An Industry in Peril

By Bill Kennicott, Founder, World Cut Flower Commission · Published October 1, 2026

A florist today is as busy as ever, but not because sales are growing. US florist revenue has shrunk about 1% a year over the last five years. (IBISWorld) Florists are busier because there is less help behind the counter. Floral designer jobs are projected to fall another 6% over the next decade (BLS), and industry leaders interviewed for a Texas A&M study described struggling to find and keep staff (Knuth & Hall). The owner now designs, delivers, answers the phone and keeps the books, with little time left to market the shop.

That is why this report is so critical for florists to understand. The shops with the least time to market themselves are the ones that need it most, and the answer has to be something florists can do together. Even getting florists into one room to talk about it is difficult, because the busiest shops cannot leave the counter. That is why we are asking florists to read this, and to take part: the work is meant to benefit the shops with the least time to do it themselves.

This is not about competition. Florists who compete with each other every day can still work together, as they did when they built FTD in 1910. This is about the survival of real flower shops in a world where so many businesses selling flowers are not flower shops. By pooling their efforts, florists can stand apart from them. This does not replace any shop's own marketing; it fills a niche no one else fills: marketing the real flower shop.

We are not a wire service. The World Cut Flower Commission does not sell flowers, take orders or take a cut of any sale. Its only job is more foot traffic and more phone calls going straight to the flower shop, where the shop owns the customer.

Executive summary

Independent flower shops are closing across the world, and nothing in the industry's current plans is aimed at stopping it. The United States has lost more than half its flower shops since 1992, from 27,341 to 11,744 in 2024, even as Americans' spending on flowers and plants nearly doubled between 2007 and 2024. The United Kingdom lost about a third of its high-street florists in under a decade, from more than 8,000 in 2016 to about 5,500. In Japan, household spending on flowers in 2019 was 27% lower than in 2000.

The flower business did not disappear. It moved. Supermarkets are now the largest single sales channel for cut flowers in the world. In the UK they take about 54% of flower sales, and in Japan the supermarket is now where flowers are bought most. In Germany, the most-studied flower market in Europe, florists' share of retail cut-flower sales fell to 40% by 2022, and only grocery stores and discounters gained. The competitor changes by region: florists in parts of Africa tell WCFC that event halls, not grocery stores, are taking their work.

The industry has responded the same way for thirty years: it markets the flower. PromoFlor (1994 to 1997), That Flower Feeling's "Just Add Flowers" campaign, and the proposed national floral promotion order all aim to make people buy more flowers. None of them tells people where to buy. The research funded by PromoFlor itself found that this kind of generic advertising is "outlet-neutral": it grows the whole pie and leaves each channel's share where it was. Advertising the florist was what moved share to florists.

Today nobody advertises the independent flower shop without taking a cut of the order. Wire services sell their own brand. Directories sell placement. Marketplaces take a percentage. PromoFlor's council had 25 seats, 3 of them for florists. The proposed U.S. Floral Board would have 12 seats, none of them for florists.

Other industries in the same position found an answer. Independent brewers, booksellers, hardware stores and German grocers each drew a hard line around who counts as independent, built a mark that enforces that line, and pooled their marketing behind the seller rather than the product.

This report makes the case that florists need the same thing: segmented marketing that sells the florist, the person and the skill, not the flower. That is the purpose of the World Cut Flower Commission, the first worldwide marketing organization for independent florists, and its I Speak Flowers program.

The world is changing. SEO is now AI. Florists need to adjust.

The way people find a florist is changing faster than at any time since the telephone. For twenty years, being found meant climbing a page of Google results. Today, more and more customers simply ask an AI assistant to find them a florist, and the assistant answers with one name or a short list.

It is already here. ChatGPT reached 900 million weekly users in February 2026. 45% of US consumers now use ChatGPT or another AI tool for local business recommendations, up from 6% a year earlier. AI summaries now appear on 68% of local business searches on Google, more often than the familiar map of local businesses. And when an AI summary appears, people click through to a website in only 8% of visits, against 15% when it does not. (OpenAI figures, via Reporter Outreach; BrightLocal, 2026; Whitespark 2026, via Elev8; Pew Research Center, 2025)

Google still handles most searches, and most AI users still use Google too. But the direction is clear: fewer clicks, fewer pages, and more answers chosen for the customer. A florist who once had to be on page one now has to be the answer.

The future they are trying to build. The largest technology companies are now building AI that does the shopping for the customer, including picking up the phone. Google's "Ask for Me" feature, shown in Search as "Have AI check pricing," calls local businesses on a customer's behalf, asks about price and availability, and sends back a summary, usually within 30 minutes. It began in 2025 with auto shops and nail salons and is expanding across the US. In September 2026, Google began testing "Call for Me," which lets its Gemini assistant call a store to check stock, make reservations or place items on hold, dialing from the customer's own phone number. Meta's AI agents can now place calls for users too. Florists tell WCFC they are already getting AI calls placing orders. (TechCrunch, September 2026; Search Engine Journal; JobNimbus on Google I/O 2026)

This is the future being built, and it is not being built for the flower shop. The AI calls only the businesses it already finds in local search, usually the top few results. In one early analysis, about one in four of Google's AI calls went unanswered, and nearly half of the businesses that did answer gave no price. (EnvisionUP, citing Joy Hawkins) A shop that is not found is never called. A shop that does not answer clearly is left out of the customer's summary. The florists who will win are the ones the internet, and the AI that reads it, already knows are real.

What will the AI say a flower shop is? It will repeat what the internet tells it. Today the internet is full of order gatherers that look local, directories that sell placement, and supermarket floral counters that government data counts as florists. Unless florists put their own definition on the internet, the AI will learn someone else's.

So what are we, as florists, to do? Do we stand silently, doing nothing, hoping an industry will help us survive? The facts in this report tell a different story. For a hundred years the industry has marketed the flower, and the flower shop has kept closing.

Marketing is a verb. It means doing something. A shop that waits to be found by a search engine, a directory or an AI is not marketing; it is hoping.

We believe the answer is old-school marketing. Everyone else is racing to buy their way into new technology. Marketing means doing something different from everyone else. I Speak Flowers goes back to what a customer can see with their own eyes: billboards, bumper stickers, the decal on the door, the mark on the van and the box. It avoids new technology as the solution wherever it can. Three simple words, repeated everywhere people drive, walk and shop, all pointing to one place that tells the public, and the machines that answer the public, which flower shops are real.

Florists need to adjust, together. No single flower shop can afford billboards. Together, florists can. Pooled advertising, many shops each paying a small share, is how independents in every trade have bought the reach of a chain while staying independent.

What the world did not count on is florists pooling together. It has worked for trade after trade: independent brewers, booksellers, hardware stores and grocers. It can work for florists.

That is why this report exists, and why I Speak Flowers was built. But to understand what florists must do next, we first need to look at where we came from, and why florists are losing today.

First, where we came from

This is a long, detailed report, and every number in it is real and sourced. If you own a flower shop, it is the history of how the floral industry has marketed itself, and who it has left out. It is history we can learn from.

Most florists today have never heard of PromoFlor. Of the 45 flower shops WCFC visited in 2026, only 2 had heard of it. A few remember Buzz the Bee and the "Think Flowers" ads of 1996. That history matters, because when PromoFlor was ended, independent florists had no vote, and they have no vote in the plan proposed to replace it.

I Speak Flowers can be the next PromoFlor, this time with florists included. The whole industry can share the cost of marketing, and that marketing can promote each independent flower business to the world, not just the flower.

The numbers: a worldwide decline

Wherever the data exists, the independent flower shop is shrinking. The pattern is the same in North America, Europe and Asia: fewer shops, a smaller share of sales, and fewer young customers.

Two cautions keep these numbers honest. US Census counts only florists with paid employees, so one-person studios are missing. In the UK, the total number of florist businesses has held roughly steady once home studios are counted; the trade is breaking into smaller pieces, not just shrinking. That is its own problem. A florist working from a home studio has no storefront for customers to walk past, so being findable depends entirely on marketing.

The steepest fall came between 2005 and 2013, when the US lost about a third of its florists in eight years.

The industry's own research says the same. A Texas A&M study commissioned by the Wholesale Florist & Florist Supplier Association and eight other floral associations, and published on SAF's website, names supermarkets as a disruptive force in the floral industry since the late 1950s. It finds that supermarkets moving up-market into weddings and events increased competition for retail florists, and puts the net effect at a 45% drop in the number of retail florists since 2001. One industry leader interviewed for it summed it up: "While the doors of the retail florists shrank, the dollars did not." (Knuth & Hall, Change and Disruption in the Floral Industry)

SAF's own member surveys agree. After Mother's Day 2019, 38% named supermarkets and grocery stores as their top competitor, second only to order gatherers at 46%. (SAF, 2019)

Where flowers are bought now

The customer did not stop buying flowers. The customer started buying them somewhere else, and in most of the world that place is the supermarket.

Three things stand out.

The shift is still moving. In Germany, the pandemic taught shoppers to buy even high-end bouquets at the grocery store, and the habit stayed. In the UK, supermarkets set the price customers expect, which squeezes florists when their own costs rise.

Grocery is moving up-market. Warehouse clubs now sell complete wedding flower packages and bulk wedding stems, and advertise funeral flowers alongside them. (Costco wedding flowers; Costco flowers for every occasion) Weddings and funerals, long treated as florist territory, are no longer safe.

It is not inevitable. France and the Netherlands keep supermarket share far lower than the UK. Grocery dominance is a result of how markets developed, not a law of nature. Why florists have held on in those countries is worth studying (see Questions still to answer).

The competitor also changes by region. Florists in parts of Africa tell WCFC that event halls, which bundle flowers into a venue package, are taking their work before grocery stores ever arrive. A worldwide answer has to fit each market's actual competitor.

The math of an industry without flower shops

The flower industry can survive without flower shops, but as a smaller-value, high-volume commodity business. The arithmetic shows why.

Each customer who switches spends less. In consumer research summarized in the Texas A&M study, the median florist purchase was $50 against $20 at a supermarket. (Knuth & Hall) Take 1,000 gift purchases:

To bring in the same $50,000, supermarkets have to sell 2,500 bouquets, two and a half times the volume. The industry has to move far more flowers just to stand still. These medians come from older consumer research, so read the example as an illustration, not today's prices.

Total spending can grow while shops shrink, and it has. US spending on flowers, seeds and potted plants rose from $38.1 billion in 2007 to $71.0 billion in 2024, while flower shops fell to 11,744. The money did not disappear; it moved to high-volume, low-price sellers. (SAF Floral Industry Facts)

The middle gets cut out. The same study found supermarkets increasingly buy direct from growers to get volume pricing, and that this drove consolidation at every step of the supply chain. An order that leaves a florist for a grocery store is often an order a traditional wholesaler never sees.

Variety shrinks. Florists buy many varieties and know how to use them. Supermarkets sell a narrow range of bouquets, often assembled in bulk before they arrive. Fewer florists means fewer buyers for unusual stems, which squeezes specialty growers.

The skill disappears. Floral designer jobs are projected to fall 6% over the next decade. (BLS) Once the designers are gone, no one is left to sell a $50 arrangement instead of a $20 bunch.

Without flower shops, value concentrates in grocery chains, importers and bouquet makers. The losers are florists first, then traditional wholesalers and specialty growers. Is that good for the industry? It can grow. Is it good for florists? That is not the same question, and it is why everyone in the middle of this trade has a stake in flower shops surviving.

Who markets the flower shop today

Almost every business that advertises "local florists" earns money when the order moves through it. That is not dishonest, but it means the florist is the delivery method, not the brand.

Sources: Teleflora; Teleflora findaflorist; Teleflora 2026 campaign; BloomNation; Fleurop.

The networks florists built did not stay theirs. Florists founded the first delivery networks: Fleurop in Berlin in 1908 and FTD in the US in 1910. In Britain, Interflora was a florists' trade association until 2005. It was then sold to private equity, sold to FTD in 2006, and later bought by Teleflora. In the US, FTD's member florists, some 20,000 of them, voted in November 1994 to sell their cooperative to investors. It filed for bankruptcy in June 2019, and its business was sold that August. A network that began as florists helping florists became a business that sells florists' work under its own name. The lesson is not that FTD was a bad idea; it was the best idea this trade ever had. The lesson is that what florists build together has to stay theirs. (Seattle Times, Nov 8 1994; CNBC, June 3 2019) (Fleurop history; Interflora)

Customers are sent away from real local shops. In the founder's own hometown, a small suburb outside Chicago, he counted the businesses competing for flower orders. A search for a florist there shows at least 33 businesses from somewhere else. The town has 2. One directory listed 10 "real local" florists for the town, and none of them were in it; another listed a shop in Quebec, Canada, as 10.9 miles away. Neither real shop appeared on either list. (Founder's own count, 2026.)

It is how the whole system works, not one bad actor. An order gatherer builds a website or ad that looks local, takes the order, keeps a cut, and passes it through a wire service, which takes another cut, to a real local florist who actually makes the flowers. One US news investigation described order gatherers keeping about 20% without touching a flower, with the wire service taking about 7% more. Some have even used real shops' names online, so the shop gets the complaint when the arrangement disappoints. (The Gazette, 2021)

The public and regulators are catching on.

• Australia: In February 2022 the national consumer regulator warned Valentine's Day buyers to ask where their flowers really come from, saying some large national sellers were falsely presenting themselves as local florists. Later that year it secured court-enforceable undertakings from online florists that had falsely claimed to be local. (ACCC; iTWire via CB Insights)
• Texas: A 2011 bill analysis described telemarketers posing as local florists through local-sounding names, local web addresses and forwarded local phone numbers, so customers pay more and get less. (Texas HB 989 analysis)
• California: A 2012 bill addressed florists listing local phone numbers to appear local when they have no local presence. (California AB 1581)
• Florists themselves now publish warnings telling customers how to spot an order gatherer, especially on funeral home websites. (Ward's Florist)

The customer wants a local florist. What is missing is an easy way to tell which one is real.

Why being the local shop is no longer enough

Many florists believe that being the well-known shop in town is all the marketing they need. The evidence says a good reputation reaches the people who already know you, but not the customers you need next: the new neighbor, the bride from the next town, the daughter ordering from across the country.

Word of mouth has moved online. 97% of consumers read reviews for local businesses, and Google, Facebook and AI tools like ChatGPT are now the most common sources for local recommendations. Yet only 35% of small businesses have a Google Business Profile. (BrightLocal, 2026)

Small-town loyalty did not save other independents. Iowa State economist Ken Stone tracked small-town retail for decades. Some small Iowa towns lost up to 47% of their retail trade, and towns under 2,500 people saw retail sales fall 30% after discount chains arrived nearby. Across Iowa, hardware stores, well-known local businesses with loyal customers, lost 30.9% of their market share. (Stone, Iowa State; Phys.org, 2012; Urban Conservancy)

The floral industry's own research agrees. Industry leaders interviewed for the Texas A&M study observed that surviving florists tend to be near large cities, while rural shops have fared worse. They also noted that florists had same-day delivery first and let Amazon take it, because florists never promoted it. (Knuth & Hall)

Pooling works, but only while the stores own it. Independent hardware stores that pooled their marketing through Ace grew. True Value's cooperative was sold to private equity in 2018, and in October 2024 the True Value wholesaler filed for bankruptcy and sold its operations to Do it Best, itself a member-owned wholesaler for independent stores. (CNN via 6abc)

What a flower shop should spend on marketing, and where the money really goes

Business guidance, inside and outside the flower trade, says a small shop should spend 3% to 8% of its sales marketing itself. For many florists, a large share of what they spend to get customers goes to the middle instead of building their own name.

Sources: SAF Floral Management benchmarks; summary by Rio Roses; SBA guidance, via the Houston Chronicle; Gartner, via SearchLab.

For a shop doing $300,000 a year, the florist benchmark means $9,000 to $12,000 a year on advertising. The general small-business benchmark means $21,000 to $24,000.

Where the money actually goes. On a wire order, the sending florist keeps 20%, the wire service takes 7%, and the florist who makes and delivers the arrangement gets 73%. On top of that come dues and fees that can run several hundred dollars a month. (The Vindicator, 2005) SAF's own accounting guidance tells florists to count wire-in orders at 73% of their value. A shop that fills $50,000 of wire-in orders a year gives up $13,500, more than the entire advertising budget the florist benchmark sets for a $300,000 shop. That money buys orders, not the shop's own name.

Many florists have dropped the wire services. Raleigh florists told WRAL that wire-service fees were cutting into their profits, and one ended a decades-old relationship with FTD. (WRAL) Florists on industry forums report that after leaving, their sales dipped at first but their profits rose. (Florist20 forum) As early as 2005, a group of independent florists had formed its own alternative network. (The Vindicator, 2005)

Pool part of it. No single shop's 3% to 4% buys a billboard. Pooled with hundreds of other shops, a small part of each budget can.

Keep the message; adjust the tactics. The message should stay the same for years, because recognition comes from repetition; Restore kept Brian Urlacher on its billboards for years. What should change constantly is where and when the money is spent: which boards, which months, which towns and which online channels. Spend most in the weeks before Valentine's Day, Mother's Day and wedding season. Then measure: ask every customer how they heard about the shop, and count lookups on ispeakflowers.com and scans of the door decal's code. Review it every season and move the money to what works.

The industry's attempts at national promotion

For more than a century, the industry's big collective campaigns have advertised the flower, not the florist. Each one is funded and governed by growers, importers, auctions or wholesalers. None has given the independent shop a meaningful say, and none tells the customer where to buy.

Sources: SAF on the proposed order; That Flower Feeling, Perishable News; That Flower Feeling Q1 2026; Floral Daily; The Florist on the Flower Council; The Florist, 2024 reprieve; HortiDaily. PromoFlor and earlier history: WCFC history page; Focus on Floriculture, Feb 1984; Federal Register, Dec 29 1994; 7 U.S.C. 6804; Federal Register, Apr 21 1997; Supermarket News, Aug 11 1997; Rimal & Ward, 1998; SAF, Oct 27 2021.

PromoFlor worked, and then the people paying for it voted it down. The council's own chairman said handlers found it hard to write the check: a lot of money and no immediate results. Only handlers with $750,000 or more in sales could vote. The only florists with a ballot were those large enough to run their own distribution center. The independent shop had none.

The replacement gives florists less. PromoFlor's council had 25 seats, and retail florists held 3 of them. The proposed U.S. Floral Board shrinks to 12 seats, and florists hold none. The table got smaller, and florists lost their chairs.

"Outlet-neutral" sounds harmless until you do the arithmetic. A campaign that lifts every channel by the same percentage hands the most new business to the biggest channel. Where supermarkets already sell the most flowers, generic promotion grows their sales most. Growing the pie is not the same as changing who cuts it. These campaigns are not bad for florists; they are aimed somewhere else.

The proposed order is stalled. Five years after it was proposed, nothing has been published in the Federal Register: no proposed order, no hearing and no vote. USDA has run promotion votes for other crops in 2026, including blueberries and Christmas trees, so the process works when an industry submits a plan. (USDA AMS referenda; U.S. Floral Board FAQ)

WCFC supports growing the category, and believes it is not enough. More people buying flowers is good for everyone who grows, ships and sells them. The order's own supporters describe it as general, generic promotion to get consumers buying flowers year-round. But a bigger pie does not fix the florist's slice. Generic promotion is outlet-neutral at best, and florists' share has been falling for years regardless. If that trend continues, the pie grows and the florist's piece barely moves. That is why segmented marketing for the florist is needed alongside any generic campaign, not instead of it.

In this illustration the whole market grows by a fifth, but almost all the new money goes to supermarkets. Florists end up with a smaller share of a bigger pie, and barely more sales than they started with.

To what end? A campaign meant to strengthen the flower industry could speed up the very shift that is closing flower shops. If suppliers pass the cost of the assessment on in their prices, florists would help pay for it, and grocery stores would collect most of the new business it creates. The industry grows; the flower shop keeps shrinking. Fewer shops means fewer designers, less variety and fewer customers for the wholesalers and growers who depend on them. That is the question every florist should ask of anyone proposing to market the flower on their behalf: growth for whom?

Other industries show the same pattern. Pooled promotion works for the product. The Real Christmas Tree Board, funded by a 15-cent assessment per tree, returned $6.98 for every dollar in the short run and $13.12 in the long run, according to an independent 2025 evaluation by Timothy Richards of Arizona State University, part of the independent review the program is required to have (Real Christmas Tree Board annual report). A 2017 review by the US Government Accountability Office of eight agricultural checkoff programs found returns of $2.14 to $17.40 per dollar, with caveats on how the studies were done (GAO-18-54). Industries routinely pool money to market together, and it pays. But in every one of these programs, the money markets the product, not the shop that sells it.

The association question

Florists' main associations represent the whole supply chain, and much of that chain sells to supermarkets. An association whose members include the grocery store's suppliers cannot run a campaign against the grocery store.

The US example: SAF and Floriexpo. The Society of American Florists is listed as a brand partner of Floriexpo, the trade show built for high-volume flower buyers. Floriexpo's advisory board is filled with grocery floral category managers from chains such as Albertsons, Safeway, H-E-B and Hy-Vee, and has no independent retail florists. Floriexpo's CEO has said the board's main job is to be the voice of the high-volume buyer. The show began as the Super Floral Show and was later owned by a company that ran grocery trade events. (Floriexpo partners; Floriexpo advisory board; Floral Daily)

The industry is training the competition. The industry's clearest response to grocery growth has been to help grocery floral departments do the florist's job better. SAF supports Floriexpo by lending its name as a listed brand partner, and Floriexpo is where those training sessions happen. The show opens each year with a full-day Floral Bootcamp covering design techniques, marketing and team-building. Supermarket floral buyers are part of its audience. The 2026 Bootcamp sold out, and its practical approach was reported to resonate with supermarket floral managers facing staffing pressure. (Thursd, 2024; Thursd, 2026; Lawn & Garden Retailer, 2026) Grocery chains now run their own design shows, workshops and competitions for their floral teams, and industry designers teach them. (Balance and Blooms) The skill that once set the florist apart is being taught to the grocery counter. No equal effort exists to tell customers why they should go to the florist instead.

To be fair to SAF: it has no supermarket members, and its own board includes independent retail florists. The issue is structural, not personal. SAF's member categories include growers, wholesalers and importers, many of whose biggest customers are supermarkets. Its categories draw no line between a flower shop and a supermarket floral department.

One member, many stores. SAF counts companies, not shops. Its dues are based on annual sales, and a company with several locations pays on its company-wide sales, with branches added at no charge. One SAF "member" can be a single flower shop or a company with dozens of stores, and dues tied to sales give the largest operators the largest stake. The independent single shop is one voice among companies far bigger than itself. WCFC works the other way: one price per location, so every shop counts the same. (SAF Membership)

SAF's own award went to a campaign sold in supermarkets. That Flower Feeling's "Just Add Flowers" campaign won SAF's Marketer of the Year in 2023. Its branded flower products are now sold by Kroger in all its stores nationwide, and by Albertsons, Price Chopper and other grocery chains. (SAF, 2025) The association's top marketing honor went to a flower campaign whose products sit in the stores competing with florists.

SAF's membership numbers have fallen, and its pages disagree. According to a USDA National Agricultural Library record, SAF's website listed 16,000 members in 2001. A florist-software directory quoted "over 7,000" in 2021. (FloristWare) Today SAF's About page says "more than 2,500," while its membership page says the membership "exceeds 6,000." (SAF About; SAF Membership) SAF reports growth by counting new members, 240 in 2023 and 185 in 2024, but does not publish how many left, so its claim of growth cannot be checked. (Floral Daily, 2023) Earlier figures may have counted people rather than companies, so the exact size of the drop is unknown. The direction, by SAF's own published numbers, is down.

The definition problem. The industry's own description of a flower shop separates the florist from growers and wholesalers. It never separates the florist from the supermarket. A grocery floral department buys flowers, cares for them and sells them to consumers, so it fits the definition. The line the industry drew is between the florist and its supplier. The line it never drew is between the florist and the bucket at the checkout.

Even government data cannot tell them apart. The same Texas A&M study checked which businesses US Census files under the retail florist code. Alongside real flower shops, the first page of results alone listed more than 20 supermarket floral departments, including Kroger, Albertsons and Wegmans, plus Teleflora, 1-800-Flowers, large plant growers and an oil company. In the official numbers, a grocery floral counter is a florist. (Knuth & Hall)

The same pattern abroad. In the Netherlands, the Flower Council's future has been fought over by the auction and the wholesalers, the two groups that pay for it. Florists are not at that table.

What florists lack is a body whose standard only florists write, and that takes no order and no cut of any sale. That is the gap this report argues must be filled.

Lessons from other industries

Independent businesses in other trades faced the same giant competitor and found a way back. Each one drew a hard line around who counts as independent, built a mark or brand that enforces the line, and pooled marketing behind the seller rather than the product.

Sources: Brewers Association seal; CraftBeer.com; SIBA; Bookshop.org, Fast Company; bookstore growth, SAN; Bookshop.org $50 million; Ace; Ace revenue; EDEKA; EDEKA share.

How they got businesses to join. None asked for money first. The brewers' seal was free and the association handed out window stickers. Bookshop.org was free to join, as easy as setting up a Facebook page, and paid stores from the first sale. Ace promised lower costs, and today guarantees new members a 5% rise in gross profit dollars in their first year. Each had a named threat: Big Beer, Amazon, Home Depot. And every lasting mark had three things: a written standard anyone can read, a mark the customer can see at the moment of choosing, and a line that can say no. If everyone passes, the mark means nothing. (WCFC, Similar Industries)

A warning. Independents banding together does not automatically help florists. In Germany, EDEKA, a co-op of independent grocers, is one of the supermarket groups selling the flowers florists used to sell.

The case for segmented marketing

Generic advertising sells the flower to everyone. Segmented marketing sells one kind of seller, the independent florist, to the customers and moments where that seller matters most. The evidence says the second is what moves sales to florists.

The flower industry's own research. The 1998 Rimal & Ward study, funded through PromoFlor, found that generic flower promotion left each outlet's share unchanged, while branded advertising grew florists' share and took it from supermarkets. The brand doing that advertising was FTD, when it was still owned by florists. That is independent academic support for marketing the shop, not the flower.

Social norms can be built. In Japan, fewer than 5% of engaged women received a diamond ring in 1967. By 1981 about 60% did, after a sustained campaign tied the diamond to one specific moment. The lesson is to own a moment, not a product category. (Epstein, The Atlantic, February 1982; Christian Science Monitor, 1982)

General goodwill bends under price pressure. American Express created Small Business Saturday in 2010. Reported spending reached about $22 billion in 2024, then fell to about $18 billion in 2025, even though 77% of consumers strongly agreed that supporting local small businesses matters. A broad "shop local" message is not enough on its own. (SBA; Forbes)

People pay more for something made by a person, for someone they love. In a real-money experiment, buyers paid 17% more for an identical item described as handmade. The effect appeared only for gifts to people close to them, where the goal was to convey love. That is exactly the flower occasion. (Fuchs, Schreier & van Osselaer, Journal of Marketing, 2015)

Customers do not yet see florists as experts. Market research summarized in the Texas A&M study found that consumers tend to see florists as vendors rather than flower experts, and that belonging to a professional floral association did not make people more likely to buy. When every shop looks the same to the customer, price decides. Education, a published standard and a visible mark are how florists change that. (Knuth & Hall)

Market the service, not the occasion. As shown earlier, no occasion is protected anymore. What a grocery store cannot sell is the florist: someone who designs for the person who died, coordinates with the funeral home, walks a couple through their wedding, and fixes problems the same day. The message is: for something that matters, have a person who knows flowers make it for you.

Elevate the arrangement; never shame the bouquet. Shaming the grocery buyer attacks the person florists want as a customer. The stronger approach makes a florist's arrangement the sign that you actually thought about it.

One message, many markets. A worldwide campaign must change by region. The competitor is the supermarket in the UK and Germany, but event halls in parts of Africa. The media changes too: American football in the US, soccer in Europe and Latin America, cricket in India. Only a worldwide body of florists can plan for all of them while letting each country decide its own spending.

The World Cut Flower Commission and I Speak Flowers

The World Cut Flower Commission (WCFC) is the first worldwide marketing organization built only for independent florists. Its purpose is the one this report argues for: market the florist, not the flower.

The standard is set at the direction of real florists. It says what a flower shop is: a shop a customer can walk into, where flowers are the whole business at that location, and not a supermarket, grocery store, filling station or a floral counter inside one. Each location is judged on its own, the standard is reviewed every year, and a shop either meets it or it does not.

The list is free. Every shop that meets the standard, anywhere in the world, is listed free, member or not, and found by the postal code the flowers are going to. Nobody pays to be on it and nobody can pay to be higher up it. The first version was built from public records, so most shops are already on it; a shop claims its listing, or asks to be taken off. Customers can search it at ispeakflowers.com.

The decal goes on the door. Every qualifying shop gets a free window decal, handed over in person at a local I Speak Flowers meeting. It carries a code that opens the list, so a customer at the door can check it in seconds.

Membership pays for the campaign. Membership money builds the campaign that sends customers to the list, a marketing team working on search, social and AI for member shops, and the mark beyond the window, on shirts, boxes and vans. It is one price per location, whether you are a florist, a grower or a wholesaler. Growers and wholesalers carry the mark on their boxes and trucks, never the window decal, and only the shops the mark describes get a say in the standard. What WCFC promises is the work and published accounts of where the money went, not a number of orders. It takes no orders and no percentage of one.

This is florists building again. In 1910, florists who competed every day built FTD together, and it worked because they owned it. I Speak Flowers is the same opportunity, this time worldwide. Learn more at worldcutflowercommission.com, and find or claim a shop at ispeakflowers.com.

Conclusion: a simple message, where people still look

The floral industry has spent a century marketing the flower. The independent florist now needs to be marketed directly, in a way a customer can grasp in seconds.

Online ads are crowded; the road is not. While businesses crowd into online ads, advertising in the physical world keeps growing. US out-of-home advertising reached a record $9.46 billion in 2025, its 19th straight quarter of growth, and billboards made up 71% of it. The industry's trade group argues that outdoor media reaches people without the disruption, bots and privacy worries of online ads. The largest category of outdoor advertiser is legal services, which grew 21% in 2025: local service businesses with a simple message to repeat. (OAAA; OAAA, Q3 2025; Whistler Billboards on OAAA data)

Simple wins on a billboard: the Brian Urlacher example. One of Chicago's most recognizable billboard campaigns belongs to a hair restoration company. Restore was started in 2014 by twin brothers in Oak Brook, Illinois. In January 2016, retired Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher, famous for being bald, revealed a full head of hair from Restore's procedure, and the company put his face on billboards across the Chicago area, including along the Tri-State Tollway. (Daily Herald, 2016; Chicago Sun-Times, 2018)

The boards use short, playful lines a driver gets in a second: "Hall of Fame Hair," "O'Hair Airport," "Da Hairs." For Urlacher's birthday the company added 10 more. (ABC7 Chicago; Yahoo Sports)

The results followed. Within months of the reveal, Inc. reported that Restore's sales had passed $5 million, most of that growth since Urlacher's reveal, with a waiting list months long. Restore now says it has performed more than 20,000 procedures. The campaign also used TV and social media, so billboards were not the only cause. But the billboards are what made it a fixture of every Chicago commute: one face, one name, a few words, repeated everywhere. (Inc., 2016; Restore)

ispeakflowers.com is that message. Three words a driver can read in a second and type later. It tells the customer there is a difference between a florist and a flower seller, and where to find the real one. It sends them to a free list of shops measured against a standard set at the direction of real florists, with no order, no fee and no middleman in between.

And it is built for the age of AI. When a customer asks an AI assistant for a real florist, the assistant needs a trustworthy source to point to. I Speak Flowers is the one place on the internet that tells the public, and the machines that answer the public, what a real flower shop is, measured against a standard set at the direction of real florists, and where each one is, by postal code. No one pays to be on it, so no one can buy the answer. The billboard sends people to it. The AI can read it. Either way, the call goes to the shop.

The industry has tried three times to market the flower, and florists had little or no say each time. The world is changing, and the next customer may never see a search page at all. The fourth effort can be different: florists marketing the florist, worldwide, under one simple name, and defining for the public and for AI what a real flower shop is.

Questions still to answer

These are the gaps a fuller picture needs. Each one can be answered with public data or a simple survey.

• Why have florists held on in France and the Netherlands? Supermarkets take about 14% and 20% of flower sales there, against 54% in the UK.
• What is the "middleman tax"? Total wire fees, order-gatherer cuts, directory fees and marketplace commissions on a typical order, in one number.
• Who owns the customer? When an order arrives through a wire service or marketplace, does the shop get the buyer's contact details for a repeat sale?
• Can customers find real shops? Repeat the founder's hometown count in 20 towns across several countries, and test what AI assistants say when asked for a local florist.
• Do customers know? Survey whether buyers think the website they ordered from is a local shop.
• Is grocery actually worse? A side-by-side test at the same price point: florist versus supermarket, vase life and quality over a week.
• Who decides how industry marketing money is spent? Count independent retail florists on the boards of every national flower association and promotion body, country by country.
• What happens when owners retire? How many shops close without a buyer?
• Is fake "local" advertising illegal outside Australia? Check US, UK and EU consumer law.
• What would florists join, and pay for? Ask them directly.

Sources

Government and official data

• US Census florist establishments, 1992 to 2005
• US Census, 2013 County Business Patterns
• US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Floral Designers
• AMI flow-of-goods study for the German agriculture ministry, 2023
• Japan Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, 2023 cut-flower market review
• US Small Business Administration, Small Business Saturday
• Fresh Cut Flowers and Fresh Cut Greens Promotion and Information Act (7 USC 6801 and following); Federal Register, December 29, 1994, and March to April 1997

Industry and trade

• SAF on the proposed national floral promotion order
• SAF Floral Industry Facts and SAF Mother's Day 2019 survey
• National Florist Day, Floristry in Numbers (Rabobank figures)
• Floriexpo partners and advisory board
• That Flower Feeling, Perishable News
• Flower Council of Holland, The Florist
• Fleurop history
• Brewers Association independent craft brewer seal

Research

• Rimal, A. and Ward, R. W. "Effect of Generic Promotion of Flowers on the Use of Retail Flower Outlets." AAEA Annual Meeting, August 1998
• Ward, R. W. PromoFlor consumer tracking, 1996 (funded by the National PromoFlor Council); Knuth, M. and Hall, C. Change and Disruption in the Floral Industry, Texas A&M, for WF&FSA and eight floral associations; Richards, T., evaluation of the Christmas Tree Promotion Board, Arizona State University, 2025; US Government Accountability Office, Agricultural Promotion Programs, GAO-18-54, 2017
• Fuchs, C., Schreier, M. and van Osselaer, S. "The Handmade Effect: What's Love Got to Do with It?" Journal of Marketing, 2015
• Epstein, E. J. "Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond?" The Atlantic, February 1982

Section-level sources are linked beside each table.

Keyword index