Re: Breeders' Rights
- Subject: Re: Breeders' Rights
- From: C*
- Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 13:31:02 -0400
Well, I guess the problem is that what you are doing is so entirely
different from what I'm doing that I no longer have an opinion. Unless
your production costs are virtually nothing, it seems to me that you would
have to sell about 5 daylilies to buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks. You
must grow a ton of daylilies.
Just because I don't understand it doesn't mean much. If you can make a
reasonable profit, go for it.
Chick
halinar@open.org wrote:
> Chick:
>
> >What I don't do is go looking for new plants to sell for $3.00. If
> >you think your plant is worth $15-20 retail, I don't understand why
> >you can only get $3 for it wholesale.
>
> First, I'm not actually out looking for new hostas to wholesale for
> three dollars and would consider propagating and selling wholesale
> existing nice hostas. As a matter of fact I am in the process of
> doing that, but finding the right hosta is more difficult then it
> should be. As far as the wholesale price, I'm talking about bare root
> plants, single fans, shipped in lots of 100 or more plus shipping
> costs. That is different then wholesaling potted plants.
>
> As to wholesaling potted plants, most of the mass merchants around
> here, western Oregon, only want to pay a maximum of $3 for a one
> gallon pot. A local nursey not far away sells two gallon potted nice
> hostas for $10 to $12 and there is 6 to 8 fans per pot! Now, if I go
> to that nursery and offer to sell them single fans bareroot for $3 do
> you think they are going to rush out and buy from me when they are
> already retailing nice hostas for $12 for 6-8 fans?
>
> >I'm getting the impression that either you are wholesaling to
> >wholesalers, which is a whole different animal
>
> Most of my daylilies go to other wholesale nurseries who pot them up
> and sell them to their local mass merchants. These companies also buy
> hostas and really don't want to pay more then a dollar to a dollar and
> a half if they can for a decent single fan liner. Although that may
> sound cheap, it's not all that bad for something that is easy to
> propagate when you are shipping off one to two thousand plants at a
> time to one customer with little or no advertising expense. You take
> a one dollar hosta, 50 cents for the pot and planting mix and then
> water and care for the plant for a year, and you then have two dollars
> or more invested in that plant. If the mass merchants don't want to
> pay more then three dollars, that doesn't leave you with much profit.
>
> >It is not hard to find good, newer hostas retailing for $15-25
> >here at local garden centers here,
>
> There might be a few nurseries in the Portland area that might be able
> to get that price for a 2 or 3 gallon pot, but most of the top end
> hostas I've seen are in the 10 to twelve dollar range for 6-8 fans. I
> recently bought a three fan pot of Elvis Lives and a very nice Yellow
> River for $7.95 each. One of our local mass merchants, Fred Meyers,
> was last year selling some nice hostas in 4 inch pots for $1.98, which
> means they were buying them for 95 cents to one dollar.
>
> >I would estimate that the average wholesale for a good plant is $5-8.
>
> I assume you are talking about a one gallon potted hosta with several
> fans and that is delivered.
>
> >if you are wholesaling to other wholesale growers, it seems to me
> >that you are competing with the Dutch and the tc labs, and I wouldn't
> >know anything about that either, except I don't envy you.
>
> Actually, you can make some decent money in this market IF you have
> the hostas the people want and you have something that is easy to
> propagate. This past spring one of our local hardware stores that
> sells some bulbs and plants had bagged hostas for $1.98 to $2.49 and
> that was for one to two nice single fans. They weren't the lasted and
> greatest hostas, but some of them were nice enough.
>
> >Maybe your plant is not as ordinary as you make it sound to me.
>
> Actually it looks rather nice, a beefed up Francee that looks a little
> bit like Patriot. The problem I see is that I doubt that there is a
> great enough demand within the connoisseur/collector market to make it
> worth while, but I think it would do well in a national mail order
> nursery catalog. You have to remember that these juys put a 8-10 fold
> increase on the price if they have a color picture and a 4 to 7 fold
> increase with out a color picture. If I wholesale to them for one
> dollar they are going to list it for $10.
>
> >The fact that you are not impressed with hostas
>
> I never said I wasn't impressed with hostas. All I said was that I'm
> not a hosta connoisseur/collector. I also have a lot of other things
> that interest me besides hostas. When I look at the hosta scene I see
> a number of big growers selling millions of plants a year. It's hard
> for a small time grower to compete against them.
>
> >it's hard for me to picture another Francee sport that would compare
> >with what I consider very good, but readily available hostas.
>
> That's part of the problem. It's nice, but there are a lot of nice
> hostas out there.
>
> >Maybe there is no market for really good hostas in your area.
>
> Hostas grow well enough out here in western Oregon, but the market
> isn't anywhere near as good as back East.
>
> >But if people would pay $4-5 for a really good hosta, as I think they
> >would in most places,
>
> Now, are you talking about $4-5 for a potted hosta wholesale or retail
> and for how many fans?
>
> Joe Halinar
>
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