hello, Gary, i don't work in the business: thought i would share my experience as a consumer: I got 2 dends from walmart. they were from costa nursery farms in goulds, florida. i was at walmart the day they arrived and they were all lush and healthy looking. i would est. that there were about 50 plants. a week later, there were less than 10 left. only a couple of them look straggly. i also googled costa nursey farms just to get some ideas about the farm.
sue

Good question Gary. The Super Wal-Mart here, the Lowe's and the HD all carry orchids. I'm guessing they sell half within a day or two of getting in a shipment. The rest sit on the shelf and slowly decline. The Lowe's waters everyday. The HD not at all, the WM sometimes dripping wet sometimes dry as a bone. Most of these orchids go to the 'sale rack' .....I've seen them at Lowe's as low as 20 cents for the baggie babies, all sitting out in the blazing sun with no protection at all. At that point how is anybody making money? But, there is always people gathering these things up, and sure enough, in the basket a large bag of potting mix, pots, baskets ........shoot, I've done it myself. Maybe that's part of it. Maybe they figure sooner or later you'll need supplies, and that translates into sales. Still it seems the loss on orchids would be enormous. I don't under it either. Who eats the loss? Lowe's? the grower? I hope someone comes along that knows the scoop.....

The retailer eats the loss. I don't work in the business but it isn't hard to figure out that that is what must happen. The retailer purchases in huge quantity and very low price from the wholesaler who might also be the grower. As one poster noted a popular hybrid (Cattleytonia 'Why Not', Colmanara 'any') will sell out in mere days before any decline past the point of saleability. The retail markup is such that only 1/8 to 1/4 of the plants have to be sold to recoup outlay. Anything after that is profit. Magazines and newspapers are retailed differently and retailers save and return unsold issues to the wholesaler who might also be the printer for credit. Smaller orchid operations might also have a similar return policy with their wholesaler but if unsold plants are put on clearance racks and/or discarded then I think it is safe to say that they are operating on the plan I outlined at the beginning.

H

I worked at HD for a while in the Garden Dept (it's how I got started in the Orchid hobby) and we got Orchids from several different growers.The Orchids that came through our store lasted longer than usuall but not much longer. I did the best I could for them but there were other employees who loved to flood every plant we got every day and twice a day in the summer. but back to the point, we got credit from the vendors for every orchid that died or was thrown out. They rarely let us sell any at a discount because essentially the vendor was buying them back from us when they died or got too ugly. I used to mark down prices at request for the sad looking ones but I wasn't supposed to. For Us it was the Vendors who took the hit we were just the "salesman"

I second to Salvialvr comment. That is what the HD people told me a while ago.

I tried asking for a discount on an abused looking catt one day at HD in one of the Miami stores, and was told no, bz they had to be rtd to the vendor/nursery for credit to HD's a/c. THe stores in Miami don't encourage discounted orchids; even if they are DEAD, DEAD and you still want to buy it. They tell me, NO, and rudely, too. You have to get there as they are alighting from the trucks to get fresh chids.

Sue
martha Stewart did a segment on Costa farms but was centered on Bromeliads.They market 600,000 per year of these alone. Now broms in general are not as hard to propagate as orchids but still that many??? Boggles the mind .They must have zero GH loss.
Would love to see how you turn out orchids like popcorn.lol.
Another who markets differently in Sun bulb also in Florida. They sell those in plastic bags usually hanging inside the store. Orchids are less than 1 percent of their sales. The loss of these must be staggering would hardly seem woth the effort lol
I bought several of these for an experiment for 9.95 each .Everyone one of them has grown!! lol I find it interesting that HD sells them for 12.95 while Lowes is 13.95 lol. Same co, same types . Must be spur of the moment sales to novice growers. Had a vendor once tell me that if a plant is in flower you will have at least 5 times the sales no matter what the price.
Of course I've always suspecte that orchid growers are willing to spend a lot more money than other fanciers.
Except maybe roses, they know no bounds either lol thanks everyone gary

I worked at a garden store for a while, and we sold orchids for about 3 times the invoiced price. I don't know whether the store made any money on them, after you factor in shipping, display space and care, writeoffs, etc. They were generally larger plants than HD or Lowe's. We never sent any back to the vendor.

I read somewhere that there is a big nursery in the Half Moon Bay area of California that grows about half the phals sold in the US, and virtually all the phals sold by Costco, Home Depot, Lowe's, etc.

almost all my phals are from Costco. they have always rebloomed and i have one which continuously rebloom on the same stem. after the flowers drop: a week or 2 later i would get another spike on the spike. and the flowers usually last from 6 months to 9 months. the ones I did not get from Costco, I have either killed for one reason or another or have not rebloomed. strange, isn't it?
sue

The only problems with box store orchids is that there is a lack of variety and many do not have name tags. Without the box store orchids we hobby growers would have to spend much more for the species and hybrids for our collections.

So in general terms Box Store orchids are not inferior at all. They come from orchid nurseries that would not exist without the box store market.

I'll second the comment about selling in-bloom orchids. They sell much better at the local orchid society's shows held in shopping malls than well priced out of bloom plants. AND it only takes about 3 to 4 days for an over-priced in-bloom plant to be reduced to a wreck by the general public and shopping centre air.

Because orchids are considered perishable products, like fruit or vegetables, any loss is eaten by the retailer. My brother is a manger for a grocery store and most non perishable items not sold are sent back to the wholeseller. Seasonal items like holiday gift wrap, toys or decorations are sold in bins at half off or more. In california Taisuco (formerly Taiwan Sugar Co) which now owns McLellan Botanicals, are a huge wholeseller of phalaenopsis. Phalies are flasked and grown in Taiwan (where labor is extremely cheap) and shipped to America where they can be grown up to flowering size. Now there is a new ruling that orchids coming from Taiwan can be shipped in clean sphagnum moss and don't have to be bare root so this cuts down on mortality during shipment. Phalies are cheap to grow and flower. They flower at an early age. So the mark up on them even at a big box store is certainly higher than what was paid for them on the wholesale market. So some plants die at Lowe, HD or Walmart. No big capital outlay so no big loss. Flower shops do mark up their plants way way up. It's ridiculous. When I lived in Chicago, many flower shop would buy plants from Hausermanns. I'm sure they got some wholesale price but nothing like buying bulk from the Taiwanese. Yet the sold a phalie or cattleya which could be had at Hausermann for $25 or $30 and they would sell the plant for no less than $75. Or more. Ridiculous. You gotta be a dummy or some rich guy who didn't care about money to spend at these flower shops. There was a Home Depot only a 1/4 mile away and you could buy a comparable plant for next to nothing.

I agree about the lack of variety in the big box stores, especially, in my area. I had thought about the lack of name tag and what it means for me: I don't sell anything: I buy them for my own pleasure so I have decided that the name tag is not that important. when I repot, I sometimes forget about the tag and it gets thrown out with the old medium.
sue

Have you tried www.orchiddistributors.com

Here is a link that might be useful: Wholesale Orchid Distributors