For the past 19 years, the run-up to Valentine's Day for Gerardus Kester has meant navigating through buckets of fresh roses in the Landover flower wholesale operation he owns and directing his 50 employees as they prepared the delicate South American flowers for shipping to florists as far away as Richmond and Delaware.
Yesterday, Kester Wholesale Floral Co.'s refrigerated cement warehouse sat empty save for two racks of small potted plants, a few buckets filled with cherry blossoms wrapped in plastic and a fleet of empty vans.
Gerardus Kester still has a few flowers left at his Landover warehouse. Late last month he closed the business he started in 1986.
(Nikki Khan -- The Washington Post)
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Metro Business: Coverage of Washington area businesses and the local economy.
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Like fresh-cut roses over time, his industry has wilted. Kester Wholesale, once among the biggest floral wholesalers in Maryland, closed late last month.
Kester, the owner, blames a shift in consumer expectations. "We were like the Neiman Marcus of the flower industry, but people wanted Costco prices," he said.
The industry is being squeezed by two trends, he and other wholesalers said. On the one hand, people are buying more flowers via the Internet, cutting into the profit of the mom-and-pop florists that Kester and other wholesalers rely on for most of their business. On the other, small florist shops are finding they can save money by supplanting wholesalers and buying many products directly from growers.
That, Kester said, caused him to lose money for the first time last year, after five years of declining sales.
"The business is still there, but [people want] cheap flowers," Kester said from his empty second-floor office yesterday.
Since he opened his business in 1986 after immigrating to the United States from Holland, he has specialized in high-end flowers.
For a time, he was the only local florist with regular shipments of Dutch hydrangea, thanks to contacts in his homeland. He and his sales force developed a following among local florists and won prestigious contracts to supply a few embassies and the White House on special occasions.
There are about 1,000 wholesale florists in the United States, according to the Wholesale Florist and Florist Supplier Association.
The market began to change, however, and in 2000 many of the local florists who made up a large part of Kester's business began complaining that their profit margins were being cut by shoppers ordering flowers online rather than walking into neighborhood flower shops. The online sites would forward the orders but charge the florists a referral fee. Florists responded by buying directly from flower growers or shopping around on the Internet for cheaper, wholesale prices.
"The Internet is the great equalizer," Kester said. "You can buy flowers from a thousand different retailers in minutes. The pie gets divided even more, and people feel like if they buy direct, they get a better price."
Many of Kester's customers began buying about half their flowers directly from growers, leaving him out of the loop. He says he needed at least 80 to 90 percent of their business to turn a profit.
Scott Stevanus, a former florist who is now an event planner, said he and some of Kester's other customers were distraught when they were told the company was going under.
"What are we going to do in the spring?" he asked. "He is definitely going to be missed. People are upset."
Later this month, Stevanus is hosting a gathering of 700 florists, caterers and wedding planners to talk about where they will buy their flowers as wedding season approaches.
Stevanus said that without Kester Wholesale, those in the local event-planning industry need to consider buying directly from growers. "We need to unite," he said.
That does not bode well for the dozens of other local wholesalers, which are adjusting business plans to stay afloat. They say that despite Kester's failure, they believe that the future of the industry is top-notch customer service and high-quality product.
"If customers are now looking for high quality and quick turnaround from retailers, we have to mirror that," said Jim Seba, owner of Calvert Wholesale Florist Inc. in Baltimore.
Joy Hager, vice president of Northern Virginia Wholesale Florist Inc. in Alexandria, said she made her own contacts in Holland last year and began competing with Kester in hydrangea sales because florists are skipping wholesalers for easier-to-find flowers and plants. That has made the wholesale business a battleground.
"I am surprised to see Kester go," she said. "There are others in Maryland I thought would go first."
