Florists

The florist industry is comprised of the commerce, production, and trade in flowers. Florist services include creation of floral design or flower arranging, the display of flowers, merchandising, and flower delivery. The major products in the florist industry are cut flower arrangements, potted plants, and loose cut flowers.

The florist industry encompasses wholesale florists and retail florists, who buy their stock from growers.

Wholesale florists sell flowers in bulk to others in the floristry trade. Retail florists proffer fresh flowers. Both wholesale florists and retail florists offer additional products and supplies such as vases, artificial flowers, and other gift items. The store operations of florists include taking orders, serving walk-in customers, and delivering to consumer and commercial clients several times a week, as well as caring for the flowers in their stock and creating floral arrangements.

The demand for flowers is dependent on consumer spending. As such, the profit a retail florist shop takes in is dependent upon what effective marketing techniques they utilize. The profitability of individual shops depends on effective marketing. When marketing their product, florists focus on local or regional markets, and engage in competition based upon customer service, convenience of location, and the prices assigned to their merchandise. In addition to competing for profit with other retailers, florists now complete with mass merchandisers selling flowers, and with supermarkets who can frequently sell flower arrangements at a lower price due to volume purchases from wholesalers and/or growers.