Consumers are expected to spend $9.9 billion on Father's Day this year, with an average of $98.34 per person -- up from $88.80 last year, according to the National Retail Federation's Father's Day 2007 survey.
Popular gifts include greeting cards (70 percent), dining out (42.7 percent) and apparel (37.1 percent), but it is unclear how floral gifts will figure into that mix, as many retail florists say Father's Day is not an important holiday for them. "We don't really do any promotions," says Stacie Lee Banks, AAF, of Lee's Flower & Card Shop in Washington, D.C. "For us, it's a non-holiday. We may do one or two sales, but that's it."
George Mitchell, AAF, AIFD, PFCI of Mitchell's Orland Park & Frankfort Flower Shop in Orland Park, Ill., says that while he does promote the holiday by advertising for it on his marquee, "on the whole . . . most of what I sell for Father's Day are bouquets for the cemetery."
Tony Medlock, AIFD, PFCI, AzMF of PJ's Flowers and Gifts in Phoenix, Ariz., attributes a lack of Father's Day sales to the state his business is located in. "Arizona is such a strange and different bear -- we don't 'do holidays' like most other states. My Easter [sales] consisted of 10 Easter baskets."
A few florists, however, are starting new Father's Day promotions this year. While Wade Anderson of Woodlane Flowers in Woodbury, Minn., says the holiday "has never been a particularly vibrant or vital day for us," he is running a Father's Day ad in a local magazine for the first time.
Marty Loppnow of Waukesha Floral & Greenhouses, in Waukesha, Wis., is, for the first time, promoting a Father's Day floral special. It's Teleflora's "Rootin' For Dad" bouquet, which features an arrangement of flowers in a root beer mug, in his promotional e-mails. (FTD and 1-800-Flowers also offer one or two floral specials designed for dads). "We really just liked the bouquet, we thought it had some appeal to it so [we figured] 'let's try it once,'" says Loppnow, whose shop was Floral Management's 2005 Marketer of the Year. At press time, he had about 7 orders for the bouquet.
Chime in on what your promotional efforts for Father's Day will be like this year, in this week's e-poll.
--Vanessa Machir
vmachir@safnow.org
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