What to Expect this Mother's Day

Written By Alejandro Henao, The Flower Co, WFFSA Marketing Committee Member

Mother’s Day is around the corner. For the majority of wholesalers nationwide, Mother’s Day is the best commercial holiday due to the high and non-specific demand of the vast majority of flowers. For starters there are more mom’s than significant other nowadays hence the high demand. Throughout the US and Canada, we tend to rely on flowers to show Mom our love, and why not to our Mothers in Law as well.

Based on the top selling e-commerce retailers there will be a high demand on Roses, Lilies, Tulips, Stock, Gerbers, and Carnations.  In terms of color trends and shades, I do see a predominance in Pink and Lavender. Called my attention several arrangements with orange/yellow tones, interesting I might say to have an autumn-ish Mother’s Day celebration.  Something very important, remember your growing partner will have a lot of red colored flowers, be a good sport and try to make your pre-books with a balanced ratio between red/color. They made a fantastic effort to fulfill Valentine’s Day demands and even though I don’t like the concept, The “Quid Pro Quo” attitude is always much appreciated.

From a grower’s perspective, this holiday season will be different. Certain macro aspects will affect the regular supply of products from both Ecuador and Colombia. Even though a heavy production is expected due to natural behavior of plants until mid-June the specific Mother’s Day peak will come up to 10 day earlier due to shorter plant cycles, basically because of warmer temperatures in both growing countries.

I don’t foresee any significant shortage in an overall definition, however, if you are variety specific, I would encourage you to book your flowers, ASAP, with your trusted importer/grower and consider a plan B in case production as expected comes in early. Try talking with your clients and allure them to be shade specific and not variety specific, this will alleviate any unnecessary tension in overall fulfilment.

Just as in Valentine’s Day logistics will be in fine tune. There are plenty planes out there so don’t you worry about a thing.  I’m not a fan of sea container shipments but I respect the colleagues that do.  I do believe that it should be discussed and mutually approved. There’s an important logistic efficiency by shipping via Sea Container, so if you are willing to compromise the freshness you should get a price benefit.  Talk to your floral partner and make sure how your flowers are arriving in the US ports so you can ensure the ultimate freshness and therefore an extraordinary experience for your clients. At the end of the day that’s what we all aim for; a happy client is a recurrent client.

I wish you all a very successful holiday, there will be plenty flowers and I’m positive it will be a fantastic season for all of us. Just remember book early, receive the flowers early and be shade specific and not variety specific.

Alejandro Henao
The Flower Co.