Carol, Carols Garden
Do I even need to worry about trends?
It would be a very foolish flower farmer who didn’t pay any attention at all to changes in taste and customer preference. Most of us are relatively small growers, supplying flowers to customers through relatively short supply and local chains. We have the opportunity to listen to our customers and to be able to respond more easily than a large scale farmer.
Where do trends come from?
This is possibly the hardest thing to pin down, and there are no simple answers.
The broader you look, the more complex the picture becomes!
Generally, trends come from pretty much anywhere - the socio-political state of the world or nation, the impact on the behaviour of people, the instincts of the influencers, maybe scientific developments, or statistical analysis of future needs.
The trend makers are the people who respond to all these ideas and create ideas, develop colours, shapes, styles, materials which then start to be taken up by the designers of fashion, interiors, technology, architecture even philosophy and so on.
How do they decide what will filter down?
Frankly, I don't know. There are cycles, as we will all recognise - teardrop bouquets, dried flowers, hanging installations… But there is always space for new ideas. There is a great phrase ‘The Shock of the New’ which captures that typical response of the media and the public to new and outlandish concepts in art, fashion etc that seem strange, impractical, weird or whatever. The difficult thing for trend predictors is to sort through these and judge which elements will stick, and how they will alter the more mainstream trends which follow. We don't all have dead sharks in glass tanks in our living rooms, but the work of Damien Hirst has altered modern art forever, and ‘watered down’ acceptable elements of it will then slowly filter down, to alter the art that people buy for their houses from Ikea or wherever.
So which become acceptable or mainstream? This is a function of how the new and creative ideas are overlaid with cycles and habits, and the adopted by high profile or aspirational brands. The brands are often in the fashion industry, but can be any design-led brand, often then working with key customers or influencers.
What is an influencer?
This is a fairly widely used term for anyone who influences taste or drives demand for a product or style. These days, they are often high profile brands or celebrities or bloggers or anyone with a big impact on end customers. They might be the original creatives, or any person with a voice, who can reach and influence lots of people, most commonly through social media. In the flower world, think of Shane Connolly and the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. This could be seen to have kick-started the demand for natural. local, white weddings - and trees and branches in designs. Different markets are influenced by different sources, and we will look at these in more detail later. Understanding your market, your customer and who they are influenced by, is the key to predicting what they might want to buy from you, and when.
“Question: Who would you consider to be an influence on your customers?”
Where to look for general trends?
This depends how far ahead you are thinking. Trends will have developed in the following way - though never as neatly and predictably as this timeline suggests!
Year 1
The trade shows, lifestyle magazines, designers, trends specialists are looking at art exhibitions, fashion shows, Chelsea Flower Show, following sociopolitical trends, etc etc.
Year 2
Florists, TV, celebrities, Pinterest boards, high street brands - will be looking at trade shows, lifestyle/design magazines, maybe trends advisors, Instagram Influencers
Year 3
General public - will pick up ideas from TV, celebrity magazines, Pinterest, favourite high street brands in clothing, interiors etc, as well as getting design ideas from their florist. Brides will then be deciding their schemes for:
Year 4 or later
When you actually need the flowers for the events planned in year 3!
All of this takes time to filter through. The trends need to picked through, some will not reach the mass market, some will. A lot of this is about repetition and familiarity - and depends whether the customer wants ‘something different’, or to be seen to be fashionable.
For example, 5 years ago, I met a woman who worked in marketing for a wallpaper manufacturer. So she visited trade shows, consulted trends advisors etc. I asked her what colours were coming ‘in’. She told me that Egg Yolk yellow was predicted to be significant over the next few years. The following year I grew yellow flowers, but no-one wanted them, I didn’t see any evidence of it on social media, and thought she must have been wrong. The following year, I noticed pictures in magazines with golden and mustard yellow sofas, cushions in John Lewis etc. And by the autumn, a couple of ‘influential’ florist customers were taking a few mustard or gold flowers for their Instagram pages. The following year, they were much more requested, by these same ‘taste-maker’ type florists, as well as some trendier City Centre florists and a few brides who were mainly living in London. This year, I have seen much more of these colours in clothes and homewares on the high street, and have used it more in weddings. Next year, maybe this same colour will start to filter through to more of my weddings, and even into retail bunches? I’ll keep growing some, but it hasn't replaced blush yet. ‘Yet’ is the important word!
In conclusion, the taste of the majority of customers does change, but quite slowly. Using last year’s ‘best sellers’ as a basis for next year is fine, but be careful to hedge your bets a bit. If your customers book well in advance, you will get a bit of warning, but many do not.
Looking outside the flower world is important if you want to get a better ‘feel’ for the way people are thinking, what trends might be developing. Look for repeated themes, which are coming up in different areas. But these may take a long time to feed through to your customers, if at all.
Weddings
If you are growing for weddings, there are two main questions to ask yourself
What does your customer want to achieve with the flowers? is it pretty, accessible, cheap & cheerful or are they wanting to make a statement about themselves?
Where are they looking for their ideas?
This will depend on your typical or target customer. I did a small survey of my florist customers, asking where their brides collected ideas from and these came up as the most popular:
Pinterest - This is huge, and heavily dominated by USA. If you can look out for repeated, popular images, or the boards which Pinterest are promoting to you, you will get a bit of an idea what is ‘trending’. But I find it very hit-and miss, totally dominated by US and conventional type flowers. If you have your own boards as reference, then you will get a good idea what your customers are liking - though you won’t hear from the ones who don't like the options you have posted, so you might miss some trends.Celebrity Weddings and celeb magazines eg. Hello! - I don't think any of my brides have referred to this, but I tend to have older, more individual, maybe less brand-aware brides. The high street florists I asked (and who I sell wholesale flowers to) said these were a definite influence.
Bridal magazines, photos shoots - with models and staged flowers. These are usually ‘aspirational’ - so aiming to set trends or to create a brand vision - always predictive in some way, and perhaps one of the easiest and most accessible ways to get ideas.
Blogs - Rock My Wedding, Love My Dress, Rock n Roll Bride, Boho Weddings, One Stylish Day, They Fell in Love, etc. These all feature real weddings - and usually quite quickly after the event. They are worth following to get an overall idea of what’s going on - but they are obviously ‘after the event’ rather than predicting. But they are good to get a feel - and to get ideas.
These are all places you can look for ideas for your particular customer. I would also add in perhaps my most valuable resource - Personal social media accounts for ‘influencer florists’ especially in America and in UK. These are the people who I follow most - as the work they are doing today will often feed through to my bookings for next year. Here (in no particular order) are suggested florist accounts
UK: @mossandstonefloraldesign @aesmeflowers @simplybyarrangement @pyrusbotanicals @firenzaflowers @thewhitehorseflower @vervainflowers @joflowersofficial @gandgorgeousflowers @lucytheflowerhunter @wildbunchflowers
Rest of the world: @soilandstem @ariellachezardesign @Lamusadelasflores @fleuropean @sarah_winward @floretflower
Home and gift
The Home and Gift market is different. These are people buying flowers to go in the house, or to give to other people to go in their house. Whether you are selling these direct to customer, or you are selling pre-made wholesale bunches, or wholesale stems to a florist, the end destination is someone’s house.
In general, these are much less affected by trends and fashion. But there are trends within interiors, so it’s worth working out how your customers live and where they get their interior decorating ideas from:
Retail outlets - John Lewis is a great source of ideas and, although aspirational for some, will influence the colours that people will end up buying. Recent trends for very neutral interiors have been updated with ‘pops’ of strong colour and pattern. Flowers are a great way to achieve this, without over-committing.
Magazines - House and Garden, Interiors mag, Country Living (still!) as well as lots of higher end lifestyle magazines. This is where the ‘Scandi’ thing has filtered through to most people.
Having said all this, most flowers are still bought by and for women, and pink is apparently still the biggest seller. Yellow and orange are still only really popular in autumn. Consider also, that if your flowers will be sitting under fluorescent shop lights, then bright colours will work best.
Styling, Photoshoots, Floristry workshops
If you are doing these yourself, or supplying florists or stylists who are doing these, then you need to be thinking a bit further ahead with colours, styles and varieties. These are all ‘aspirational’ type activities - setting trends, showing the customer that the creator is aware and ahead of trends, developing and reinforcing a brand image.
Customers in these categories may be looking for:
Something different, to catch the eye and set them apart from their competition - this may be different materials, new colours, sculptural pieces etc. if they're coming to you as a grower, they want material which cannot be sourced through usual wholesale channels.
Photo-friendly materials and colours - They might cover this in their brief, but lots of wispy material is hard to photograph, as are some colours e.g. red, white. They will generally need lots of variety, and toning colours.
‘Trendy’ colours - ie the ones appearing in the lifestyle magazines, on aspirational social media feeds etc. But not so ‘fashion-forward’ as to be alienating for their target customers.
“TASK:
For each or the above market sectors, identify the main influencers that you do/could be following.
What are the consistent threads coming through?
What conclusions can you make for your business?”
What are the top trends?
Having done a bit of research and from my own observations, these are some significant trends which seem to be filtering through, especially for stylists and weddings:
‘Green’ - sustainable, zero waste, organic, local materials. Many many more customers are asking for provenance and are motivated to seek out local growers and less wasteful methods. Hand-crafted, personally grown, individually designed vales are important.
Foam-free is part of this, has gathered must pace within sectors of the industry - although I find that most customers are still entirely unaware of the sustainability issues within floristry, even if they do value locally grown flowers.Yellow - especially mustard and gold - is growing in presence, but slowly! Blush is still very strong for weddings and all the florists I asked said it was showing no sign of going away yet, although it does seem to be giving way to white. Bright pastels are also strong for me - pinks, oranges and lemon yellows, but I’m not sure how widespread this is.
Installations - things hanging from ceilings and beams. Practicalities mean that lightweight, long-lasting dried material is ideal for this especially wispy, etherial grassy, weedy, and fluffy - including pampas grass! Combining the trend for installations and arches with a need for foam-free causes headaches. Dried and fake flowers may be the easiest answer.
Bleached material - usually chemically bleached, is a trend coming out of the Far East via USA, and is mixed in with the market for dried flowers - although the techniques are very different. The artificial bleaching is potentially hazardous, especially if coming from less closely regulated regions of the world. Some of this effect can be achieved with natural sun bleaching, but takes longer and is time-consuming.
DIY weddings - still popular, but clean and more modern, not lace/hessian/jars
Fake flowers and balloons!! This came out of some high profile celebrity weddings a couple of years ago, but offers a more practical and (possibly) more cost effective way to have big showy arches and structures.
What to ignore?
Pantone Colour of the Year? The Marsala of a few years ago did persist, but the more recent ones don't seem to have had much impact at all.
Macrame?! This was around last year, as part of the craft theme, but it’s fussy, takes ages and looks quite folksy. Will it stay around??
Don’t ignore, but be cautious about short term trends - Keep a balanced approach - stick to what you know, but then experiment with a few new colours or varieties to keep your buckets feeling fresh.