Selling Wholesale: Is that Right for Your Farm?

Selling to wholesale customers, whether they’re florists, designers, or resellers, requires a clear understanding of their needs and expectations. Join the fabulous Erin McMullen of Rain Drop Farms as she offers a practical introduction to building successful wholesale relationships and preparing your farm or floral business to sell at scale. We’ll cover what wholesale buyers prioritize, including quality, consistency, and communication, and how to present your product line in a way that inspires confidence. Participants will learn how to set appropriate wholesale pricing, create professional availability lists, manage orders efficiently, and meet delivery or pickup standards. We’ll also discuss common challenges and how to avoid missteps when working with larger-volume buyers.

Whether you’re transitioning from retail sales or looking to expand your market channels, this session provides straightforward guidance to help you enter the wholesale market with clarity and success. This one-hour Zoom-based webinar will offer a Q and A session with Erin, and is complimentary for ASCFG Members.

About the Instructor: Erin McMullen is a veteran flower farmer and co-owner of Rain Drop Farms, a specialty cut flower farm based in Philomath, Oregon. She and her husband, Aaron Gaskey, began their farm around 2000, initially growing mixed produce before shifting their focus to cut flowers, especially dahlias, annuals, and perennials. Over more than two decades they’ve developed Rain Drop Farms into a multi-acre operation supplying local and regional markets, florists, and wholesale cooperatives like the Seattle Wholesale Growers Market.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 2:04

Or you can put the pocket on top. And put up on the top and the combo. I've learned about the farm. What can we talk about or do we mean when we use the word or file? Oh that way stuff.

SPEAKER_00 2:21

So Erin, are you ready? I'm ready. Thank you, Rebecca. And I just want to, because we're going to move that QR code off the screen, but it's going to come back up at the end as well. So if you didn't get a chance to take that picture, don't worry. I myself am a devout member of the ASCFG and have been for oh 12, 13 years. It the ASCFG helped me launch my farm from what it was into what it's become for sure, with all of the educational opportunities as well as the community and the people who I've met along the way. So I'm very grateful for that and I'm thrilled to be here today. I am going to share my screen and we're going to get started. So let me give you a little bit of an idea of what of who I am as I try to share my screen and hopefully it works. Tell me if I've got it. It's right. Is it working? Okay. Yay. All right. So my name is Erin McMullen. I'm from Raindrop Farms. We are in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. So I saw a couple of other people who are in the valley along with me. So extra welcome. We are enjoying in a beautiful sunny spring day. So very excited to get out into the sunshine after this. Hopefully everybody is getting some sunshine today. I know we've had varied weather throughout this the winter and it's been a little it's nice to see the sun. So my farm has been in existence for about 26 years. We started as veggie growers, we evolved into flower growers, and then we stepped from kind of a retail farmers market model into almost exclusively what I consider a wholesale model. And I want to talk a little bit about why I said consider it a wholesale model as opposed to just saying I'm a wholesaler, because there's a lot of nuance to what we consider wholesale. So first of all, I want to, Rebecca and I were getting ready to go on today. And I was looking at this slide and I was looking to the left-hand side of this picture and seeing this to me like a gigantic cucumber beetle that's sitting on my flowers here. And my first thought was, well, I wouldn't send that to wholesale. That's awful. But I just I my brain can't stop seeing it. So I want to just address the the cucumber beetle in the room. Everybody's flowers have bugs, it seems like. Okay. I also have a helper here today, Larry, my dog, is gonna try to help. So hopefully he'll keep his keep his space. Okay, so now I have to figure out how to move my there. We go. So what is a wholesaler? What do we mean by wholesale selling? So if you are growing flowers, you probably have an outlet. Hopefully by this point, you have an outlet. You're growing flowers. Maybe you go to farmers markets, maybe you have a farm stand, maybe you have a CSA, maybe you sell to like a restaurant or a grocery store, maybe you sell to florists directly, or you sell through some sort of like a collective or a cooperative. So these are all ways that it we are selling our flowers. And then if we are thinking about wholesaling our flowers, we're thinking about in this context, the way we're gonna discuss it today is middleman, if for better, for lack of a better term. This is a place where you're gonna sell your flowers and then they're gonna sell them to someone else. So there are all sizes and types of wholesalers across the country. In almost every large city, there's gonna be a wholesaler or multiple wholesalers. I think some of the most famous ones are like the San Francisco flower market. We in Seattle, we have the Seattle Wholesale Growers Market or the Seattle Growers Market. Here in Oregon, we have a market that's called the Oregon or the Flower Market, where we have four different wholesalers that are housed. So traditionally, a wholesaler is going to be buying product from big huge farms. So think imported flowers from South America, from Africa, from the Netherlands, supplying them all in and then wholesaling them out to designers, florists, anyone who would buy flowers. It is easy to get into the mindset that a wholesaler is your competitor as a flower grower. And in sure, in some ways, you know, they're selling flowers just the same way that you are, but that doesn't have to be the case. There are many wholesalers who want to work in conjunction with a local flower farm or local flower farmers for various reasons. So wholesalers I'm gonna we're gonna go through a couple of other like kind of nuances about different different options in wholesale, but what I was telling Rebecca is it's just a really nebulous term. It it kind of encompasses a lot of the way that we sell flowers. I personally sell through the Seattle Growers Market, which is a wholesale market, but it's owned by local growers. We do buy in California products to resell. So we are kind of a wholesaler, but I also sell through wholesalers that are in the Portland area. One that's nationwide is called Mayash. If you're familiar with Mayash, they are a pretty traditional wholesaler in that they buy products in and they have a sales team and they sell to florists. They also have an interest in having local flowers. So why does a wholesaler want local flowers? We have the ability as flower growers to grow things that just don't ship well. And I'm sure you've heard this, but there are lots of flowers that just don't love getting dry boxed in the bottom of a plane and flown two days and then put on a truck and driven across the country. I mean, go figure. So we have a unique niche that we can fill as local growers for those flowers that don't ship well, those flowers that don't cut well in early stages. So flowers, a lot of flowers that are shipped in the wholesale chain are cut very closed and then they are open, they are able to open after shipping or you know, whenever they arrive in their final destination. It makes them really attractive for wholesale sales. But not every flower is like that. So those are the flowers that we can really look at. But your local wholesaler would still really like to have those in their catalog. So they are gonna be looking for local growers to find. So that kind of gets us to why you would sell to a wholesaler. So I wanna I wanna start by saying I'm I'm a like small farm. We grow on 12 acres of land. I sell to my wholesalers, but I am by no means my wholesaler's whole like whole world, right? So I can it's very easy to feel like a small fish in a very large ocean when you're looking at selling to a wholesaler. And so it can be very intimidating and very overwhelming. But there is a time and a place in your business where you may feel as though you want to look into wholesale. And some of the reasons why you might want to do that is because you maybe you live someplace where you just don't have access to a lot of direct sales. Maybe you live someplace. I personally live a hundred miles from the wholesale market. There are florists in my community, but there are not enough florists in my community to support the amount of flowers that I grow. So I needed to look elsewhere. And wholesale was a good option for us because I wanted to be able to make the most of my logistical journey, getting my flowers from my farm to the final sales point in the most efficient way, both you know, physically and financially. So you may also not really like working with people, and that's perfectly reasonable. You might just not want to have to deal with 20 different florists. You might really like the idea of thinking saying, I have one buyer who I'm gonna deal with and they're gonna buy my things in quantity. Maybe you grow in mass quantity, maybe that is your gig. Maybe you would rather, rather than say, I'm gonna grow four, 400 different varieties and I'm gonna grow 10 feet of everything. Maybe you're like, I want to grow three things and I want to grow an acre of each one of them, in which case that might be a good option for wholesale. Oh, I accidentally tried to close the waiting room bar and I switched to my next slide. So let's go to my next slide. This is a this is kind of an example of that logistical, that logistical power that wholesale has, right? So this is my one of my box trucks, it's all empty there. These are my two sons. They are filling this truck up. That truck is completely full, and that truck's gonna drive a hundred miles and drop all of those flowers off. So yay. I that's a that's thousands of dollars of flowers that are just like leaving the farm in one cell swoop, done. The the example on the right, the photo on the right is an example of inside of a cooler at a wholesale house. They are just incredibly efficient. They pack those flowers in, they pack those flowers out, they move them, they get rid of flowers on the daily. So being a part of that kind of system is attractive to me because I want to be able to move my flowers quickly, to get them harvested at the correct stage and know that they're going someplace where they're going to be treated properly and get to their final destination. So the reasons why you want to sell to wholesale. I am gonna we'll be totally up front and up front, and we're gonna talk about pricing a little bit later. We're not selling to wholesale because it's the highest price point, but we are selling to wholesale because it gives us the opportunity to move crops quickly and move crops in quantity. Okay, let's see. Let's see what we got next. Okay, so here's an example. I'm standing in my field, I'm looking at this 120-foot row of crest, and right next to it, 120-foot row of Bells of Ireland. And I'm thinking, I have various avenues for sales. I have direct to sell to florist sales, I have direct to retail sales, and I have wholesale. And I know that even though that crest is beautiful and it's gonna be gorgeous, same with the Snapdragons on the right hand side, if I try to sell them only to my florists or only to my retail customers, I'm not gonna be able to get through that entire crop. But I can look out there and I can call my wholesaler and say, hey, in about two weeks, I'm gonna have more crusts than I know what to do with. Could we cut a deal on crusts? Same with the Snapdragons. And while it's not my, you know, while I would like to make as the most money on my stems per stem as possible, I also sometimes get over my skis in the planning process and end up with hundreds of feet of something that maybe I could take a make a learning lesson out of it. So if I don't sell those, then they look like this. And while this is a beautiful, like sunsteady type of picture of all of these Snapdragons, none of those Snapdragons are really worth anything to me at this point. They're all so blown open that I maybe could use them in like roadside stand bouquets, but they're not of a quality that I would want to sell them to my florists. They're not of a quality that at this stage that I would feel like they would be able to command the top dollar that I want to get for them. So I want to, I don't know how to go back. Anyway, it's okay. You can picture those snapdragons in your mind. I want to be looking ahead and thinking about how I'm gonna move those crops, and wholesale can be a really effective way to do that before we get to this beautiful scene, which again, it's gorgeous, but it's pretty it would be prettier if it was green and they were all sold. Another way that I utilize wholesale is when I have a crop that maybe isn't really in demand necessarily. So these are these beautiful French marigolds. They are amazing, they're gorgeous. My florists love them, my designers love them, but they don't love them in July. And that's when these ones started blooming. So this was a year I learned a lesson like don't plant my French marigolds until later in the season because I need to have them in September and October. But I had this big, beautiful flush. What am I gonna do with them? I was able to reach out to my wholesaler and they were able to buy hundreds and hundreds of bunches of them, kind of on the fly, just because I had them and I needed to move them. Did I take a lower price for them? Absolutely. Was I happy with that? I would have loved to have gotten a higher price, but I was ultimately just happy that I was able to move them. Okay, so what are wholesalers looking for? Okay, so this is the meat of it, right? Why would a wholesaler choose you over just buying something in from Ecuador? We already talked a little bit about how there are just some crops that don't ship well. So that's you know, that's kind of a step one. They're looking for things that they can't get through their traditional avenues of sourcing. So things like dahlias are a great example. That's kind of the like epitome of local flour, right? Is that dahlias just don't ship well. If you've ever bought dahlias wholesale from a wholesaler that have been shipped, you know that they can be pretty rough. So wholesale, but you know, local dahlias, that's a whole nother story. So they're looking for local options. They are also looking for these things. These are kind of like the bread and butter of what we are doing when we are selling wholesale. We are looking for they want when you go in to talk to your wholesaler, they want to know that you have quality product, that you have enough quantity to supply them with, that you can consistently not only supply them consistently, but can supply consistent quality and consistent quantity. And that you can communicate well. Because while my florists and yours may be the same, may be able to kind of go on the fly and buy things last minute to get a color palette, or if they need something extra and they're gonna call you. Gent often the wholesalers want to have a little bit more, a little bit more lead time than that. I did just give the example of those marigolds, and that's kind of another little little tidbit about wholesale that can be really nice, is that sometimes they do have the ability to just scoop stuff up if you have extra. But let's talk a little bit about the number one thing on this list, which is quality. So looking at quality, we all know that that is one of the ways that you set yourself apart as a farm, as a grower, is to grow the most, the highest quality bloom that you can. And we're talking quality of bloom starting from the plant, right? Like, so if you are supplying your plant with if you're first of all choosing varieties that have the potential to give you great stem length, great bloom size, great bloom time, colors, things that are desirable in that way, you're setting yourself up for success. And then you're growing them well. So you're creating an environment that your plants are gonna thrive in, adequate nutrition, protection from uh pests and disease, no cucumber beetles. I'm just kidding, if you have cucumber beetles, you know there's no getting rid of cucumber beetles. And then, you know, thinking about these, these really important facets of harvest and of post-harvest. So creating ensuring that you know the state correct stage of harvest for each crop, the correct stem length. And this is a little bit, this is another one of those kind of like nebulous things, right? This is this can be a little bit back and forth, but bunch size and then standard pack size. So when we talk about wholesale, they there is a standard and wholesale, generally speaking, that they're gonna be expecting. So that's gonna mostly have to do with the stem length and the bunch size and then the pack size. So when I say standard pack size, that is like what how many bunches go into a bucket. So if you're using black 10-liter buckets or seven-liter buckets, you would hear something like from a wholesaler like this is you know, this is Yarrow path eight. So that means that there's yarrow and there's eight bunches that are gonna go in that bucket. Bunch size, generally speaking, we're thinking 10 stem bunches. When I talk to sometimes when I discuss this with people and they say, But you buy a dozen roses. Yes, you do buy a dozen roses. But if you're buying roses from a wholesale, you're buying them in well, sometimes pack 10 or sometimes like 25. Like there's standard pack sizes for different or standard bunch sizes for different things. And this is something that again, you would want to communicate with your wholesaler. I know that my wholesaler, I supply all of my my biggest single wholesale crop is dahlias. So I'm gonna use that as an example. I supply 10 stem bunches of dahlias. That's the standard on my farm that allows us to be the most efficient with our with our crew and with our labor and then with our pack and everything. So we sell dahlias 10 stem bunches, pack five to our wholesalers. But some of the other local farms that grow and sell to our wholesalers sell them in pack uh in stem counts of five. And that's an agreement that they've worked out with their wholesaler in that way. The big, the biggest in my mind, the crux of this is these two books. And I I have them right here with me. I know it's going to be backwards, but if you are looking to sell flowers, period, full stop, you need to have these books. You need to have the post-harvest handling book and then the standards book. And so the reason that I really want to nail that is because the quality that you are presenting to any customer, whether it's retail or wholesale or your florists, is reflecting every one of us local growers. And we all can standardize by utilizing the information, the like hard researched information that is in these books. This book I know is available on the ASCFG page. This is by John Dole, the post-harvest handling and care of cut flowers. This is just essential. I cannot stress it enough. And the things that are important in these two books, in that book in particular, is looking at stage of harvest and post-harvest treatment. The John Dole book gets a lot more into kind of what you would be how of like post-harvest treatment, like what their storing and shipping kind of standards are. And so familiarizing yourself with those of the crops that you sell is going to allow you to provide your wholesaler with a product that they recognize as equal to what they buy wholesale from other places, you know, out of the country, especially, um, because the standards are there. And then floral standards, this is the book that was written by the Seattle market. And this one goes a little bit more into the specs and what the expectation is. So, like for example, let's see, I'm just gonna flip to a page that looks like we all know what it is. I'm literally flipping to every page, and it's like, what is that? No. So, for example, like lark spur on the Larks per page. It's going to give you how many stems per bunch. It's going to tell you what the standard height is. It's going to tell you what the pack is. So in this case, a larksper bunch would be 10 stems per bunch. The standard height is 18 to 24 inches. And the standard pack is 10 per procona. So these are, of course, these are all informed by the standards that the Seattle market has for its member growers, but it's a really good place to start to recognize what the expectations are. And then we're going to talk about quality of bloom just a tiny bit. Again, sorry, dahlias are like my biggest, my best example. I utilized this one in a this particular image in an article for the Quarterly just a few years ago when I was talking about stage of harvest. And this is also kind of what we were looking at when we were writing the book in Seattle, as far as the dahlias go, is how what the best stage of harvest is. And so if you look at the far left, this very, very open, this is all the same dahlia. This very, very open one. This this dahlia is too far open to be sold wholesale. It's just beautiful, but it has no longevity at this point. And so what our trials showed is that if we were cutting them back, like say that these are this is seven stages of harvest, it's really about five, but this very first one on the right hand side, this is a it's pretty closed. It's not as it's not like too close to cut, but it might not open as beautifully as we want. The second, the third and the second and third dahlia in this photo would be the stage of harvest that we're looking for. And so we're obviously looking at dahlias here, but thinking about every flower that you grow and determining what the optimal stage of harvest is. And I cannot stress enough how much help it can be to go into your local wholesaler and just look at things for like the example that I just used, Lark Spur. If you're familiar with Lark Spur, it's a long, long-stemmed flower with lots of little buds all the way up it. And our standard of harvest would be to only have about a third of the florets open on that before we cut it. We don't want to cut it when it's like fully open because we're not going to get as much longevity of it and we risk having it shatter. So familiarizing yourself with stage of harvest. Oh my goodness, this made me so mad when I went back looking for this picture because this is a standard that we work very hard for on our farm, which is stem length. And you can see in these two examples, I circled them with angry red pen because there are stems in these two bunches that just don't, they are not part of our standard. Like this one on the left, this is a bunch of raspberries. And that's not the worst, it's not the most egregious offender, having about two inches from the bottom of the bunch to that top of or the bottom of the shortest stem in there. But that means that when that gets put in a bucket, if that bucket doesn't have adequate water, that stem's not going to be hydrating. And that means that that one stem is gonna wilt in that bunch. And is that gonna look good on a wholesale floor? Absolutely not. Um, not to mention that when my fine, when the final customer gets that product, they're gonna pull that out and they're gonna notice. I mean, they may or may not notice, but they have a stem in there that's not the same length. So if they're trying to make something that needs all the same stem length, oh we're falling down on the job. This right, this right, I distinctly remember what happened with this. And I like ran out into the field with this bunch to find the the harvesters and was like, what are you doing? Uh no, I'm not, I'm not that mean. I didn't do that, but this is just this bunch was a mess. There is a very, very large difference in the stem length there. And no matter how, I mean, we don't put enough water in our buckets to have that short stem get in the water. So this bunch is not going to, this is a low quality bunch. I this bunch got pulled out at quality control and checked for other, like it got pulled away. So making sure that you're standardizing your bunch length, your stem length, and your bunch size so that you don't end up with this. Because if your wholesaler sees this once, they might go, oh, well, that's a bummer. But if they see this consistently, they're not going to be your wholesaler anymore. Oh, this is a screenshot from the camera in my market booth in my Portland market. So I'm like, why did I put this in here? But I just I used, I want to use this to illustrate something about wholesale that we I wanted to touch on. So this woman that's in my booth right now, she is a buyer for a wholesale market that's in the market. The Portland market is set up in an interesting way. I have my own booth in one of the markets, and then there are wholesalers outside of that. And the wholesalers come in and they shop the booths. Um, but I also sell directly to those wholesalers. So one of the ways that I set myself apart from or I differentiate my retail, what I consider direct to florist, which is this cooler, from my direct to wholesale market is that I have chosen, and this is a choice you can make or not make, but I have chosen to not allow my wholesalers to order by specific variety. So with dahlias in particular. So my I, and we'll get into it a little bit in pricing, but I sell my dahlias by color to the wholesaler. And that's a pretty standard way for them to buy them. Farms that are in, you know, other countries aren't selling specific, like say uh varieties of status. They're just selling blue status or white status. That's how the wholesaler is ordering them. So it stands to reason that when they're ordering dahlias, they're ordering purple dahlias or yellow dahlias or white dahlias. They aren't as concerned, oh they aren't as concerned with the varieties. And so I don't, and we'll get again, we'll get into it in pricing. I don't really allow them to order by variety, but they still want those neat things. And so they will come in and shop for this. And I wanted to illustrate this in that wholesalers want unique items as well. And that's a that's a farm-by-farm decision as to what you can offer that's unique and whether or not you have an outlet elsewhere for that. But she was in here looking for a very specific thing, okay. Quantity. This picture on the left is my first wholesale load to my wholesaler. This is about eight buckets of dahlias, and this is my like little transit van. So it all fit in there. It was really tightly packed. I was really excited to take this to them. They were thrilled with the varieties, they were excited about it. And over the last maybe eight years, we've expanded into like full trucks of variety of dahlias going in. But I wanted to illustrate that this the just because you don't have like a field full of marigolds or a field full of dahlias doesn't mean that you can't start the conversation with your wholesaler, right? This when I was uh taking this transit van in, I was so nervous that they were gonna say, oh, these are not, you know, these are not quality enough, or these you don't have enough of them, or I was just second guessing myself so much. But the the quality and the quantity was great for them, and it allowed me to develop that relationship over the years so that now they come to me because they recognize that we will deliver on that quality in whatever quantity we can. And then I'm not sure why I put the picture of the marigolds up, but that's my daughter, and she was thrilled to be matching the marigolds. Okay, consistency. Y'all, you just need your greenhouses to look just like this, and then you'll have perfectly consistent everything. I would love to say that this is my greenhouse, this is not my greenhouse, but this is a greenhouse, this is a wholesale Silosia greenhouse in the Netherlands. So this is what their standardization looks like. This is what their consistency looks like. It is mind-boggling. This is acres of Silosia that all looks perfectly the same height and perfectly the same size and perfectly the same stage of harvest at the right perfect time. And the systems that they use for that are most are systems that are not that are inaccessible to most of us. But I wanted to illustrate what the wholesaler is expecting, like what they expect, usually, like what they see when they order from large farms like this farm in the Netherlands. And so we can use this, it's intimidating. Is that yeah, that's super intimidating. It was beautiful, but as I was standing there, I was thinking, oh my gosh, my Silosa is never gonna look like this. This is bananas. But we can also recognize that this can inform what our quality standards can strive to be. Again, like it's not gonna look like this because we don't have the proper equipment with the all of the all of the greenhouse systems that they have in place, but we can recognize what the expectation is and strive to meet the best or as close to that expectation as we can. Also, it was so pretty. Okay, communication. This is gonna be so uh personal to you and also to your wholesaler. Um, I watched Jenny or sorry, Jenny, not Ellen's talk last week about discuss about con communication with florists. And uh there's uh hers, you know, one of her suggestions was creating a weekly availability. Uh, and that's a great, it's a great habit to get in, even if you are not planning on selling to wholesale. It's a great habit to start creating an availability, like even if you're only sharing it with one person, just because it allows you to start to, or to continue if you're already doing it, to use your power of prediction to think about what crops you're gonna have, what crops are going to be blooming, what crops are a week out, two weeks out, three weeks out, and approximate quantities of what you'll have, uh, which is not easy to do. It's really challenging. And it takes years and seasons of experience to really hone it. I'm no good at it. I mean, I'm fine at it, but it's something that I struggle with on the regular because I never want to overpromise and underdeliver. And it terrifies me to send out availability for things that are more than about a week out. But I do it anyway, and I do it based on my previous year's availability, my crop plans, and my, you know, best guess, my my feel for what's happening. But talking about communication, the most important thing is that you're consistent and that you're clear and concise with your communication. And if you would rather get text messages or phone calls, um if you'd love it if people would just order everything through your Instagram DM, then you need to set up that standard. Uh, and then that may or may not work with said wholesale customer. So just know that they're a little bit of a different, you know, they've got some pretty some of them have very like corporate like expectations as far as communication, in which case email and availability would be really helpful. Some are like, hey, just let me know what you have, or I'm gonna send you kind of an estimate of what we need and let me know what you can fill. I would strongly encourage you to introduce yourself to your wholesaler if you're interested in selling wholesale and develop it, like starting to develop that relationship, even if you don't feel like you're ready to sell wholesale this year. Just becoming a recognized face and becoming familiar with the systems that your wholesaler uses. And so that can look like you know, creating an account with the wholesaler so that you can get pricing, so you can see how they expect things to be packed, developing relationships with other growers that are in your area that may also sell to those wholesalers so that you can kind of get the inside scoop. I put these ways to communicate. If you would rather, you know, some people have like an online portal that they allow people to shop through and allow their their wholesalers to utilize. Or, you know, I don't think anybody uses maybe people use fax machines still. My teenagers don't know what it is, so when I told them about it, they were flabbergasted the other day. So then how do you sell to a wholesaler? Okay, I want to make sure that I'm on time here, Rebecca. Am I good on time? I have about 10 minutes or so making you have a 30-minute draft for the hour, 38 minutes draft for the hours. I just want to make sure I have time for questions. So, how do you sell to wholesaler relationships? That's it. You develop relationships, you uh provide the things that we talked about, quality, quantity, and consistent product, and you leverage your relationships to sell to wholesalers. That's like a such a basic answer, but it really boils down to it, right? That any any sales avenue that you're going to that you're going to pursue is based on relationships. If you're selling at farmers markets, you're face first with your customer, you're formulating relationships, and they're going to buy your flowers over someone else's flowers or your flowers in spite of not really needing flowers because of the relationship that they have with you. It's the same way with your florists, it's the same way with your wholesaler. So developing relationships. This is a picture of a tour, an ASCFG tour that we hosted on our farm three or four years ago, I want to say. And I wanted to show this picture because all of the people in this picture were putting themselves into a situation to first educate themselves, but also to form connections with other people. And so thinking about moving into a wholesale model can feel like it would be very isolating because you're like, now it's just me and I'm just selling to a wholesaler. But in reality, there may be other growers in your area who also are gonna want to sell to a wholesaler. It's not to say that you, you know, need to be like besties or anything, but formulating relationships with other growers and utilizing the information that you have both or all gleaned about your wholesale markets can be really helpful. For me personally, these are some of the relationships that we have developed have become true friendships and also really encouraging business relationships. So the picture on the left is my husband and one of our fellow growers that is in the Seattle market with us. And we got to go on this wonderful trip to the Netherlands. And as we were there, you know, we were able to talk as farms about how we sell wholesale, what products we saw that we thought would be in demand, what our wholesalers are expecting. We're able to have these conversations so that we're not in an echo, you know, we're not in an echo chamber just by ourselves. It's these kind of relationships as well with as relationships with your wholesalers that can really benefit you. Uh, the picture on the right is a picture on the dock in the Oregon Flower Growers Association of two of the local flower growers having a very, very intense conversation, clearly. But, you know, they are we're always talking to each other. We're always trying to determine, like, you know, how we can work together and how we can leverage those relationships. And I put this in here because 15 years ago, if you had told me that I would be selling wholesale, I would have laughed at you. And one chance interaction on an airplane on the way to an ASCFG conference led to us joining the Seattle Wholesale Growers Market and developing relationships that we've built on that have allowed us to grow into more wholesale markets. So I just can't, I cannot impress upon you enough how important becoming part of your community as far as flower farmers and you know, developing those relationships, not only because it can be good for your business, but it's really good for your soul. It will make you, it will fuel you as you endeavor on this very, very challenging job that we all have chosen to take on. Okay, so now let's talk about pricing. Okay, so before we get into like the nitty-gritty, and I want to be like full disclosure, we're gonna talk some numbers, but they are by no means me giving any advice on what you should be pricing your product at, right? I just needed to use some solid numbers, concrete numbers, so that I could exemplify some of the reasons and thought processes behind how we price to wholesalers. So I want to talk first about where you sell your product now or where you currently market outlets. So if you're selling to farmers markets and or any other retail venue, so you're selling to farmers markets or you're selling maybe to like restaurants or you're selling through a CSA, but you're selling to kind of that final customer, that end customer, the person who's gonna, let's be honest, pay the most money for your flowers. That's the person who you're you're selling to now. Wholesale is probably gonna be a pretty eye-opening pricing conversation because the pricing is not retail pricing. And we can think back to like when we talked about what a wholesaler is and that they are the middle person between the farmer and the the end, you know, the end customer. Or maybe they're one of many middle people between those. So they have to make their money too. So you're at the farm level, you need to make money, you need to sell it to somebody who either is going to pay you enough money or sell it to someone who's gonna sell it to that person. So there's of course that to consider. And I mentioned, I also want to mention in here that if you are selling two florists directly and you're planning on moving into selling to wholesale, you're going to want to take into consideration what your wholesaler is going to end price it to your florists. So, you know, some florists would very much rather buy from a local farmer. They will seek out the local farm. They will very make a very concerted effort to support local farmers at the farm level. And that's wonderful. We love those customers, right? Some customers just have no interest in that. They would love to get local flowers, but they don't want to have to deal with the hassle of having to talk to five different growers to get all the things that they need. They're just going to shop at the wholesale market. And they're they're very content with that. And if there's local product there, they might buy it if it's priced competitively. And so just thinking about where you're going to it. So this is you, y'all, I am not a I am not a slideshow project person. I'm not a Canva person. So this is my very basic kind of flow chart of what we're talking about here. So I put up this bunch of Silosia because it was an easy one to think about. If I were to sell that bunch of Silosia direct in my wholesale market to a florist, it would go for $10. So then my florist is going to take it and they're going to do whatever they're going to do with it, or maybe they're going to sell it outright. And then, you know, they're going to make their profit on that. If I were to sell that maybe at a farmer's market, my farmer's market would not carry an $18 price point, but I know that there are some farmers markets that will. The point more, it's less about the actual dollar number and more about the to illustrate that I'm going to sell my bunch at a lower price to my florist than I would sell at retail. And it may not be, you know, it may not be that much of a markup, but it's going to be a markup. And then so what does that look like as a wholesale price? So I want to just so there are a couple of different ways that you can sell through wholesale. We sell two different ways to wholesale. I have wholesalers who buy outright products from me. It's a guaranteed sale. I'm going to bring them a hundred bunches of dahlias. They're going to buy them all. They're going to give me a price. I'm going to walk away and I'm never going to think about those dahlias again. It's just going to be done. And then I have a wholesaler who will buy things on consignment from me. So I have to price them and I determine what I want to price them at and what I want to try to sell through them. I stock the shelves, they sell them through their counter and they give me a consignment rate on what on that price. So two different models, two different price points. When you're thinking about that wholesale price point where you're selling to like flat out, now it's their, you know, it's theirs to deal with. I can, I will give them, they get a lower price. It's a guaranteed sale. I have no skin in the game once those dahlias, once those flowers go off my farm. So I can take a lower price point on them. But on my consignment, I'm taking a risk. Like I'm risking that I'm picking flowers that are going to sell in their in their wholesale warehouse. So I'm going to give them less of a discount and a lower consignment rate. So that might look like a 30% discount on direct sale things, but only a 20% discount on consignment. And this is again, this is not not like this isn't like the end all be all, but these are just some numbers to start thinking about. So as you're thinking about what is it worth to you to sell wholesale and that bunch of Silosia, maybe you only have three bunches of Silosia. Well, the wholesaler's probably not going to be interested in three bunches of whole Silosia. And you can make, if you can sell them for $10 and sell three of them, great. But if you have a hundred bunches of that Silosia and you know you can sell three bunches at $10, What are you going to do with the other 97? You're going to try to sell them. And if you need to sell them at $7 a bunch, yes, it's not as much. But it's the economy of scale, right? You are selling them, they are leaving your farm, they are gone. You may find that the wholesalers, you know, if you like the marigold example that we used earlier, those I was desperate to sell. I sold those for a lower rate because they needed to move and they did not have any, there was no retail value for them for me. There was no florist value for me. My they just wouldn't buy them. Sorry. Creatures in your in your Zoom screen. So there are a lot of fact factors to consider when we think about pricing to wholesalers. The you want to think about what their their end price is going to be and what their markup is going to be. And sometimes it's as easy as just asking. Sometimes it's literally that simple. Um, it feels so stigmatized to talk about money, uh, especially in like a business situation, but it's part of that relationship building, right? Is the far or the wholesale, the when you find a good wholesaler, they want you to be successful just as much as you do. Because if you're successful, you're going to continue to bring them the high quality and the consistent product that they know you for. So they don't want you to go out of business. They also, you know, are some of them behold into their corporate overlords. So they do have to have pricing consideration. But that's a conversation that you can have, an awkward one potentially, and kind of ooh, but once you get it going, once you start it, once you have an honest conversation, you can really look at your numbers and determine whether it's going to work for you. You know, if I was to go into a wholesaler and they were gonna say, well, I'll give you 250 for that bunch of Silosia, I mean, I could dry that Silosia, I could give that Silosia away, I could, you know, like I could put it into stand bouquets for my farm stand. There are a lot of other things I can do with it. But if I don't have the information, I can't make the decision. Oh, did I do it? Before, yeah, so I we're kind of like right at the end, but I wanted to mention a couple of other weird like one-offs that go into the wholesale category. And one, you know, I mentioned earlier collectives and cooperatives. And that's kind of this hybrid strange feel. If you are part of a community where there are other local farms, you know, forming a collective or a cooperative can help leverage your selling power in a wholesale type kind of way. So that's I know that there's sometimes there's some like teasing apart that goes with thinking about that as a wholesale option. But when we're talking about large wholesalers, like standalone wholesalers, there have been a couple of wholesalers in our area who have also hosted like a like a local farms kind of pop-up within their market because they want, again, they want to have those wholesale or those local product opportunities available for their customers. And so that's one of those things that may like your wholesaler may be doing that already, right? They might be bringing in local product simply to have it on the floor in like kind of a blocked-out situation. And the there was one in Seattle that was doing this, and they were kind of running it almost like a farmer's market within their wholesaler. Like the the farms were responsible for bringing in their own product and pricing their own product and selling their own product, but they were able to utilize the the existing infrastructure of the building, right, to access customers essentially. So that's kind of a creative solution to get in with a wholesaler. Another way, another thing to think about is one of the wholesalers that we work with also does a lot of grocery work. They have kind of like a side, like a separate business that's housed underneath their same, their same wholesale umbrella that does grocery sales and does like growth bouquet programs and flower programs for grocery stores. And they are always looking for product to add to either their lineup as far as like consumers' bunches, like you know, single bunches, bunches of single flowers or stems that they can buy bulk. So those are kind of some other a little bit more obscure wholesale avenues that could be explored with the right wholesaler if you have a way to converse with them. So is wholesale right for you? So thinking about whether or not you have the capacity to grow large quantities of product, to grow consistently quality product that wholesalers will buy, to communicate effectively with your wholesaler, to deliver on not only deliver on your product, so making promises and then fulfilling those promises, but also logistically either delivering the product. So that's part of what we kind of didn't touch on it. Well, we touched on it a little bit when I showed you the pictures of our box truck. But if you're selling hundreds and hundreds of bunches of things, you have to have a vehicle either to transport them there or the capacity on your farm to accept a vehicle from a wholesaler that would be able to pick them up. So we, you know, we do both ways, but sometimes when that wholesaler's like, we'll just send a truck and they send a 26-foot truck and it has to like navigate its way through our farm roads, it can be a little bit stressful. So, you know, thinking about the physical, like actual ability to deliver. Uh and if the answer to all of those things is yes, then you know, selling wholesale might be a good option for you. And if you are questioning any of those things, you know, starting to develop those relationships with your wholesalers and starting to really have those discussions around like, well, how could I logistically deliver to this market? Like, what is the quality that you're looking for? What kind of quantity would get me in the door? And starting to have those conversations now, even if you know, wholesale is not right for you this year. I can't, I think that would be a really strong way to approach it. Okay. I know I only have a couple of minutes and I wanted to make sure I didn't miss any questions if there were questions. Thank you all for listening to me ramble about wholesale.

SPEAKER_01 50:11

That was not a ramble. That was a delightful delivery. You have a wonderful lecture with incredible knowledge. Yeah, thank you very much. We already have our first question. Um and folks, if you have more questions, go ahead and put them in chat. You know, Aaron, do you want me to read the question for you?

SPEAKER_00 50:30

I mean, well, so I can see the question. Is this from Tina Sawtop?

unknown 50:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 50:35

So the question is what are average or typical wholesale markups or margins? Does it vary by category? And do you find these markups and margins vary from imports to locals? So I don't have a whole lot of experience with what they're marking their imports up as. I do buy imports, and what my my experience with that is, is that usually what I sell the same thing for. So like status, I usually am looking at about a 30 to 40 percent difference in stem price from what I can buy it from in as to what I'm selling it to my wholesalers or to my florists. And to clarify, I'm not selling the imported product, but when I buy status in the winter, it's coming in at a price that in the summertime, my whole price per stem for that same status that we're growing on farm is about 30 to 40 percent more. Does that make sense? Hopefully. The I I would it does it does vary dependent depending on plant uh on flowers and on greenery. But I think 30%, like 30 to 40 percent is a pretty standard window of markup. And uh, you're gonna find things that are marked up far more, and you're gonna find things that have a much lower margin. And that's where you know, kind of doing some research, getting on those availability lists so that you can see what they're buying things or what they're selling things in for, and then having discussions with your buyer. Minimum number of bunches to recommend having available weekly and number of varieties. So, number of varieties is less important. You could just have one thing. You could just say, I only have zinnias this week. That's what I'm gonna offer. And number of bunches is gonna depend a little bit on what the size of your wholesaler is and what their standard is. I would say that at least having a bucket of anything is gonna make it. I mean, that's kind of the minimum as far as like walking in and saying, I have this. You know, they're going through thousands and thousands of bunches of flowers, you know, every day or every other day or whatever. So I don't know, that's it might be a gross exaggeration, but you know, one bucket of vinias walking in the door, would it, you know, you'd be able to show them maybe what you have, but thinking about having larger quantities is gonna depend a little bit on what the wholesaler is, what their expectation is, but at least a bucket of any given variety that you're looking at selling. What are the two top two things you have? Yeah, zinnias and dahlias are great. Sorry, the two top two or three flowers that don't ship well. Zinnias and dahlias are great. Garden roses are another one. Those are, I mean, they ship okay. You know, even some of the things that you would think of as very good shippers, I constantly am hearing from my florists that when they do get imports, they're not as high of a quality. Things like Snapdragons. Often the complaint with Snapdragons is that they are flat or that the the florets don't go all the way around the stems. Things that also like that bruise easily. So things like digitalis, those, you know, don't they bruise easily? So those kind of flowers don't just don't they inherently don't ship well. Which of my wholesalers pick up from my farm versus the ones that deliver to for us, because our market is set up so that we have a sales cooler of our own in our market, for the most part, we deliver into all of the wholesalers because we're going there anyway. But I do may ash is one of the wholesalers, like that's that's a my wholesaler who will come to my farm. And, you know, a lot of the wholesalers are out delivering product to to florists and stuff. And so if you are on a route that it makes sense for them to stop and pick things up, that's that's something that you could definitely encourage them to do. You know, it's not it's not too far out if it's not too far out their way and it gets them great flowers. What kind of buckets do these wholesalers expect? This I like this question. I would encourage you to standardize to professional buckets. So looking at black seven or black 10-liter buckets or prokonus systems, that is what the wholesalers are used to getting from all of their other suppliers. And it's going to give you the air of professionalism that you want and the standardization that makes it easy. And this is just a total side note, but when you sell to wholesalers, you get buckets back. So don't like make sure that you set that expectation when you start your relationship. Um, I mean, I don't mean like walking in and saying, I'll bring you flowers, but I need my buckets back. I mean just this the expectation that they're going to swap out your buckets so that you can always have buckets on farms, right? They want you to have buckets. They want you to have buckets so you can cut into them. And they don't want to have stacks and stacks of buckets you know on their back dock taking up space. So it's not it's not unexpected that you would get buckets back. How do you navigate downward price pressure from grocery channels? That's I I that's a good question. I don't know if like within the wholesale, like selling two wholesalers in like the bunches is the is really affected by that. There are wholesale, like I said, there are wholesalers who are utilizing a separate part of their their business to sell to grocery and that but that's separate from their wholesale sales. I guess it if I was looking at that grocery channel, my feeling on that is that when I have an overstock of something, when I have something that I really need to get rid of, the grocery channels can be a good way for me to to move it and I won't necessarily get the price that I'm looking for. But that is a real, it is a real challenge as we see this like race to the bottom for grocery to be able to match. Um, and sometimes we just can't compete. Like I just I can't compete with those really cheap imported stems of of kind of commodity things. Given that my experience with vegetables and flowers and knowing about the finances and producing and selling cut flowers, um would you do it all over again? Is it profitable and fruitful for my family and business? Boy, that is the 20 or the $64,000 question, right? I would do it all over again because I'm incredibly stubborn and I I love it. But I would say that it takes a lot of, I mean, it's an exhausting, it's an exhausting business to be in. It's incredibly challenging and it can cause a lot of burnout. I would say that as far as profitability, I'm not like we're not living in mansions, we're not driving new cars, but we're perfect like we're comfortable and we're happy with what we do. So I think that that in that sense, yeah, I can't imagine doing anything else. How do we convince longtime wholesalers to start carrying local flowers with the infrastructure required for collectives? It seems to make sense to start with established wholesalers first. Yeah, so true truth and truth and advertising, yeah, forming a collective or cooperative takes a lot of energy and effort. And it takes a lot, it takes at least one person, if not a group of people who are incredibly passionate and determined to make it happen. And that's a lot, especially when you're trying to also run a farm and a business. And if you have any, I mean, or you know, run a household, have a family, do any of the other things that life life offers. So as far as convincing longtime wholesalers, quality product. Convince them, like convince them with a bucket of the most beautiful flowers that they've ever seen. And that it sounds very, you know, woo-woo, but it's true. There, and there are some things that we're just as local, you know, as local growers with the infrastructure and the resources that we have available to us, like that Silosia picture that I shared from the Netherlands. We just are not going to be able to compete on that as far as as far as those, like, you know, the sides of the heads and the consistency of the stems until we are able to access those kind of infrastructure upgrades that that they are able to there. But but I will say that we have plenty of things that we can offer that are high quality and that are not available and or available at lesser quality. And those are the conversations that we can start with. And you know, as we see the global markets shift and change, we may see more of those come available for us. So I think keeping our our eyes and our ears open and us continuing to assess the state of the industry and having those relationships with those wholesalers, even if you're just just a customer, but having you know a little bit of a little bit of insight on that. Yeah. Okay. I think did we get did I get them all, Rebecca? I think you did.

SPEAKER_01 59:33

Yeah. Thank you so much. This is Margaret.

SPEAKER_00 59:36

Thank you, everybody, for coming. Hopefully, this either informed you and inspired you or informed you and just maybe helped you make it informal.

SPEAKER_01 59:48

I think it's the former. I think you've definitely empowered a lot of folks. With that, I just want to say thank you all for joining us. Um thank you to the market. Oh