Please provide annual (quarterly if possible) data for floral sales
for past 5 or 10 years, but I will take what you can find. Please
provide any breakdown for online, supermarket, warehouse club and
traditional florist. I am on a tight deadline.  Will tip generously
for speed and accuracy.

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Request for Question Clarification by websearcher-ga on 04 Mar 2005 09:23 PST

Hello infopros:

Given that you are on a tight deadline, I thought that it might be
best to handle this question/answer in a series of back and forth
clarifications.

The absolute best, free information on the floriculture business,
which I'm assuming is the precise area you are interested in, comes
from the USDA (Department of Agriculture). I'm also assuming that you
are looking for U.S. figures.

The USDA puts out annual statistics on the industry, which can be accessed at:

floriculture and nursery crops
http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/flo/

The latest outlook report (Sept. '03) can be found at: 

Floriculture and Nursery Crops Outlook
http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/flo/Sep04/FLO03.pdf

If you go to page 14 of this PDF document, you will see a table that
breaks down sales by year (since 1995) and by industry segment.

So, depending on how you want to define your exact industry, we can
easily add up the figures for 1995 - 2004. If you want to use their
"Total floriculture sales" definition, then the amounts are:

1995: 3,328,632,000 
1996: 3,407,320,000 
1997: 3,896,050,000 
1998: 3,947,517,000 
1999: 4,096,560,000 
2000: 4,576,585,000 
2001: 4,802,555,000 
2002: 5,089,514,000
2003: 5,068,620,000 (preliminary data)
2004: 5,075,678,000 (forecast data)

Another document on the USDA site contains more "raw" data (and is rather large):

Floriculture and Nursery Crops Situation and Outlook Yearbook
http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/flo/Jun04/FLO2004.pdf

The floriculture data starts at page 33. They break down the sales
data there by many criteria (state, flower type, grower type, etc.)
but do not collect data by retialer type, as you requested. I doubt
that there would be any reliable figures for that sort of breakdown,
since putting individual retailers in those categories is highly
subjective.

How would you like to proceed? Have you got enough data now for your
purposes? Is there something else you would like me to look for? Are
any of the assumptions I have made incorrect?

Thanks. 

websearcher

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Request for Question Clarification by websearcher-ga on 04 Mar 2005 09:26 PST

Hi infopros:

Please reply to my previous information with a Clarification of your
own. We'll continue to trade clarifications until you are satified, at
which time (assuming you *are* satisfied), I will officially answer
the question and collect the fee.

Thanks. 

websearcher

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Request for Question Clarification by websearcher-ga on 04 Mar 2005 09:31 PST

Hi infopros:

Please note that the figures from the USDA are *wholesale* figures. If
you want *retail* figures, please specify. Retail numbers will likely
be much harder to find.

websearcher

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Request for Question Clarification by websearcher-ga on 04 Mar 2005 09:45 PST

Hi infopros:

OK, I'm finding more good stuff. 

The American Floral Endowment (http://www.endowment.org/) has a very
nice PDF document showing a presentation with soem very interesting
stats.

U.S. Flower U.S. Flower Buyers: What do we know about them? 
http://www.endowment.org/pdf/usflowerbuyer.pdf

It has breakdowns for retail sales (yearly) from 2000-2003 on page 22:

2000: 17.974 Billion
2001: 18.048 Billion
2002: 18.219 Billion
2003: 19.068 Billion

This slide also shows a breakdown by type of floriculture. 

Further down, on page 31, there is a breakdown of "channel shares" by
dollar percentage for the years 1993-2003. Very close to the exact
categorization you requested.

On pages 33-37, they break down these channel numbers in even more
detail for 2000-2003.

This is the best I've found so far. 

websearcher

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Clarification of Question by infopros-ga on 08 Mar 2005 12:49 PST

This answer was very helpful  You turned me on to many good sources,
even without any feedback.  Sorry for the tardy response.  Go ahead
and post this as the qnswer and I will tip  $75.  Well done.  Thanks.

Hi infopros:

I'm very glad the information was of assistance to you. Instead of
reposting the information in this section, I'll just leave the
original data in the clarification requests.

Thanks again. 

websearcher

Went after and identified the unique high quality sources rather tah
the run of the mill generic posers.