A Bloomin’ Dilemma : Color Bowl Still a Mother’s Day Hit but Has a Dark Side
Mother’s Day, one of the busier holidays for growers and flower sellers, has an unlikely villain this year: the color bowl.
The color bowl is a favorite Southern California Mother’s Day gift. It’s a mix of inexpensive flowers--petunias, marigolds, impatiens--packed tightly into a clay pot.
In the past, color bowls sold for $16 or $17 each. Today, retailers are selling them for as little as $5.79.
The price reflects a tug of war between retailers and growers over the popular gift. It is a tale that illustrates a typical tension between these two sides of the agriculture business.
Nursery plants are Orange County’s largest crop; they still thrive in one of California’s most urbanized counties. In 1991, local growers supplied $141 million worth of plants, shrubs, trees and flowers to retailers and landscapers. The county’s No. 2 crop, strawberries, had less than one-third the wholesale value.
Color bowls were once the darling of wholesale growers. Their attraction, in part, was that growers could use whatever flower they had overstocked. But as the price of bowls dropped, growers were not making as much--if anything--on color bowls.
One reason for the lower price is that many retailers have substituted plastic pots for terra cotta, reducing the cost by about $2. But growers contend that retailers are selling color bowls below cost--a practice called using a loss leader--to get customers in the door.
“A lot of growers have gone out of the color bowl business,” said M. Todd Landwermeyer, general manager of the flower division for Doelz-Metz Wholesale Nurseries in San Juan Capistrano. “We can’t make a margin on them.”
His nursery is down to about 5,000 color bowls this year, Landwermeyer said, contrasted with nearly 20,000 last year.
Growers and retailers agree as far as a year ahead of time on quantity, price and the retailers’ advertising plans. Planting begins in January, and Mother’s Day falls within the nursery industry’s main season: March to May.
Once planting has begun, wholesalers lose their bargaining power. The growers are essentially forced to accept a retailer’s price because they have a perishable commodity. Some retailers have been accused of changing terms on their contracts and making growers angry. Growers are hesitant to force the issue because they want to maintain a working relationship with large retailers.
But culprits are hard to find. One of the lowest prices on color bowls this year is at Nurseryland Garden Center in San Juan Capistrano: $7.47 for a 15-inch pot.
The store insists, however, that that’s a fair price. “Our policy is to sell no item at a loss,” said David Haycock, assistant store manager.
Another low-price color bowl can be found at HomeBase, $7.49. But this Irvine-based home-improvement chain declined to say whether it is making any profit on the items.
“The statement is that we are competitively priced,” said Carol Elfstrom, a spokeswoman.
Other retailers bristle at the mention of loss leaders.
Roger’s Gardens, an upscale retail nursery in Corona del Mar, is one of the few still selling terra cotta color bowls for around $15. “Our products are designed, not slapped together,” said Lew Whitney, president and co-owner. “We don’t loss-leader anything. That’s not our market.”
Another retailer suggested that price changes can cut both ways. Lisa Franks, a designer for Browne’s Flowers in Dana Point, said, “Growers sometimes charge us more during the holidays.”
The tensions are bubbling during the industry’s “busiest week of the entire year,” according to Nurseryland’s Haycock.
Others said Mother’s Day is just behind Easter, Christmas and St. Valentine’s Day as their busiest period for sales of potted plants or flowers.
Growers and retailers can readily name several special items that sons and daughters want to buy for Mother’s Day, 1993. But what the stores have in stock has more to do with last year’s preferences, because the industry plans so far in advance.
Popular this year are spring bulbs and topiaries--which are plants grown in unusual shapes, such as animals or a candelabra.
Standard favorites are back, as well: orchids, chrysanthemums, spring bouquets and roses.
In general, color bowl controversy aside, this year has been better for everyone in the business.
“This has been a very positive year,” said Jo-Anne Groot Beall, vice president of El Modeno Gardens in Irvine, one of Orange County’s larger nurseries. El Modeno sells to WalMart, Target, HomeBase and others.
“The drought is officially over, the weather has been perfect, the economy is leveling out,” Beall said. “People are a little more enthusiastic about the year and about their gardens.”
Growth Industry Stays on Top
Nursery stock and cut flowers were Orange County’s largest agricultural crop in 1991. The nursery industry has been the county’s largest agricultural producer for 23 years. The 1991 figures:
Wholesale value Nursery stock Production (in millions) Small trees, shrubs 28.0 million $115.8 Bedding plants 1.7 million flats 12.7 Potted plants 2.4 million 9.6 Cut flowers 460,000 dozens 1.5 Christmas trees 33,000 trees 1.2 Miscellaneous* 0.7
* Includes sod, stolons (propagated grasses), strawberry crowns, field-grown vegetable plants for sale in retail nurseries and aquatic plants
Source: Orange County agricultural commissioner
Researched by JANICE L. JONES / Los Angeles Times
