinated effort to get the many thousands of rose orders delivered in a timely manner on Valentine's Day.
In addition there are occasional unpredictable factors and uncontrollable risks that can always occur such as too much rain, drought, or freezing temperatures, damaging rose crops.
We welcome any questions or comments on this subject. Thanks! Blom'in Bee
Welcome to our new Blog
by Bloom'in Bee on 02/03/10Thanks for visiting our new Blog page. Bloom'in Bee will try to keep our customer up to date on what's new in the floral industry, industry trends, company sales, seasonal updates and much much more! Feel free to make posts and ask questions here.
