There are few signs of recession in London’s elegant Sloane Square. It is here that shoppers find one of London’s smartest florists – Moyses Steven – just across the road from Cartier and Tiffany’s, the world-famous jewellers.
Inside the flower shop, a royal warrant is on display above the banks of orchids and the massed roses, peonies and lilies – the three-feather crest which shows that Prince Charles, Britain’s Crown Prince, buys his flowers from here. An assistant ties white lilies, jasmine, and big, blowsy white roses into a huge, lush bouquet.
Moyses Stevens’ flowers are gorgeous, and undeniably expensive; those big white roses cost 4.50 pound sterling (84 Br) each. But the well dressed men and women who come in to collect the bouquets and arrangements they have ordered are clearly buying on quality, not on price.
Moyses Steven’s managing director, Victoria Odell-Romanoff, confirmed that this retail side of the business has been largely unaffected by the recession.
“People still seem to be buying flowers,” she told Fortune. “Our private customers are still going strong.”
Where she has noticed a difference is in demand from corporate clients, and in orders for flowers for big events. They have not cancelled their orders, but they have cut back by reducing the number of arrangements, or the amount they spend.
But she is hoping that the worst of the recession may now be over.
“It is only over the summer we have felt that it has been very quiet, but it is quiet every summer,” Odell-Romanoff said. “We have already seen signs of September looking like a very good month, so we are hoping it will continue to pick up. We have already got lots of orders booked in for Christmas, and so we feel very positive that the last quarter will be back to normal.”
The financial health of their customers may be one worry, but the effect of the economic crisis on exchange rates has been just as serious for the British cut flower sector. Ask a London florist where their roses come from, and the answer — inevitably — is Holland. Wherever the flowers were grown, most reach Britain via the Dutch flower auctions, and that means they are priced in euros. And the British pound has plummeted against the European currency.
Adam Porges, the chairman of Britain’s Flower Import Trade Association, says the collapse of the pound was just one in a whole series of blows to hit the flower industry in the past couple of years. His company – All Seasons’ Flowers – particularly, has been badly hit because he imports a lot of flowers from Colombia. First the Colombian currency rose against the US dollar. Then the pound fell, losing 30pc of its value against the dollar in a very short time.
Colombian flowers were suddenly a lot more expensive. Meanwhile last year’s spike in oil prices doubled the cost of air freight within a year. For the traditional flower trade in Britain, already suffering from the relentless competition of the big supermarkets, this was bad news on top of bad news, Adam Porges told Fortune.
At Moyses Steven, Victoria Odell-Romanoff has been finding her own ways to deal with the exchange rate problem.
“We do use flowers from Ethiopia,” she says, “but not directly, they come through the Dutch markets and the Euro has made buying flowers very expensive. We have not passed this cost on, but have just started using more English Flowers and more seasonal flowers in our hand-tied bouquets and vases.”
English and old-fashioned looking flowers are popular for weddings – hydrangeas, large headed scented roses, and peonies.
So Ethiopian flowers face stiff competition here, from locally grown flowers and high quality Colombian flowers at the top end of the market. Lower down the scale, the big supermarkets seldom buy at auction, but have their own direct supply contracts, mostly with Kenyan growers.
A typical British supermarket welcomes customers with a big display of cut flowers just inside the entrance, and tempts them to buy with rock-bottom prices. Sainsburys, one of the biggest, is currently selling a bunch of 15 Kenyan roses for just 2.99 pound sterling (55 Br), a little more expensive than Bambis, but a good deal cheaper than the flower shop at the Addis Abeba Hilton. And they come with a sachet of ‘flower food’ and a guarantee that they will stay fresh for at least a week.
Adam Porges concedes that supermarkets have encouraged people to buy more cut flowers.
“For the supermarkets, it is all about price. They put a lot of pressure on their suppliers to keep prices down, and we do not really know how profitable their flower sales are,” Porges told Fortune. “They may take a loss on flowers in order to tempt people to spend money elsewhere in the store. But we only deal in flowers, and we have to set a price which gives a fair return to the importer, the retailer, and the grower.”
While Adam Porges paints a picture of a specialist flower trade in long-term decline, his counterpart at the Flower Wholesale Trade Association, is more of an optimist. Jon Adams’ company, Jane Adams Ltd, sells to high street flower shops and he says some of them – like other small businesses at the moment – are struggling.
“We have seen a bit of a downturn, and some natural wastage among the shops,” he says.
But that is not necessarily because of a slump in demand. There is a theory that flowers are largely recession-proof. As luxuries go they are not expensive, and when times are tough, people buy flowers to cheer themselves up.
Jon Adams says that the ‘flower holidays’ this year, Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Mothering Sunday, have been as good as ever.
“Now the wedding market is keeping us going through the summer, and best of all, the weather has been quite good; and when the sun shines, then people buy flowers!”
By ELIZABETH BLUNT
Special to Fortune
