Mothers day Market news from Stems Flower Market Ballarat

Busy, Busy Busy is what the team at Stems are at the moment gearing up and preparing for Mothers day Sunday May 10th.  Flower supply is unprecedently tight this year due to a few factors.  Firstly flower supply always tightens up around this time  of the year due to the shorter days and cooler weather  however the very sudden cold snap of last week and the five days of frost put an absolute handbrake on flower growing.  Seconldy 98% of NSW lilie growers have missed mothersday and their crops will not flower for at least another two weeks.  This leads the wholesalers and shops in NSW looking to our Victorian growers to fill the gap and has consequently pushed lily prices up significanlty and made the harder to get.

Many companys look to imported product from Malasia, China and Colambia at mothersday to fill the gap in supply.  FLowers such as Roses, Lissianthus, Carnations, Chrysanthanums and orchids are sourced form these countries.  The main companies to do this are our larger supermarket chains.  They justify this decision by prefacing that their is not enough locally grown product to meet comsumer demand.  Yes this is true but as a grower do you want to wait 60-120 days to be paid for the flowers you supplied them and that they were paid for in under 10 days by you the customer!!  No i don’t think so.  As well chains have large bargaining power and the grower is exposed to the prices that are dictated to them by the buyers these buyers are usually pegging prices against imported product prices which are produced by people being paid $2-$5 per day.  Not very well balanced is it.

Anyway enough of my hobby horse.  At Stems Flower market all the flowers you see in our cooler for sale have been paid for.  The growers are paid a cheque evry Thursday at market.  For this reason our growers are always keen to fill our orders as best they can and they have not dissapointed us this Mothersday despite the massive supply shortfall in the market.

Where do I start with the great products we have in store at the monent? well I can’t so you’ll just have to give us a call or drop in to see our extra large range of fresh blooms for you to chooses

To all the mums happy mothers day from the Stems Market Team.