Valentine's Day 2013: Good News For Retail Florists
The good news is that more customers are choosing traditional florists. Thirty-eight percent of American adults purchased flower or plant gifts from a retail florist, compared to 28 percent in 2012.
Ira Silvergleit, Floral Management April 2013
This is up 10% from the 28% statistic reported last year and represents an increase of 36%. It's a big jump and is also a full 7% over 2007, the next highest year included in the survey (which covers 2007-2013). It also gave real retail florists a solid lock on second place - selling more flowers and plants than any other outlet except for supermarket/grocery.
But the good news doesn't end there.
The median (middle) amount spent on flowers and plants jumped from $27.40 in 2012 to $35 this year.
Ira Silvergleit, Floral Management April 2013
It's not just more people, it's more people spending more money. And, again, the increase is significant - we're talking about a jump of almost 28%. Put it all together and we're talking about 36% more customers shopping with real local florists, each spending 28% more than they did last year.
Seven out of ten florists reported sales gains from a year ago compared to 10 percent reporting declines and 18 reporting flat sales.
Ira Silvergleit, Floral Management April 2013
This is good by any standard but even better when you consider that 84% of shops reported increases in 2011 and 79% reported further increases in 2012 - that means most stores are reporting improvements even on those compound gains.
Sales through the largest channel - grocery stores/supermarkets - were lower than last year and it can be assumed that many of those customers must have "moved up" to real florists. This seems like a good thing - as people started to feel okay about spending more money on flowers they chose to spend that money with real florists. Hopefully that means they appreciate the better quality and service real florists provide.
As for the other channels... mass merchandisers and street vendors were almost flat. National internet floral services and national toll-free floral services (counted as two different channels in this survey, but most florists would lump them together under the "order-gatherer" label) were up slightly - about 2% each. But, even if you total their share you still get growth of only 4% and a combined market share of about 18% - far less than the growth or market share enjoyed by brick & mortar florists this year. It seems like the good guys made most of the gains this year.
Sadly next year probably won't be quite as good. In 2014 Valentine's Day falls on the Friday of a holiday weekend and this usually hurts flower sales - many believe that customers choose to spend their Valentine's Day budgets on a date instead of flowers. It's unfortunate but great to see a positive trend overall and, if it continues, should help offset the Friday/Saturday/Sunday decline florists will see over the coming years.
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