Growing Profitable Revenue Streams, Part 2: Wholesaling to Florists
Finding the right revenue streams for your flower farm can make all the difference in your success—and it’s rarely as simple as choosing the first sales channel that comes along. That’s why I’m writing this blog series: to share my personal experiences with the many revenue streams I’ve tried, so you can learn from my journey and avoid some of the mistakes I made along the way.
That’s why I came up with the Revenue Streams Compass™, a tool I wish I’d had when I started. It explores 19 different ways to sell your locally-grown flowers and includes worksheets, self-assessments, and guides designed to help you figure out which revenue streams are the best fit for your skills, personality, and business goals. While these blogs are all about my story (the messy parts included!), the Compass will give you a roadmap for making confident decisions about where to focus your time and energy.
This installment of the series is about my early experiences selling wholesaling to florists—a channel that hasn’t been a major focus for my farm, but might be the perfect fit for you.
Wholesaling to Local Florists: Cultivating a Complementary Channel
One of the biggest factors that kept me from making wholesaling to florists a major revenue stream was a realization I had early on: I wanted to design. Creating bouquets and arrangements with my own flowers was a huge part of what inspired me to start this farm. Handing over my blooms for someone else to design just wasn’t where I wanted to focus my energy.
That doesn’t mean wholesale is a bad choice for others—it’s just not the right fit for someone like me, who loves controlling the final creative product. If you’re someone who thrives on growing high-quality flowers and doesn’t mind letting someone else handle the designing, wholesale could be your dream channel. For me, it’s remained an occasional source of income, rather than a main focus.
A huge aspect of my love for flower farming comes from designing with the blooms. This desire pushed me towards wedding work and direct-to-consumer sales of bouquets. But sometimes, I just like to exercise my creativity and create arrangements that interest me—even if no one has asked for them—like the ones shown here!
When a Florist Sees Red
Early on in my flower farming journey, I attended a workshop co-led by a highly respected florist who works exclusively with local flowers. One of her stories made a big impression on me: a new grower she was working with had brought flowers to a prominent wedding florist, only to have the florist declare, “You call these red? RED?? These are practically orange!” Whether or not the shouting was real, my takeaway was clear—when you wholesale to florists, you need to be ready to meet very specific expectations. It’s not just about growing beautiful flowers, but about making sure they’re exactly what the florist needs—color, stem length, timing, etc. The demand for specificity of color is particularly acute with florists who are focused on weddings, as their clients place a high value on getting exactly what they envisioned. Blush isn’t just light pink, and burgundy could mean anything from a deep wine red to a moody plum. I explain more about this in another blog called Think Like A Florist To Sell To A Florist - knowing your customer is everything!
When I first heard that story about the famous florist rejecting the new grower’s flowers because they weren’t the “right” shade of red, it shook me. As a new grower, I worried about whether my blooms were “good enough”—not just in terms of color but in every way. I’ve since realized that understanding and communicating color is actually one of my strongest skills, but back then I was hyper-aware of all the things I didn’t know yet.
All of the dahlias in these pictures can be described as “pink” but they are all different hues – some are fuschia (purple-pink), others are warm pink (almost salmon-hued). Some are bright, others are muted. Clear communication with the florists you are selling to is critical to avoiding mis-matched expectations.
Leftovers and Learning Curves
As much as that red/orange story had me second-guessing wholesale, the sheer number of dahlias I was harvesting eventually outweighed my nerves—I needed another outlet for all those flowers. At the time, though, I wasn’t able to create a proper availability list—the kind that gives florists a clear picture of what’s coming and allows them to plan their orders in advance. I simply didn’t have enough experience to predict what would be blooming a week or more into the future. Accurate forecasting is an important skill for wholesale growers, but I was still learning the timing of my own crops.
So my earliest wholesale interaction was closer to what some growers call a “bucket route.” That’s where a farmer brings flowers directly to florists and the florists choose what they want on the spot. It’s more spontaneous than working off an availability list, but it can be a great way for florists to make impulse buys of things they didn’t know they needed—or snag varieties their wholesaler didn’t have that week.
For me, this looked like driving straight from the farmers market to a florist’s shop with my leftover inventory. It wasn’t a formal bucket route, but it worked as a way to move otherwise unsold flowers and build a relationship with a local florist without needing to forecast my availability in advance. I was upfront that the flowers had been at the market all morning and so would be best used for immediate event work. It was a win-win—she got locally-grown dahlias at a discounted price, and I moved product that would have otherwise gone unsold.
I’ll admit, I’ve always found direct selling intimidating. That first after-market trip, walking in with buckets of flowers and hoping the florist would be interested, was hard. But once that relationship was established, I didn’t have to “sell” anymore—it became a simple exchange. Still, someone with a natural talent for sales would be far better suited to this kind of sales channel: someone who can not only sell the dahlias the florist already wants, but also convince them that they need those Jewels of Opar or whatever else the farmer has in abundance. For me, the bucket route worked because it didn’t require the time, organizational skills, or crop prediction experience that building and maintaining a proper availability list demands.
Parking Lot Exchanges and Poppy Surprises
One of my longest lasting relationships with a local florist came when I connected with a woman who ran a small operation out of her home. Her orders were sporadic, which worked perfectly for me at the time, since I was still figuring out how to grow consistently and predict when flowers would be ready. Our first sale happened in the parking lot of a Food Lion grocery store, which was selected because it was located approximately halfway between us. I handed her a bucket of flowers, she handed me a check, and we laughed at how much it felt like some sort of clandestine deal. She often needed flowers at the last minute, and while this worked in the beginning, it eventually became difficult to manage. Texting back and forth about availability worked when I only had a few varieties, but as my offerings grew, so did the challenge of communicating what I had in this manner.
In the earliest days of the farm I still felt unsure as to whether the quality of my flowers would measure up to the demands of a high-end florist. That question got answered one day when my husband, Mike, delivered Iceland poppies to a florist in Washington, D.C. for Mother's Day. We had extras, and the florist—who I’d never worked with before—was desperate for additional flowers and had reached out to me via Instagram. When Mike walked in with the bucket of poppies, a customer talking to the florist turned around, took one look at them, and said to the florist, "I changed my mind. I want THOSE in my arrangement!" Mike relayed this story to me with obvious pride, and hearing it gave me a huge confidence boost. It erased the fear that the anecdote about the famous florist had imprinted in my brain. It was the moment I realized that I was growing flowers that more than measured up to a florist's high standards. To get an insider look at the expectations of florist customers who want to purchase wholesale blooms from you, check out this blog about how to Take Stress Free Orders and Start Selling Your Flowers.
It was a bucket full of Iceland poppies that made me trust in the quality of the blooms I was growing, when they wowed my florist customer’s customer.
Due in large part to my focus on design, which led me to focus on sales channels like farmers markets, subscriptions, and wedding design, wholesaling never became a major sales channel for my farm. Even though we sometimes had available flowers, I recognized that the time needed to make wholesaling effective wasn't possible for me. Finding florists who needed what I had, when I had it, and giving them enough notice as to its availability was more than I wanted to add to my already overstretched schedule. I preferred using my flowers for direct-to-consumer sales, where the profit margin was higher, and I got to create the designs.
It also didn't help that florists often needed flowers at the same time I did. Mother’s Day, for instance, quickly became a week when I knew I could sell every single stem myself, directly to customers, rather than at a wholesale price. The same went for the height of fall wedding season.
But when it worked, it worked well. I remember one time when I was too busy to harvest cosmos for the home-based florist, so I told her she was welcome to come cut them herself. She was thrilled, and I knocked a little off the price. It was a win-win—she got the flowers she needed, and I sold blooms that I had in abundance. That’s one of the benefits of building relationships with local florists: when you have a good rapport, you can find creative solutions that benefit both parties.
Our Mother’s Day offerings include giant mixed bouquets and arrangements filled with the best of spring and – assuming they’re blooming in time – lots of straight peony bunches. These are exactly the same blooms that florists want at this time of year, but we generally need every single bloom to satisfy the demand of our own retail customers.
Could Wholesale Be Your Best Revenue Stream?
Wholesaling to local florists can be a great way to move flowers, and many flower farmers build it into the backbone of their business. But it comes with its own set of challenges: managing timing, coordinating expectations, and maintaining clear, consistent communication about what you have available and when. If you enjoy relationship-building, thrive on organization, and don’t mind handing over your blooms for someone else to design with, it can be a very rewarding (and reliable) revenue stream.
But the bigger question is this: Is wholesaling to florists really the right sales channel for you? The upcoming Revenue Streams Compass is designed to help you find your best-fit revenue streams, taking into account your strengths, your personality, and the realities of your farm. Join the waitlist here to be the first to know when it’s available.
Next up in this series: My experience selling buckets of curated blooms to DIYers—one of my favorite revenue streams but also one in which I’ve had one of my most frustrating customer experiences.
Want to skip the guesswork and find the revenue streams that truly fit your farm?
With guided self-assessments to uncover your advantages and challenges, plus a comprehensive guide to all the major floral revenue streams, our Revenue Streams Compass gives you clarity, confidence, and a plan that’s truly aligned for your business’ success.