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You can still say it with flowers.
The coronavirus has brought florists a veritable bouquet of problems this Mother’s Day, but shops are doing their best to keep up with demand.
More than eight in 10 people still plan to celebrate the holiday despite the pandemic probably keeping them from treating their moms in person, spending $205 apiece, according to the National Retail Federation, which is $8 more on average than last year. Google GOOG, -0.28% searches for “Mother’s Day deliveries” have also spiked 500% over the past week.
And among the most popular gifts: flowers, of course, with 64% of shoppers expecting to mail their mothers a bouquet this year, according to the NRF.
“Demand has been through the roof,” said Gregg Weisstein, the co-founder of BloomNation.com, an online marketplace for finding bouquets from local florists and studios around the country. BloomNation works with about 4,000 florists, and Weisstein told MarketWatch that many of those shops have seen demand that is “probably double what they saw last year.”
Danielle Mason, the vice president of Teleflora.com, told MarketWatch that the online seller has also seen “a noticeable spike” in Mother’s Day flower orders over last year, as many people who can’t be with their moms in person are sending their love by sending bouquets.
“We have seen more demand come in for Mother’s Day in the past week or two than we’ve ever seen,” added Chris McCann, CEO of 1-800-Flowers.com. He also credited the run on bouquets and gift baskets with “a real pent-up demand of people needing to connect” during the pandemic.
But business isn’t blooming everywhere. The Society of American Florists recently surveyed about 150 flower shop owners. And while 33% expect Mother’s Day sales to be up this year, and 24% expect them to stay flat, some 42% are bracing for sales to be down on one of the traditionally biggest holidays for flower vendors in the U.S.
That’s in part because meeting the growing Mother’s Day demand is a challenge in the shadow of an outbreak that has infected more than 3.71 million people and killed more than 259,695 worldwide, shutting down national economies around the world as people shelter in place to stop the virus’ spread.
What’s more, the coronavirus hit the $8.5 billion global flower trade especially hard in mid-March, when lockdown orders came down across Europe and the U.S. About 400 million flowers in the Netherlands, including 140 million tulip stems, were destroyed in a single month as demand plummeted. And it remains to be seen what sort of impact the many weddings being canceled or postponed this summer will have on the industry, not to mention scrapped senior proms and graduation parties.
So what does that mean for Mother’s Day shoppers this week? While you can still find beautiful bouquets, it may require more legwork. You may also need to settle for an arrangement made from whatever blooms that the florist is able to get their hands on.
Because while there’s actually an overabundance of blooms at the moment, supply-chain issues make it a struggle to get flowers into stores and farmers markets. “It’s really depending on where in the country they are, as the different lockdown rules have varying impacts on businesses,” Weisstein explained. “In San Francisco and Los Angeles, the actual flower markets have been closed, so shops couldn’t even get flowers from traditional sources, and they are doing whatever they can to source flowers directly from growers wherever they can.”
Some florists also may not have been able to reopen yet, depending on the social distancing guidelines mandated by their local government. Or those that have opened may be short-staffed. “Staffing is the biggest issue,” said Kate Penn, CEO of the Society of American Florists. “Florists are operating with smaller teams, due to staff needing to be home with kids, caring for loved ones, or due to needing to lay off staff during the closures. So they’re tackling one of the year’s biggest holidays with a fraction of their regular team.”
So many mom-and-pop flower shops are just not in the position to take the same volume of orders as they could over Mother’s Day weekends past. “There will be shops delivering and accepting orders all the way up to Mother’s Day, it may just be a little more challenging to find,” Weisstein said, “especially to find the exact flower you want.”
For example, many South Carolina florists haven’t been able to get their hands on the varieties of flowers that they’re used to, so they can’t create custom-order bouquets the way they did before. They’re just taking whatever buds that their suppliers can get. “There’s no method to this madness,” one store owner told MyrtleBeachOnline.com.
“Clients wanting French tulips won’t get them this year,” a Detroit florist told FlowerPowerDaily. “What we are doing is providing specific looks and selling color schemes, like green and white or pinks, and not specific flowers. There won’t be a beautiful Mammy Blue rose that has lavender with a fuchsia edge available.”
A Hudson Valley, New York florist also told the site that rather than offering 30 varieties of bouquets, this year she is only doing eight or 10. And instead of having 10 staffers available to fill orders, as she would before, just she and her daughter will be running the store on Sunday.
And some local businesses are even out of stock already. Farmgirl Flowers based in San Francisco is sold out for Mother’s Day week, for example. So is Hawaii’s Beretania Florist.
But the bigger online florists such as Amazon AMZN, +1.44%, 1-800-Flowers.com, Teleflora.com and FTD.com are better positioned to make bank this Mother’s Day, as their business models were already set up for online orders and deliveries.
And most of the floral industry reps that MarketWatch spoke with assured that people can still get their hands on Mother’s Day bouquets this year, and that prices shouldn’t be higher than last year. Folks are just going to have to look around and temper their expectations.
Here are some tips to catching a bouquet:
Place your order ASAP. If you’re the kind of last-minute shopper accustomed to grabbing flowers on Mother’s Day as you head over to mom’s, you’ll want to get a much earlier start this year. The sooner you place your order, the better chance you have of finding what you want, and getting it delivered in time.
Be flexible about the delivery date. We’d all love for a beautiful bouquet to show up on mom’s door on Mother’s Day, but many florists are operating at a reduced capacity, and will need to spread their deliveries out. “Let’s deliver this Friday, Saturday or Sunday,” suggested McCann. Or maybe even next Monday or Tuesday. “And the florist can plan their capacity out much better, instead of trying to get the orders all delivered in one day,” he said. Or tell mom that her flowers are coming next week, and make it Mother’s Day Week.
Do some research. You may have to put in a little more work than usual this year to find a florist that can deliver what you need — but hey, mom’s worth it, right? Penn from the Society of American Florists recommends finding a local shop by “looking at the Google local listings.” There’s also plenty nationwide online sellers to choose from.
Expect some substitutions. Some florists have been hit harder by the pandemic than others, which means some will have a wide array of flowers, and others may have a more limited supply. You might not be able to customize a bouquet the way that you could last year. “For example, this time of year, peonies are always super popular,” said Weisstein. “But to be able to source them now is going to be a huge challenge for florists, so there will begin to be a lot of substitutions to find whatever flowers they have to make different arrangements.”
Regardless of whether the bouquet you ultimately pick out shows up a little late, or looks a little differently than you expected, remember that the best gift you can give your mother isn’t something that you stick in a vase.
“More importantly, pick up the phone. Reach out, do a little FaceTime,” said McCann. “Show the people that you value that they’re remembered.”
