Top 10 Wholesale Flowers
Today, I’m breaking down our wholesale revenue by our top 10 bestselling flowers! We sold to florists including the amazing Colorado Flower Collective and our friends at Longmont Florist. I’m going to do this breakdown in three different ways:
Specific product, i.e. “White Ranunculus”
Flower type, i.e. “Ranunculus”
Color, i.e. “White”
I found and analyzed this data by going through my sales reports from the Collective and by combing my Quickbooks reports. Then I put the data into a Google spreadsheet and used the Pivot Table function to summarize the data by categories. Here is a link to the spreadsheet if you’re interested in using it for your own purposes. You can make a copy and save it to your own drive to play with it. Below is a sample of the data I am working with, and then an example of how the Pivot Table breaks it down.
🏆 The Winners by Specific Product 🏆
Sunflowers to Longmont Florist
Lisianthus, White
Ranunculus, White
Statice, Apricot
Dahlia, Orange
Lisianthus, Raspberry
Sea Oats, Green
Zinnia, Queen Lime Red
Ranunculus, Rust
Sea Oats, Brown
Honorable Mentions:
Dahlia, Sweet Nathalie
Dahlia, White
Comments from the Judge:
I am pleased to see that sunflowers were our biggest seller, because we did go big. Longmont Florist asked us to specifically grow sunflowers for them because they found the quality of our flowers so much better than what they were getting shipped in. Of course, it may not be fair to include sunflowers here as a whole category, not broken down by color, but let’s be honest: most of them are just yellow. Also, this is for just one customer.
I am not surprised to see white lisianthus and ranunculus topping the list, but what an upset from the apricot statice! Those peachy apricot colors continue to be in high demand.
Down at number 5 and 6, orange dahlias are probably on top because I love orange and grew a lot of them, and then anything lisianthus is just popular. This was the Mariachi series ‘Carmine’, which is an unusual “dusty hot pink”. But it’s important to note that orange is not the despised color we sometimes think it is, especially in the fall when florists are looking for “fall colors”.
Further down, it’s great to see beautiful, easy-to-grow perennials like the sea oats on the list. I did sell as many stems of this beautiful arching grain as I possibly could. Zinnia Queen Lime Red continues to be that special, muddy color that florists love. Finally, our Tecolote Café ranunculus were a big hit, and we’ll continue growing those en masse next year.
Our honorable mentions just show that, indeed, white dahlias and Sweet Nathalie are still in the running and worth growing.
🎉 The Winners by Category 🎉
Dahlia
Ranunculus
Zinnia
Lisianthus
Sunflower
Statice
Sea Oats
Scabiosa
Gomphrena
Oregano
Honorable Mentions:
Broom Corn
Purple Majesty Millet
Comments from the Judge:
The biggest winner by almost twice the second-place category was, unsurprisingly, dahlias. Not only do we grow a lot of dahlias (about 2000 plants) and they put out a lot of blooms, but they are productive over about 8 weeks and they command a high price. Cut & Come Again + Many Plants + High Price = WINNER.
The same applies to our second-place finisher, ranunculus. While they have a shorter season than dahlias, they can be planted much more closely together and put out 5-6 blooms per plant, and again are priced well, so they too are winners.
I was surprised to see that zinnias came in third, but they are desirable, especially those muddy Queen series colors, and florists just can’t get good zinnias from traditional wholesalers. It’s a good reminder to keep on growing them!
Lisianthus make sense on this list. Again, a high-dollar crop with lots of plants in the ground, working over a long season, means good money. Plus, they are just gorgeous and I continue to love them.
I love seeing sunflowers at number five. In contrast to our top 4, this is a low-input, low-cost, direct-seeded crop that’s easy to succession plant over and over, even if it’s a one-cut and lower value flower. I find that sunflowers add tilth to the soil, though they are heavy feeders, and they are useful on the farm to provide shade for plants that need a bit of encouragement to grow taller. Hooray for sunnies!
Statice remains a bit of a surprise to me, but again I’m happy to see it here as a long-season, very productive plant with dried flower power. Next is Sea Oats, and of course I love to see our perennials showing up for us. The scabiosa category includes our perennial scabiosa, which earns a higher price and is easier to cut than the annual pincushions, but this category also includes our Scabiosa stellata pods and our small patch of “Focal Scoop” scabiosa. It’s a worthwhile group.
It’s fascinating to see gomphrena on the list, as it’s something that I continually battle with continuing to grow or cutting from the rolls. We had a great blush variety this year that sold well at the Collective.
Oregano - who knew? This includes our purple flowering oregano, which I think is actually marjoram, and our white-flowering Greek oregano, which we also sell when it’s just seed-heads, as a greenery. Very productive over a long season and lots of stems to sell, though a lower price, means it’s worth it.
I included our honorable mentions because they are awesome and I sold every single stem we grew. Purple Millet is expensive seed and transplanted, but produces many stems over a long season. Broom corn is a fantastic direct-seeded crop, and those seed heads and the amber color were much in demand in the fall.
🌈 The Winners by Color 🌈
Here, we’ll do a top 5 (there are only so many colors).
White
Apricot/Peach
Pink
Green
Red
Honorable Mentions:
Yellow
Orange
Comments from the Judge:
Well, not much of a surprise in any category here, though it’s interesting to see Pink up top and Blush not make the list! (Blush came in all the way down at number 10). It’s very important to continue to grow whites, peaches, and apricots. I know, however, that if I had more blue flowers, they would be topping this list too. I included honorable mentions because those warm colors are still important.
I hope you found this interesting and helpful. It’s a great idea to break down your own sales in this way, just for your own interest and to help you make decisions about the future. Beware of misleading conclusions — if you didn’t grow any white dahlias, then then wouldn’t show up on the list.
Thanks for reading!