Love isn’t the only thing blooming this Valentine’s Day. Athens’ florists will spend the holiday wrapping roses and lilies to help love-stricken customers win over their dates.
Each year, more than 400 million flowers are sold in America for Feb. 14, according to an IPSOS-Insight Floral Trends Consumer Tracking Study. Local flower shop owners said they rely on the Valentine’s Day rush to keep them afloat during slower times.
“Valentine’s Day is something that if you have a good one, it can keep you going for a couple months, like when the students are gone and our business goes away quite a bit,” said Natasha Neal, who owns Jack Neal Floral with her husband Davey. “The second largest is Mother’s Day, because people who don’t have a girlfriend definitely have a mom.”
About 30 percent of Neal’s annual sales come from Valentine’s Day alone, she said. Like every other flower shop, almost every foot of floor and counter space was covered in romantic floral this past week.
Local shops have had shipments of flowers coming from Florida, California, Canada and Ecuador about once a day, and the florists had to plan those shipments based on the condition they wanted their flowers to be in by Thursday. Tulips, for instance, were delivered last weekend to ensure they would open in time for the big day.
“It’s really just a huge guessing game for florists,” Neal said. “We don’t know when people are going to call, and we don’t know what they’ll want or when they’ll want it. You just have to predict.”
At its Union Street location, Jack Neal Floral is closer to campus than the other three flower shops in the city — Athens Flower Shop on East State Street, Hyacinth Bean on West Union Street and the floral department in Kroger, also on East State Street.
Even though Jack Neal is easiest for students to walk to, Jim Sands, city council president and owner of the Athens Flower Shop with his partner, David Ratliff, said students make up about 50 percent of his clientele, compared with Jack Neal’s 30 percent.
“The biggest everyday sellers are just everyday flowers,” Sands said. “A lot of people will buy flowers for boyfriends and girlfriends, and Athens has enough people in it that there’s always someone doing that. But Valentine’s is by far the largest. That’s because we’re a student-oriented community.”
Even without the students, Athens Flower Shop has about 4,500 permanent residents in its online database. Sands said Valentine’s Day brings in 10 to 20 percent of the year’s sales.
The most popular flowers for Valentine’s Day are roses, lilies, daisies, carnations and tulips, he said. According to the IPSOS survey, 51 percent of Valentine’s Day flower sales are red roses, and 27 percent are roses that aren’t red.
A normal shipment at the Athens Flower Shop is about 100 roses. This week, Sands will receive up to 1,200.
But while the other three Athens shops use only flowers imported from hundreds of miles away, Hyacinth Bean owner Polly Creech tries to use as many locally grown plants as possible — up to 20 percent coming from her own garden in Albany.
“I try to use as many local, organically-grown flowers as possible,” she said.
After three years of just growing flowers and selling them to wholesale and retail florists, as well as at the Athens Farmers Market, Creech opened her own shop. Though she said she doesn’t get as many students as the others, she gets most of their parents.
During the warm months she does weddings almost every weekend, and during the holidays she makes centerpieces and wreaths. In her little workshop, where she also sells locally made pottery, glass and jewelry, she sifts through buckets of flowers almost by herself — even today, when other flower shops will have five to 10 others on staff.
“On Valentine’s day, this whole place will be full of arrangements waiting to go to people,” Neal said. “… It always feels good to get those phone calls from people saying we made their day.”
oy311909@ohiou.edu
