Decbmbeb 13, 1906. 



The Weekly Florists^ Review* 



241 



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THE RETAIL 



FLORIST 



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CHRISTMAS SUGGESTIONS. 



The Prospects. 



All the conditions are right for a 

 wonderful Christmas trade this year. 

 For the last half dozen years the volume 

 of Christmas business has been steadily 

 increasing, keeping step with the general 

 prosperity of the country at large. Flow- 

 ers being so distinctly a luxury to the 

 great mass of the people, lean years for 

 the working classes are comparatively 

 barren years for the florists, but with 

 everybody else doing business our trade 

 does not fail to experience its share of 

 prosperity; indeed, since the time when 

 the average family has found its daily 

 necessities supplied, the development of 

 the greenhouse industry has been such as 

 to surprise, not only those who are 

 mere recorders of the general prosperity, 

 but those who are closest in touch with 

 conditions in our trade. The way the 

 scriptural green bay tree flourished is 

 not an illuminating comparison for the 

 way our trade has thriven. 



This season finds the farmer prosper- 

 ous as never before; it finds the railroads 

 taxed to the limit of their greatly en- 

 larged facilities, their earnings greater 

 than ever, their payrolls swollen by 

 recent raises in wages; it finds factories 

 working overtime and unable to keep 

 pace with orders; it finds industry ham- 

 pered by the lack of operatives to carry 

 on the business of the day; it finds the 

 whole country so completely employed 

 that so good a business man as Sir 

 Thomas Lipton, after a trip from New 

 York to Omaha, declared that the whole 

 history of the world shows no record of 

 such great industrial activity as now pre- 

 vails in the United States. Yes, it is 

 going to be a good Christmas. 



Trend of Trade. 



In the last half dozen years there has 

 been noted a pronounced change in the 

 trend of holiday trade, which, now that 

 it has spread from the leading stores in 

 New York outward through succeeding 

 stages until it has reached the levels 

 where art is not the means to the end 

 we all desire, is showing the inevitable 

 reflex action. But plants, having come 

 into so great popularity for Christmas 

 and Easter, never can be entirely dis- 

 placed — they serve too good a purpose. 

 Indeed, although the men who led in the 

 artistic embellishment and sale of plants 

 as a holiday substitute for cut flowers 

 are now turning their attention else- 

 where, still thousands of those who do not 

 depend upon originality for their business 

 standing will this Christmas handle more 

 plants than ever. 



The vogue which plants have enjoyed 

 at the holidays in the last few years 

 probably was due as much to the dif- 

 ficulties of procuring enough satisfactory 

 cut flowers as it was to the skilful use 

 made of plants by the bright men who 

 turned to them, not only as a means of 

 satisfying the call for novelty, but as a 

 means of increasing the amount of sal- 



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able stock at a time when demand ex- 

 ceeded supply. And now plants will 

 drop to a secondary place (if, indeed, 

 they ever held first), not so much be- 

 cause the novelty has worn off as because 

 the supply of cut flowers has become 

 more nearly equal to holiday require- 

 ments; because cut flower growers are 

 beginning to appreciate the suicidal 

 folly of pickling, and because the enter- 

 prise that makes Bhinebeck violets an 

 important item of stock in Chicago has 

 made it possible for the wholesalers to 

 satisfactorily supply the needs of retail- 

 ers at the most distant points. . 



Importance of Requisites. 



The popularity of plants was only 

 achieved by virtue of the skilful use of 

 the innumerable aids provided by the 



of the profit when the birth baskets go 

 to mother and child, when the young man 

 sends a bunch of violets to his lady love, 

 when the wedding bells are rung, and 

 when life's journey's done, to say noth- 

 ing of our recurring Christmases and 

 Easters and other happy occasions. 



Especially at Christmas are requisites 

 necessary and profitable. Many a bunch 

 of violets may be made to sell a fancy 

 hamper; many a cut flower order may 

 be made to include ribbons at as great a 

 profit as is made on the flowers; every 

 deft addition of inexpensive embellish- 

 ment adds to the satisfaction of your 

 service, and when it comes to plants it 

 is next to impossible to sell them at all 

 except with some sort of decoration, if 

 it be no more than a paper pot cover. 

 In nearly every case the addition of the 

 requisites adds to the selling value of 

 the stock to such an extent that the 

 profit on the supplies is a better per- 

 centage than is made on plants or 

 flowers. 



A Case in Point. 



Take boxwood, for instance. The 

 illustration gives only a poor idea of the 

 attractiveness of the arrangement be- 

 cause the colors cannot be shown. As 

 everyone knows, the boxwood is dark, 

 lustrous green. The receptacle is the 



The Araucaria in its Holiday Attire. 



indefatigable dealers in florists ' supplies. 

 While it may be that the vogue for 

 plants is on the wane in leading stores, 

 it is certain that the use of artistic 

 requisites is only at a beginning, for so 

 great is the ingenuity of those engaged 

 in their manufacture that it is impossible 

 to find a place in which no one of these 

 useful articles can be used without im- 

 proved effect and generally increased 

 profit. The supply dealer gets his share 



Pompeian ware, light green, unglazed, 

 making a good contrast. The ribbon is 

 holly red. The whole effect was such 

 that the Chicago store that provided 100 

 of these for last Christmas sold them all 

 at $2.50 each. 



Now let us examine the cost: Plant, 

 25 cents; jar, 25 cents; ribbon, 10 cents; 

 total cost, 60 cents each. They were 

 designed to sell for $2, but they looked 

 so good an extra 50 cents was added and 



