Thriving flower shops in Melbourne, a lucky one in the slow-growing economy condition

Reporter: Yuqing Tan

"The sales of flowers, for me rise (during this year)," Dolly Leuzzi said, who is the shop keeper of Leuzzi Flowers. In her view, her business seems did not influence by the slowdown in economic growth recently.

Dolly and her flower shop /Photo source: Yuqing Tan

Dolly's florist which has 20 years’ history is located beside Queen Victoria Market. During the interview, her shop assistants were busy. A variety of people were buying bouquets at the small shop near the market. The customers included businesswomen in formal dress, the young lady in fashionable dress and even a burly man in a casual shirt.

During the recent three years, Australian economic growth slows down, which also leads the retail industry to face a depressed market. However, this economic situation did not affect certain flower shops in Melbourne.

According to the data from Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), the Australian Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rates shown a declining trend as well as the growth rate of Household Income and Consumption during recent years.

And the figure from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) also shows that the sales of retail in Australia present a volatile trend in current years. In addition, its overall trend was down during the previous five years.

As Westpac's Matthew Hassan wrote in his article titled First impressions: Australian retail sales June 2019 in 2nd August 2019, "The most eye-catching figure is the annual growth rate in retail volumes — at just 0.2 per cent, growth over the last 12 months has been weaker than in the GFC and the weakest since the early-90s recession."

However, the table from the Australian Horticulture Statistics Handbook - Other Horticulture 2017/18 published by Hort Innovation shows that the growth rates of the wholesale value of cut flowers maintained small but stable rose in recent years.

According to the data tables of Value of Agricultural Commodities Produced published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), between 2017 to 2018, the growth rate of the gross value of nurseries, cut flowers or cultivated turf in Melbourne rose 14.4% compared with last year.

Besides, all nine Melbourne florists randomly surveyed in October this year said that their sales rose during the recent years.

For why florists in Melbourne such lucky even in the current economic condition, John Freebairn, a professor of economics at the University of Melbourne, provided a possible explanation.

He said, "When many people either face a lower income or an increase in the likelihood of a lower income, they reduce expenditure on "large" luxury items such as overseas holidays and delay purchases of new motor vehicles, but at the same time purchase more "small" luxury items such as chocolates and flowers."

"I think, with flowers, you can make yourself happy with spending five or ten dollars. It is not that big expensive," Dolly said with a kind smile, her opinion almost coincide with professor John's.

In addition, some shopkeepers believe that cut flowers are no longer a luxury but a necessity. "Our customers consider flowers to be a spiritual necessity," Huiying soh said, who is the shopkeeper of QN Flowers. Kathrin Borovik, a shop assistant from Queen ST Flowers Co said that people always need cut flowers for many different occasions, like birth, death, etc.

Ruly with her flowers /Photo source: Yuqing Tan

Some customers think so too. Ruly, who work on the landscape industry, said that she often decorated her home with flowers. "It is fresh" she said. And she also said, if certain kinds of flowers become too expensive for her, she will choose the other kinds to replace, but still buy flowers.

But, is everybody doing flower business in Australia as lucky as the florists in Melbourne currently? As the spokesperson of the horticulture department of Victorian Farmers Federation (VFF) said, the sales of Victorian flower wholesalers were decreased during the recent three years.

"The past few years have seen many growers leave farming as they are struggling to compete with imports," this spokesperson said. This person also said that imports account for 20.9% of domestic demand in 2018 to 2019 in Australia, and supermarkets often chose to sell imported cut-flowers which were lower prices.

However, VFF predicted that this situation might be improved by the updated imported cut flowers regulation made by the Australian Government Department of Agriculture and came into force on September 1st this year.

As the regulation sated, certain cut flowers exporting countries, which had high trade volumes, need to deal with their goods to managing the pest before those flowers enter Australia by using a series of measures, like fumigate.

Therefore, the spokesperson of VFF expected that the demand for locally grown flowers might growth caused by the drop in the number of imported flowers.

But will this new regulation affect lucky florists in Melbourne?

Tlli Mauclce, the shop keeper of North Flowers & Gift, concerned about the impact of the new regulation. As he said, if the cost of the imported flowers increase, he also has to increase the price of his flowers. In his shop, around 50% of cut flowers were imported, including the Kenya roses and Asian orchids.

Flowers in the white boxes are imported flowers in Tlli's florist /Photo source: Yuqing Tan

But for Ellen Douglas, a manager of Clover Flower Co, It's not a big deal. As she said, the imported one only occupied 20% in her shop. "We can just use the seasonal flowers to replace them (if they hard to stock the imported flowers)," Ellen said. She did not think that the change in imported cut flowers will hit her good business.

On the nine flower shops interviewed, only Tlli's florist stock more than half imported cut flowers. The rates of imported cut flowers were sold in the other seven florists were below or around 20%.

Dolly also is a quite lucky one who did not worry about the influence of the new regulation. As she said, the proportion of imported one in her shop was around 20% and depended on the season.

And she is quite confident with the future of her flower shop business. "With more people living in the city, more people should come to the market. Because it is close to where they are living. So, my business should increase," she said.