New York's Flower District Hitting a Rough Spot

Manhattan’s Flower District is famous for its variety of flowers, from the simplest to the most extravagant. The recession has had a fairly big impact on sales. Though the streets are packed in this area, the stores are full of flowers but not many buy them.

Paradise Plant owner Sees Kumar says, “It’s a very, very hard time right now. Very tough time.”

Kumar’s been in business for 25 years, and at this point he has a lot of inventory and not much business. It seems that regardless of his efforts people just do not have the money to be spending it on flowers.

Absolutely Wild owner Peter Cunningham says, “We’re still doing a lot of charity work, but as far as the corporate side has gone, it has completely disappeared as of last year and that has affected 50 percent of our business.”

John Grafenecker, a floral designer, says about customers, “They don’t want to hear about lilies and orchids and beautiful centerpieces. People are retreating, they’ve got to do good at their daughter’s wedding but not as luxuriously as it would have been.”

But flower merchants are optimistic, they are just seeing this as tough times and are hopeful that things will get better. Most are saying they will weather the economic storm regardless of some of the economic losses they have experienced.

[Via: ny1.com]

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