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JLORISTS^ 

 REVIEWS 





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BUILDING A BIGGER 



iff BULB BUSINESS 



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^ow #/ie nvei'age window display of hidhs, ivhich to the layman has the 

 appearance of an onion exhibit at a county fair, may he made really 

 efficient hy the use of a Dutch girl figure and artificial blooms of hyacinths, 

 tulips and narcissi. A suggestion capable of elaboration. 





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BSPITE the delay in the 

 delivery of the fall bulbs 

 and the reports of short 

 crops in France and Hol- 

 land, the appearances are 

 that the quantities im- 

 ported this season will be 

 the largest in the history 

 of the trade. The cause 

 given for this is the 

 stock one of the iour — the European 

 war. The Holland" growers, who here- 

 tofore have saved most of their choic- 

 est bulbs for critical European buyers 

 and too often palmed off the "seconds" 

 on less particular American customers, 

 have been in^a"*nilemma, so to speak. 

 The greater part of their European 

 business has been cut off by the war 

 and the. British embargo, so that many 

 of thera have been making unusual ef- 

 forts to make sales in the American 

 market. While not desiring to disturb 

 supplies already contracted for, some 

 of the exporters are said 

 to have made extremely 

 attractive quotations 

 earlier in the season. 



The Bulb Window. 



Importers i n t li e 

 United States have been 

 willing to take hold 

 strongly and it is rea- 

 sonable to assume that 

 a larger quantity of 

 bulbs will have to be 

 sold this ^all, and that 

 the bulk of the greater 

 supply will have to be 

 moved at retail. The 

 mail-order seed houses, 

 as usual, have issued 

 their fall catalogues 

 featuring bulbs, and 

 perhaps many florists 

 who handle bulbs at re- 

 tail, whether located in 

 city or country, are con- 

 templating getting out 

 some .sort of literature 

 to assist in increasing 

 their sales this autumn. 

 But whatever tne form 

 of sales promotion em- 

 ployed, for the local 

 bulb business there is no 

 eales-iRaking force ,. an 

 effective and economical 

 as the display window. 

 That most seedsmen and 

 florists are aware of 

 this is attested to by 

 the annual autumnal 

 crop of bulb window 

 displaji. 



Now these window displays, at least 

 those seen by the writer, consist mainly 

 of small baskets neatly filled with the 

 different kinds of bulbs, with each of 

 the exact little piles labeled and 

 priced. Windows of this description 

 maj' sell the bulbs displayed, true, but 

 there is something radically wrong 

 with them, and if this wrong is cor- 

 rected their ability to sell bulbs surely 

 will be greatly enhanced. 



A Fact That Counts. 



The trouble is that the average re- 

 tailer does not get far enough away 

 from his business to see it in the right 

 perspective. He does not seem to have 

 had the leisure, leisure in this case be- 

 ing defined as that profitable time or 

 opportunity to get far enough away 

 from the business to see it as it really 

 is. To the man outside, the average 

 bulb window looks like a display of so 

 manv onions of different colors and 



A Window Full of Dutch Bulbs is Tame Compared to This. 



shapes. The man inside, behind the 

 counter, who buys his hyacinth, tulip 

 and narcissus bulbs by the thousand, 

 seems to forget that the ultimate con- 

 sumer actually buys, not the bulbs, but 

 the flowers they will produce in the 

 spring. While the bulbs constitute the 

 article exchanged for the money across 

 the counter, the amateur gardener 

 really sees and purchases them for the 

 potency within that will be flowers in 

 spring. 



The window to sell the most bulbs, 

 then, should not only show the bulbs 

 for sale, but also the flowers the bulbs 

 will produce. Some of the retailers 

 have reasoned this out and supple- 

 mented their bulb displays with highly 

 colored lithographs of tulip, hyacinth 

 and narcissus blooms. But why not 

 make the advertising more realistic? 

 As bulbous plants in flower are out of 

 the question in fall, why not utilize 

 the artificial replicas of hyacinths, 

 tulips or narcissi, such 

 as manufactured and of- 

 fered for sale by the 

 supply houses? A large 

 number of artificial 

 flowers is not required 

 and they will servo for 

 years if packed away 

 where they will keep 

 clean. 



The Illustration. 



The accompanying il- 

 lustration, which depicts 

 a window used in the 

 spring as a drive on 

 bulbous cut flowers and 

 potted plants, is printed 

 here merely as a sugges- 

 tion for a fall bulb win- 

 dow. By substituting 

 artificial tulips, hya- 

 cinths or narcissi for the 

 natural flowers shown, 

 and by placing the va- 

 rious bulbs in the near 

 foreground, the retailer 

 would have at his serv 

 ice a bulb window psy- 

 chologically correct 

 from a sales or adver 

 tising standpoint. In 

 place of the girl it could 

 show a little Dutch boy 

 in wooden shoes and 

 such a window surely 

 would be much more ef- 

 fective than the average 

 bulb window one sees 

 each autumn. It would 

 suggest to the pedestrian 

 the possibilities of his 



