How To Get 700 Tulips Into a Mini.

Take a cherry red convertible Mini and fill it with about 700 tulips. Which shines brighter: the dramatic tulips or the awesome vehicle?

Mini with tulips

Last year Sun Valley Floral Farm needed a “stop you in your tracks” display for the International Floriculture Exposition in Miami Beach.  Our Dutch designer Pieter Landman had a bold vision.  When he presented his vision of tulips bursting out of a convertible Mini during a creative sales meeting, everyone was kind of silent…waiting for the boss to react. We watched in anticipation as he mulled it over with his thick Dutch accent, 

“Ahhh, Hmmm, tulips?  In a car, ja?” 

 

Pieter Landman, a very flamboyant designer whose resume includes the flowers at Wimbledon, royal palaces and international fashion shows, throws is hands in the air,

“Not just a car! It’s a Mini, it’s perfect.  The color, the shape, we fill the whole thing with tulips, more colors than a rainbow, no one has seen this before!”

The boss says, “Ya, a Mini Cooper, aye?”

The head of sales, a California born surfer and flower industry pro quietly chimes in, “That'd be awwwwesome.”

The rest of the sales team is already making eye contact establishing the pecking order for who gets to drive first.  A sly smile starts to creep across the boss's face, as we watch him mentally warm up to the idea.

“Hmmm, Ahhhh, OK Pieter, let’s do it!”

Pieter Landman in action.

The unintentional cheers and high-fives from the sales team make for a quick uncomfortable silence as people suddenly feel self-conscious as they are knuckle bumping in the middle of the meeting.  The boss looks around as his staff tries to regain their composure, “Meeting adjourned, now get back to work” as he strides out of the office while trying to keep his own grin contained.

A month later, the head of marketing is now tasked with renting a Mini in South Florida.  She calls to make a reservation from California, and getting a little bit of sticker shock from just the cost to rent the Mini, says, “Well, we aren’t really going to drive it any further than the convention hall, we are just using it as a display.” 

 

“What are you going to display,” asks the rental agent.

“Well, we are a flower farm and we are going to fill it with flowers” she replies.

“Flowers?   …in the Mini?  Mama, I don’t think we have a car for you to rent. Goodbye.” (Click)

Ever determined, she makes the rounds of all the luxury car dealerships and finally finds another red convertible Mini, of course for Pieter, It has to be red!  I overhear her explaining in her sweet southern accent that she is on vacation, just going to use the car to zip around town, no mention of work, conventions or tulips.

Mini dashboard with tulips

We land in Miami about midnight, and have asked the rental people to stay late so we can pick up the Mini, we have also rented a nondescript van for all our stuff.  As we leave the safety of the airport and start off into a dark industrial portion of Miami, far off the beaten path to locate the Mini rental place, I notice Jack locks all the van doors and is checking his mirrors a little too much.  We pull into a street that reminds me of a Miami Vice set, our intrepid Marketing Director hops out of the van with Anthony.  They walk into the open sliding door of a big garage.  A menacing looking guy (who was probably just upset he had to sit there until nearly 1 a.m. for us to pick up the car) talks with her a bit, his hands moving in expressive gestures. He starts up the car, revs the engine and in my imagination pulls out a brief case full of guns and cash, our Marketing Director makes the exchange, slides into the Mini, Anthony bounds over the door into the passenger seat. Jack slams the van into gear and we get back on the freeway as fast as we can.

Mini with the top down.

The next day, we take the Mini over to the convention hall, we have already cleared it with the organization sponsoring the convention and expect to just drive the car right in, and park it at our booth.  Piece of cake.  

Enter the Union.  The Union has different rules and regulations than the convention center.  They let us know, that the car needs to have less than a quarter of a tank of gas, have the battery disconnected, and we need to hire a local Miami-Dade County fireman to keep an eye on the car 24 hours a day, to ensure against it catching fire.  A lot of string pulling, favor calling and other shenanigans commence, all to no avail.  The Union is not going to budge. The strategy session evolves as we wait for our other display materials to get unloaded from a long line of semis. 

The ideas flow,

• Let’s syphon the gas out, a few calls to Pep Boys and a local gas station proves that with modern vehicles this is extremely hard to syphon gas, and illegal as well. 

•  Let’s take the car to the hotel and pay the concierge a few bucks to leave the car idling outside the hotel for the next 8 hours or so.  Clicking away on smart phones, we learned a car burns between .4 to .6 gallons of gas in an hour at idol, the Mini has a full tank.

o   Maybe if we put a brick on the accelerator it would burn more gas?

• Let’s make a huge contribution to the Union retirement fund.

• Jack offers to take one for the team, “You guys can set up the display, and I’ll drive the car to Key West and back.”

• Let’s redo the display and use a different type of vehicle, one without a motor.
• How about a canoe?
• How about a set of kayaks?
• How about a rickshaw? (This would be sweet!)
• Mountain bikes?
• Beach crusiers?
• A claw foot tub?      

• Let’s try to return the car, and rent a different red convertible Mini with less gas in the tank.  (The call was made, no dice.)

• Let’s leave the car idling outside the convention hall unlocked.  Without 2 keys, this seems like a great opportunity to have our display vehicle turned into a stolen vehicle.

•  Let’s encourage the Union guys to figure a way to deal with it.  We send Jack out to the hot, loud industrial loading dock, saying in his best Jersey accent, “Whadda mean, yous can’t just take care a dis?”

• Let’s drill a small hole in the gas tank and let the gas the drain out, then fill the hole with toothpaste when we are done.

• Let's take the dashboard apart and disabling the gas gauge.

Mini trunk, filled with flowers.

We set up the non-car elements of the display, it is a hot and sweaty affair since they don’t turn on the AC until after the show starts.  By 4 p.m. everybody is pretty tuckered out and the car situation is nowhere closer to being resolved. 

 

I see our Marketing Director grab the keys, “Alright Jack, go out and drive as much gas out of the car as you can.” His sunglasses, usually perched above his forehead, naturally pop down onto his eyes as he replies, “You got it, Boss.”

She points at me, “You go with him, and make sure he doesn’t do anything dumb.”

“Yes, Mama.”

Five minutes later Jack and I are rollin’ down famous Ocean Drive, top down, tunes bumpin’, pulling up alongside Ferraris and convertible Beemers.  Revving the engine like crazy, just to use up as much gas as possible.  Art deco architecture, palm trees, beautiful people, the Miami Vice soundtrack playing in my head. We wind out of Miami Beach, Jack pushing the accelerator down over the Julia Tuttle Causeway.  Now this is a fine day in the floral industry.

 

By now it is just approaching 5 p.m. and all of a sudden the soundtrack in my head comes to an abrupt halt, as Jack downshifts into a construction zone, which quickly becomes grid lock.  It’s about 95 degrees and super humid.  We are blasting the A.C. with the top down, to use up gas.   A dump truck is belching exhaust literally into my face in the low slung Mini. I-95 is a mess of traffic, orange cones and heavy machinery.  No girls in bikinis here, no Latin-techno music blasting out of bars, not a mojito insight, just grime and smoke.

An hour later we get into stop and go traffic, what a blessing.  And maybe another hour later, we break free of the traffic, and catch a stunning sunset rolling down the South Dixie Highway through Key Largo.

We stop for a picture, and turn the Mini around to drive back across the edge of the Everglades, racing as fast as we can, so we get the worst possible gas mileage, and hoping to still get late dinner.

The next morning our Marketing Director takes the Mini out for an early spin for a hundred miles or so, and we finally get the tank down to a quarter full. In case you’re wondering, this car gets about 44 miles to the gallon.

Sun Valley's Mini flower display

We pull it into the convention center, Pieter and the Sun Valley team burst into action, and a few hours later, the cherry red Mini Cooper has become the talk of the convention, and I realize you should wear sunscreen while in a convertible in Florida.

 
We are back in Miami this week, if you are coming to IFE, we will see you here.  If not, tune in next week to see what kind of trouble we were able to get into, and for another funny post about our last trip to Miami, read Tulip Credits.