Flower Marketing for 2013

Here we go on another trip around the sun. In the flower industry the sun plays a larger role than in most industries, so we are especially glad to see the New Year arrive and now we can start moving toward Valentine’s Day, Women’s Day, Mother’s Day and longer days in general.


This time of year it is wise to take a few moments to reflect on the last year and chart your course for the coming year. The last year was a good year here at Sun Valley. We had some great crops and some big sales. There was definite room for improvement; some of you might have noticed us run out of red tulips in the last days before Christmas and maybe we should never grow the Doubleen Lily again. That said, our team members achieved some very lofty goals in planting, harvest and packaging a staggering amount of beautiful flowers.

In looking forward to 2013 I always wonder, “How can we encourage more people to bring home flowers.” Not necessarily Sun Valley flowers (although this is strongly encouraged!) but buying flowers to bring to your home, office and give as gifts. One of the highlights of the last year was sitting down for lunch with best-selling author Amy Stewart. Many of you may know her as the author of the seminal book on the flower industry titled, “Flower Confidential” where she traveled the globe finding out the inside scoop on the floral industry. This is a great read for anyone who appreciates flowers, and wonders what really happens behind the scenes.

Amy made a great observation about something the cut flower industry is really missing, this is a cult following. She brought up the popular television show “Sex in the City”, which ran for many years and spawned two movies. In this show the main character Carrie Bradshaw, played by Sarah Jessica Parker, is obsessed with ultra-expensive shoes. Shoes created by fancy Italian designers that few of us could ever afford in real life. Her fixation on shoes through the run of the program turned their entire audience into $500 high heel aficionados. Due to the show’s popularity and longevity, a whole generation of women…and men, now knows what a “Manolo” or a “Louboutin” is.



$770 bucks!

 This interesting phenomenon probably hasn’t done that much to sell more $770 Dior Gladiators, however, the fact that “Manolo” is now a household word shows the potential of having an advocate in Hollywood or New York. Obviously, I don’t think the costume designer or the screen writer for the show was actively marketing for these elite shoe companies, I think this was a natural, organic story line which once it took hold they were able to develop, repeatedly.

What if Carrie Bradshaw had been infatuated with lilies as she was with shoes? Imagine her walking by a florist, pining away at a dramatic Gizmo Lily, from our Lilitopia Collection. Imagine Carrie surrounding her laptop with Sumatras, and imagine how the Rose Lily would have blown her mind. Now imagine the devote fans of her show following her lead…ahhh, it’s a beautiful picture isn’t it?

As an industry we need to promote having CA Grown flowers in the home as a healthy lifestyle choice and an aesthetically pleasing necessity, whether you live in a tiny Manhattan apartment, a rolling estate in the foothills of Colorado, or in a subdivision in San Diego.

Where can we find our flower advocates, our flower fans? The first place we need to look is outside of the flower industry, and hopefully into mass media, television, social media and Hollywood, and we especially need to look to the younger set. Today’s young women have more education and more buying power than any previous generation; we need to demonstrate the joy of flower culture, starting in 2013.

Amy’s next observation was equally as powerful. We need to take several pages from the Wine Industry's play book. Our two industries are so similar, it can be frightening, yet wine continues to grow at a ridiculous rate, while flowers are not. …Sure you can catch a nice buzz from wine, but flowers are also intoxicating, with a much smaller hangover. Our markets are basically the same.

As I consider this point, I see the way the “pairing” craze has combined the food and wine industries, this is sheer unadulterated genius. It is an upsell and a value added scenario, which creates a much better experience for the user. How about in 2013 we start pairing flowers with the meal as well, based on scent, texture, color, geography, aesthetic form and history. We simply need to pull back the lens in that shot in Sunset Magazine to have not only the meal and the glass of pinot, but the flowers which compliment both.

Some folks are already doing this, check out this piece from the Texas Department of Agriculture, very cool, and check out this article from Food and Wine titled "A Lesson in Paring Scents.” What a great way of enlarging the gourmet circle to include epicurean flowers.

It also strikes me that wine and flowers share another aesthetic. They both come from the earth, and involve a relatively dirty process to bring out the final product; however, they both are enjoyed in pristine glass vessels. The vase and the wine glass each epitomize style and refinement, and we need to see that people are as conscientious of filling up their vase, as they are their glass.

From Sun Valley we wish you a warm, flower filled Happy New Year.  Something about the New Year, resolutions and fresh starts ...it all makes me very hopeful. Cheers!