2022 Valentine’s Day recap from FlowersandCents

MIAMI, USA: Our man in the United States, William Armellini from floral industry forum FlowersandCents reached out to several industry professionals in the USA for his flower blog to get a sense of just how this year’s Valentine’s Day holiday unfolded. Here are some of the responses.

“It’s was a good holiday, but not a great one. Open market was not as strong towards the end, especially on roses. Ecuador came early, due to the logistical challenges, many of those growers start building up inventory in Miami, and flooded the market with cheap and aged roses, which didn’t help the market. But, yesterday was very strong, everyone restocked up, which is a good sign.”

Miami Importer

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“Another one under our belt. Last year was a terrible one, it was good with sales, but logistics were due to the extreme cold in the midwest, freezing temperatures in Texas and FedEx being occupied by sending the vaccines, we felt it could not be a worse holiday than last year, and we were right, thankfully

It was a very smooth holiday for us. Our flowers from Holland, South America, Italy and Japan all came in on time, of course, we had some delays, but we had built in a cushion of time, our domestic truck and flight partners really came through and did a great job! Our clients have been busy, happy with the quality of the flowers and generally, it just had a great vibe this year!

I hope that everyone in the industry had the same positive experience this Valentine.”

Dutch importer

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“Every holiday brings on different challenges and this one was no exception. There was a lot of noise going in regarding freight, both from South America and in the states, but as usual, it was not as bad as we all thought.

The market stayed active during peak shipping days and has maintained that way which means everyone seems to have had a good holiday. Freedom prices today are still strong which is a great indication of not only the holiday but that the month should end well.

People are needing to restock on all products and there is not a lot of product available. The holiday hangover does not seem to be there.”

Miami Importer

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“This Valentine’s was very smooth and the market was strong, but I don’t have numbers yet to verify if it was very profitable. KB did not plan to have a huge holiday because we were limited in some products such as oriental and la lilies because of bulb supply disruptions. We did a lot of pre-planning so that we did not over-commit product and made sure to sell to the customers who support us all year round.  We raised prices but we probably have not raised them enough to cover the increases in labour, energy and raw materials. However, we had very limited OT and our coolers are currently empty so my feeling is we will be on budget profit-wise for the year, even if we are down in revenue.

FYI: March is National Gerbera Month, our gerberas are now ramping up in production going into spring, so that is our current focus. ”

Robert Kitayama

Kitayama Brothers

831-722-2912

www.kitayamabrothers.com

California Grower

To read more comments on this year’s Valentine’s Day sales visit Valentine’s Day 2022 review | Flowers And Cents