L.A. Flower Market Has Had Its Share of Thorns
Birds of paradise froze, normally white baby’s breath was brown and calla lilies went limp, thanks to the recent storm pummeling California. Even so, there was no lack of flowers for sale in downtown Los Angeles before dawn Friday.
It was the last big market day before Valentine’s Day--the downtown flower district’s busiest day of the year.
Carnations from Israel and Peru, daffodils and tulips from Holland streamed into the market in time for Valentine’s Day, to help make up for the field-grown flowers lost by local growers. “The growers are taking a beating,” said Jo Valle, whose sons run a wholesale flower business in the Los Angeles Flower Market on Wall Street.
Most weeks, imported flowers account for about 38% of the flowers sold in the United States. Last week, Los Angeles growers and wholesalers said the percentage might have climbed to 70% or 80%. And despite the low-cost imports, retail florists paid twice as much for some of their blossoms Friday because demand exceeded supply.
“Overall, the product is here, but the prices are high,” said Larry Ott, owner of Desert Florist in Palmdale. Ott was among the hundreds of florists trundling metal carts through the market early Friday. “This is the biggest single sales day of the year,” he said. “Florists do about 40% of their business on 38 days around holidays during the year.”
‘Like Suez Canal’
It is hard to imagine that the bustling district, with its abundance of magnificent flowers, is plagued with problems that may jeopardize its future.
The district, long a fragrant oasis in the city’s seamy Skid Row area, is home to about 150 growers and wholesalers who have been gathering to sell their wares since the 1920s. Flower supply wholesalers also ring the area.
The flower district is centered on two competing markets facing each other across Wall Street between 7th and 8th streets. Japanese growers opened the first market, the Southern California Growers’ Los Angeles Wholesale Flower Terminal, about 60 years ago.
A few years later, European immigrants who brought their flower-growing skills to California, founded the American Florists’ Exchange Los Angeles Flower Market directly across the street.
Wall Street itself was once “like the Suez Canal,” according to one industry source, with competition and antagonism between the two markets. During World War II, there was outright hostility toward the Japanese growers. Today, flower growers say, mutual distrust continues to thwart efforts to solve the problems facing both markets.
The downtown flower district, which generates about $100 million in sales a year, is dealing with challenges ranging from the Skid Row residents to cut-throat competition from foreign growers.
And a debate on whether to move the market from downtown to another area has continued for the past 15 years. Some growers say they dream of moving into a better neighborhood and turning the flower district into a tourist attraction. Others feel that the parking and safety problems can be solved and that the market should remain downtown.
“We don’t know where we are going,” admits Frank Kuwahara, a former flower grower who serves as vice chairman of the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency. He said uniting the boards of directors who run the two competing markets would be a major step toward resolving the common problems. But, he said, that will probably never happen.
Kuwahara, whose family was one of the original tenants, retired from flower growing about 20 years ago. He still visits the market nearly every morning and is active in district affairs.
Michael Bradley, executive vice president of the 1,400-member Southern California Floral Assn., echoes Kuwahara’s concerns. “We are our own worst enemy,” said Bradley. “Someday, we are all going to be sitting on the sidewalk wondering where the flower market has gone.”
He said the market has lost business in recent years because of “the neglect, the location, parking and drug situation.” Although the streets were quiet Friday morning, the growers and wholesalers who lease space in the markets say drunks and drug addicts continue to harass customers. While the market buildings themselves are brightly lit and protected by security guards, growers point out that street people know they cannot be shooed off the public streets and sidewalks.
Competition From Outside
And then there are competitors who don’t work out of the flower district at all. Growers and wholesalers with stalls in the market are finding themselves competing with growers who bypass the market and sell directly to florists, noted Jon Prechtl, general manager of Mellano & Co., one of the oldest companies in the market.
Prechtl, whose grandfather was one of the original founders of the exchange, said they are also fighting competition from about three dozen satellite flower-distribution warehouses outside Los Angeles. The satellite warehouses serve florists who are unwilling to travel to downtown Los Angeles in the middle of the night.
Johnny Mellano started in the family flower business 40 years ago as the son responsible for irrigating fields of flowers on his father’s Cerritos ranch.
“My family and the others built this market because they wanted a place to sell their products,” said Mellano, who manages the American Floral Exchange’s market on the east side of Wall street.
Sixty years ago, the Los Angeles flower district rumbled with scores of trucks heading out across the country to deliver California’s floral products. Today, the flower district no longer serves as a shipping hub. Instead, growers ship directly by air from Los Angeles International Airport and other airports.
“We’ve seen a big change,” said Lori Anderson, whose grandfather founded the Groen Rose Co. in Montebello 74 years ago. Today, the Groen grows greenhouse roses in Santa Barbara. “We’ve lost a lot of good accounts who decided to go to the wholesale outlets in Costa Mesa or the San Fernando Valley,” Anderson said.
To keep customers, Anderson started delivering roses to florists in southern Los Angeles and Orange County. This means that after working in the Flower Market from about 2:30 a.m. to 8 a.m., she frequently finds herself delivering flowers well into the following day. Foreign imports also affect Groen’s business. Anderson said roses from Mexico tend to flood the market on holidays, such as Valentine’s Day.
Until about 10 years ago, California growers found an eager market for their products all across the country. Today, they compete with inexpensive flowers grown abroad, in countries such as Israel, Peru, Colombia, Chile and Thailand. “Ten years ago, no one even imagined the disruption of the U.S. flower market by the imports,” said Paul Ecke Jr., president of the American Florists’ Exchange, which owns and manages the Los Angeles Flower Market. “Many California growers who had extensive markets east of the Mississippi have lost their markets to the imports coming into the East Coast,” Ecke said.
Sold Within 36 Hours
He said foreign growers can sell their flowers in Los Angeles within 36 hours of their cutting. And, because flowers from Israel and several South American countries are flown in on government-subsidized airlines, their prices are competitive with domestic products. In 1987, about $47 million in imported roses were sold in the United States, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Colombia led the way with 207 million roses; Mexico was second with 18.7 million. Ecke, whose family is world famous for its San Diego County-grown poinsettias, said flowers are pouring into the United States from Israel, Chile, Ecuador and Colombia.
Canada, the Netherlands and Thailand are also flooding the market with tulips, roses, daffodils and other exotic flowers. Flower growers are trying to persuade the U.S. Commerce Department and Congress to levy higher tariffs on flower imports, but so far, Ecke said, they have not been too successful.
Closer to home, Ecke said that while the street people around the flower markets are “absolutely awful for business,” he still thinks the district has a bright future. “I think it’s different now than it was 15 years ago, but the idea of having a central market of some sort is still viable,” said Ecke.
