In a floral feat, East London retailers Janu and Kayur Patel sold over £32,000 worth of flowers during the International Women’s Day (IWD) and Mother’s Day period, but to their surprise, IWD drove the strongest day of sales.
Over the weekend, the Spar, which is located on a Jet forecourt on New North Road, Ilford, homed over 12,000 tulips, 9,000 roses and thousands of other flower varieties.
Son Kayur revealed that the store “exceeded our expectations of £30,000 and achieved around £32,000 - £33,000 in sales with an expected margin of around 50%.”
According to Jet, the forecourt has become a well-known spot for selling exceptional bouquets, with top-quality flowers sourced from Amsterdam and Kenya.
Janu has been passionate about the flower offering for many years and all arrangements are made in-store. It has proven to be a profitable venture, with the store also recording £20,000 in flower sales for Valentine’s Day last month.
Janu and his family prepared an array of flowers in preparation for the Valentine’s Day rush.
Kayur revealed that IWD is a day particularly popular among the local Eastern European community. “Tulips were are top sellers for International Women’s Day and Mother’s Day, followed by roses,” he said.
Price points
The store is able to offer various price points to suit a variety of budgets:
- Large Bunch of tulips sell for £45.
- Bunch of 10 Kenyan roses retail around the £20 to £25 mark
- Long-stem holland roses can range from £45-£70
- Mixed bunches sell for around £35
- Smaller bunches sell for around £20
Alongside the sales achievement, he had noticed a change in consumer behaviour this year: “With the changing demographic in our area, we noticed that the sales for Mother’s Day are becoming a little bit less potent and International Women’s Day sales are increasing considerably. International Women’s Day has probably turned into the biggest day for us [in terms of flower sales], and it might even exceed Valentine’s Day.”
Kayur believes that Mother’s Day is losing importance as both celebration days are relatively close to each other, and consumers’ budgets for Mother’s Day have decreased.
“There’s always going to be a demand for Mother’s Day, but I think the kind of rush that we had in the previous years won’t be as dramatic. I think we can expect maybe even better sales for International Women’s Day. We were actually caught short of tulips this year, if we push it a bit more next year, we can exceed this year’s records which were very good,” he said.
No comments yet