What Happens in Miami...

The Sun Valley team is just back from the International Floriculture Exposition (IFE) in Miami Beach, Florida.  This show is a great opportunity to mingle with other industry people, see what our friends and competitors are up to and see how the other half live. Arcata, California is about as far as you can get from Miami Beach, both geographically, weather-wise and ideologically. While Arcata is fuzzy sweaters in June and gray, foggy clouds; Miami is string bikinis and the Miami Heat.

Our 2013 Booth at IFE

One of the best lessons to be learned in Miami is which of our products are people buzzing about?  I see beautiful flowers all day long, and I am fairly spoiled by seeing first hand all the cool stuff happening on the farm.  It is a great exercise to take a solid collection of all our products, arrange them beautifully, then sit back and watch which items our customer’s gravitate towards.  Even after all these years, the Starfighter Oriental Lily still gets a huge draw and our stunning Rose Lilies were constantly being admired and photographed.

Rose Lilies and driftwood

 People also like to learn what is “new”.  Industry wide Sun Valley is know for the highest quality lilies, huge soil grown tulips and our elegant Telstar iris. At a show, our customers usually want to see what’s new, because with Lane and the rest of our growers, there is always something fresh and innovative in ground or in the cooler.

Cotinus, aka "Smoke Bush", in a Sun Pacific Seasonal Surge Bouquet

This IFE show was a coming out party for our Baja Sunflowers and stunning Eryngium. We pride ourselves on the great CAGrown products we produce on our three California farms; however, we also now have two properties in Baja, Mexico, one in Encinidas and one in Los Cabos. These two farms are dedicated to growing sunflowers, eryngium and other crops that highlight sunflowers. Our farms in the USA are certified sustainable by Veriflora, and the two farms in Baja are Rainforest Alliance Certified.  Rainforest Alliance Certification takes a strong commitment to environmental and social responsibility, and this is reflected in the fact that ours are the only two Rainforest Alliance Certified farms in all of Mexico.

Pro-Cut Red Sunflowers

At the IFE show, people were excited to see the new collection of Sunflowers, especially the Pro-Cut Red and the Teddy Bear varieties.  The Pro-Cut Red looks like it was dyed a deep chocolaty maroon, yet, it’s not dyed.  It has been bred to highlight a beautiful color palette, which redefines the idea of what a sunflower is.  Then there were the Teddy Bears.  This is a really cool sunflower that seems to ebb and flow in its popularity.  From the response we saw in Miami it looks like it will be flowing this year, people couldn’t help themselves as they touched and rubbed the soft, yellow blooms. Expect to see Teddy Bears popping up all over the industry, from consumer bunches to bouquet focals.

Teddy Bears!

Surrounding the suns were some tall vases of our eryngium.  This is not just any eryngium but a big, bold variety called “Super Nova.”  We have the exclusive right to grow “Super Nova” in North America. As I pretended to be a fly on the wall, I heard over and over again floral people saying, 

“Is this eryngium?  I’ve only seen it much smaller, wow, that is big.”

An iris and eryngium bouquet by Sun Pacific Bouquet

Outside the convention hall, the most fun to be had was on the 50^th floor of the Viceroy Hotel on a rooftop dance floor, at a lavish party thrown by Temkin, Chrysal, CH Robinson  and the Produce News.  Booming Latin jazz, a stunning view and a game seven World Championship win by the Miami Heat made this a night to remember.  As the night rolled into morning, some of the more animated guests shared some of their funniest stories.

 

Pieter Landman, with a shiny head from bumping on the dance floor, recounted a tale of his run in with the band Bon Jovi in Japan at the peak of their popularity in the early 1990s.  He went into his hotel bar asked the bartender why there were police barricades and swarms of teenagers trying to jump the barricade and make it into the hotel.  The bartender pointed to the four long haired guys drinking heavily at the bar.  Ever the fashionista, Pieter just had to engage the band and he had just had one question for the band, 

“You guys… why is your hair so long?”

With a look at Jon’s current hair style, it can’t help but make me wonder in Pieter’s question didn’t rattle around in Jon’s subconscious for years.  

Before and after Jon Bon Jovi met Pieter Landman. Nice scarf!

The music at the party transformed from Latin jazz to hip hop, and suddenly Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer” blasted across Downtown Miami.  Truly a great anthem for the flower industry, but that was my cue to grab my fellow Sun Valley teammates and make a break for it. The Miami Heat game had been just a few blocks away; we ducked our heads through police barricades and roaming crowds of revelers somehow getting back across the bridge to Miami Beach. 

 

The IFE show is a lot of hard work and expense, but it pays off by actually getting to sit down with our customers and our friends, which in Sun Valley’s case are one and the same. 

See you next year in New Orleans!