Flowers, A Business in Which Failures Abound

While for St. Valentine's day many restaurants around the world were filling up with couples in love, the Colombians who are involved in the flowers business, draining ten days of stress and little sleep were trying to sell their flowers up to the last minute. This St. Valentine's day of 2013, the flowers sold well.
Macarena Farms, a company owned by two Colombians living in New York, Nicolas Martinez and Juan Pablo Sanz, showed a great example of sales for St. Valentine's day 2013. Macarena Farms sold around $300,000 in New York and the surrounding areas, the 25% of the annual cash flow of Macarena Farms. There were 500,000 stems of roses made in Suesca, Cundinamarca (Colombia), 14% of what the farms produces annually in its 5 hectares, which finally made it to the most prestigious flower shops in New York as Starbright Floral.
In United States, there are two major days for the flower business; St. Valentine's day and mothers day, but the problem for the flower business raises the rest of the year. For growers it is not easy to maintain profit margins. In the summer the demand for flowers stops. During the three months many flower businesses have to throw the flowers away and face loss.
Although, the stem on St. Valentine's day sells from 60 to 70 cents here in United States, the real annual percentage is 30 cents, because when flowers are not in season the flower business do not sell a flower for more than 38 cents. With production costs of 26 cents in Colombia and around 60 permanent employees, Macarena Farms has annual revenues of approximately $2000,000 in a good year.
This is why the special dates such as mothers' day and St. Valentine's day are the moments of "sell or die," for small and medium business says Martinez. Success pretty much depends on a delicate balance. Luck is also a huge factor mentions Sanz, a good year could also depend on no frost damage of production and that the price of the dollar maintains stable.
In conclusion, the flower business for small and medium size companies is an every day struggle, but it is important for this companies to keep an eye open for the always unpredictable demand in United States, that comes and goes depending on the pocket of love, willing to spend for a dozen of roses, which in New York is around $75 dollars.

I would recommend to this companies not to base their entire profit on flowers, but to find another complement to their business. What do you think?

02/13/2013

I hope you like it!

Colombian Flowers Ready for the World

On February 5, 2013 Asocolflores announced through the Colombian business newspapers that their flowers were ready to be ship. As mentioned on the previous blog, Colombia was distributing around 500 million of flowers for St. Valentine's Day, an amount that makes Colombia as the second exporter of flowers in the world.
Augusto Solano, president of Asocolflores said that from the total of flowers planted in Colombia 97% goes to other countries. Of this 97%, United States gets 76%, Russia 5%, Japan 4%, and England 3%.
Colombia has consolidated in recent decades as the second largest exporter of flowers with a presence of 16% in the global market after Holland.
Well, I hope all the ladies get to enjoy some gorgeous Colombian flowers tomorrow, and I hope you have a better understanding on how meaningful flowers can be, not only for the ones receiving them, but also for those that planted the seed in the ground.

St. Valentine’s Day is Coming Up!

500 million flowers are prepared to leave Colombia on St. Valentine’s Day. This is probably the only season of the year that generates about 10 thousand additional jobs. Asocolflores promises the world, but primarily the United States gorgeous colors, hope, quality, and flowers intended to spread love on this important day.

Understanding that Colombia's weather cannot be predicted even though it remains the same all year around, Colombia's weather was superb this year for the flower production. Not too hot, not too cold, not too rainy, but perfect; Colombians consider this to be a good year for all the farms designated to agriculture.

Asocolflores is expecting the production to have a normal behavior to achieve the goal of 1,500,000 boxes of beautiful Colombia flowers exported for this season. Believe it or not, 76% of the sales of Asocolflores will make timely distribution.

For all of you who will be giving or receiving flowers on St. Valentine's Day, I hope they are Colombian. By the way, if you get or give Colombian flowers please leave me a comment and let me know what you think about them.

Here is a video of St. Valentine's Day on the eyes of Asocolflores from last year, which it was not looking as good as this year:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfVFEVtdqKk

Here is another video from last year's preparation of Colombian flowers for St. Valentine's Day:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ezpe980MEFw