Re: Breeders' Rights
- Subject: Re: Breeders' Rights
- From: h*@open.org
- Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 07:31:21 -0700 (PDT)
Chick:
>I guess my question would be, if you have a new introduction that you
>think is only worth $3, why bother?
Three dollars wholesale isn't the same as three dollars retail. I
would probably offer it for $15 to $20 retail for a decent size plant.
However, if I can wholesale it then I can keep selling it year after
year without having to deal with hundreds or thousands of customers.
>From a strictly business point of view, if you are going to grow a
>plant, why not grow one that is worth more than $3.
At the wholesale level there are few hostas that are worth three
dollars or more. Some hostas go for a little as 50 cents and that's
for a large eyed single fan.
>If your plant isn't of much value, why do you want to bother with it?
It does have some value, the question is to who. I can put a lot of
effort into selling a few plants at a relatively high price or I can
grow it out into larger nunbers and offer it wholesale plus also
retail it at a reasonable price. With few exceptions Hostas are not
that difficult to propagate. The Francee sport I have is nice, and I
think it will do well in the wholesale trade, but I think the market
for the connoisseurs/collectors is limited. If I sell off a few
plants at $50 I might make a few hundred dollars with considerable
effort and then discover that the plant is being TCed a few years
later. Instead of TCing it I can just as easily propagate it myself
and retail it at a reasonable price and still make a decent profit.
The thing I see is that there really isn't that much demand for new
hostas. If you look at the national mail order catalogs you see
relatively few hostas. This market can easily be filled by 20 or 30
good hostas. I think my Francee sport has some potential here because
it is a much larger version of Francee with a little bit of a Patriot
look to it. I do need to evaluate it more before deciding what to do
with it. It could turn out that no one is interested in it. The
problem with wholesaling is that you have to have the plants available
when you offer them. Therefore you have to take a chance and
propagate it. I've peopagated a number of daylilies that didn't go
anywhere, and I've propagated some hostas, like Golden Tiara, that
there isn't much of a market for. You take your chances and sometimes
you win and sometimes you don't win.
>Why not just grow a good plant that's already available in tc?
And who am I going to sell it to? Besides that there will be lots of
other people selling the same plant. I don't have any intention of
specializing in hostas at the reatil level and competiting with all
the collectors who already put out a catalog. Even at the wholesale
level it's difficult because the buyers already have their vendors
they buy from, so they don't jump to a new grower that easily.
Joe Halinar
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