Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 10, 1994 TAG: 9402100239
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MEGAN SCHNABEL STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
With Valentine's Day just a heartbeat away, chances are good that most of the deliveries made to Dunman Floral Supply over the past week have been shipments of those thorny symbols of love.
"Valentine's is the biggest holiday of the year, bigger than Mother's Day," said Dunman, who sells to florists. "We'll move more product this week than we will in some whole months."
Some of the roses Dunman will ship to his 1,000 Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina accounts are homegrown Virginia products, raised in Abingdon greenhouses and delivered fresh to Vinton.
But most of Dunman's roses - 90 percent, by his estimate - travel from California or are imported from South America, especially Colombia, Guatemala and Ecuador.
While there are some subtle differences among imported and domestic rose varieties - head size and stem length may vary - the variations probably aren't going to be important to most customers.
"I don't think the consumer is going to notice a difference," Dunman said. "To the average man who walks into a flower shop, the variety doesn't really matter."
For wholesalers and retailers, the biggest draw of South American roses may be price: Locally grown roses can cost twice as much per stem as imported flowers, Dunman said. California roses typically sell at the same price as their Virginia counterparts.
The price disparity between North American and South American roses is caused in part by climate and overhead differences, said David Machtel, executive director of the Floral Trade Council, a trade group based in Haslett, Mich.
Because South American flower growers operate in a climate conducive to flower production, they are able to grow their roses outside, eliminating greenhouse costs. Labor costs also are lower in these countries, where workers may earn less in a day than their American counterparts make in an hour, Machtel said.
But even the lower costs do not fully explain the ability of South American growers to undersell U.S. growers, Machtel said.
Part of the explanation has to do with the exporters' method of selling the roses in the United States. Exporters typically send roses into the country on consignment, meaning any unsold flowers must be sent back. This encourages high-volume sales at low prices, he said.
Domestic growers, on the other hand, usually grow only as many flowers as they think they will be able to sell, making each stem a bigger investment, he said.
Although there are some dumping duties on such flowers as carnations and chrysanthemums, none exist on roses, Machtel said. Roses Inc., an organization that represents domestic rose growers, has tried several times to have such duties instituted but has not been able to prove that dumping has harmed domestic growers. The Floral Trade Council is preparing to file another request as soon as funds can be raised.
"How they sell for so little is the $64,000 question," Machtel said. "It's almost like they don't have to make any money."
Machtel said the U.S. government has agreements with both Colombia, the biggest flower exporter, and Costa Rica. In those agreements, reviewed yearly, the South American governments have assured the United States that no subsidies are given. But while these agreements apply to some cut flowers, roses are not included, he said.
And even though domestic roses tend to have longer shelf lives because they have shorter journeys, Machtel said the quality of domestic roses is not enough to combat the lower prices of imports.
The news is not good for local growers.
"Probably, the South American rose growers have pretty much supplanted domestic growers nationwide," said Sam Ramsey, vice president and owner of Floral Renditions in Roanoke. Unlike many Roanoke-area florists, who said all or most of their roses are imports, Ramsey said he deals with almost equal numbers of domestic and imported flowers.
Imports "are getting bigger all the time, and domestic growers are getting smaller all the time," said John Kealey of Kealey-Johnson Wholesale Florist, Dunman's Abingdon grower. "We've done about all we can do."
\ A rose is a rose is a rose\
Wholesale prices for long-stem red roses typically are doubled between mid-January and Feb. 14. Prices rise from about 50 cents to more than $1 per stem.
Americans spend $12.5 billion a year on floral products, according to the Floral Index, a trade group in Chicago.
U.S. sales of cut flowers have more than doubled over the past two decades.
In 1971, more than 1.4 billion cut flowers, 4 percent of them imported, were sold in the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In 1992, sales topped 3.4 billion blooms - 73 percent imported.
The number of U.S. rose growers declined from 323 to 225 over the past 20 years. Imports now account for 55 percent of the 1.2 billion roses sold annually in the United States.
- Associated Press
by CNB