Re: TB: my two censt on mart iris

From: "Cliff & Rita Snyder" <snyder@eden.com>

Listers,

First let me say I too am disappointed with the poor iris merchandising at
discount stores. Often, the iris are mishandled, misnamed, and out of
season. Aiming to change the quality in our area, we visited with the big
three discounters. This spring we shipped over 9,000 1 gal potted iris to 35
locations in Central Texas. Surprisingly, at some stores they sold like
crazy, at others they were very sloooowww. My point is this, the customer is
the decision maker and it is based primarily on color and price. Further,
most customers of blooming plants simply don't recall from one year to the
next what color, much less, what named plant they purchased.

This list is wonderful for all irisarians, but it is not a fair sampling of
the plant buying public.  In addition, the big discounters fill a niche not
desired by the "big" growers - mass marketing and fast turnover. One of the
discounters has since declined to renew their business with us for next
Spring because the iris inventory did not turn in 4-6 days. I am not
complaining or whining, but just because the discounter's stock is poorly
labelled DOESN'T INDICT THE IRIS PLANT. There is no logical cause/effect
between: misnamed iris = iris are bad plants.

Finally, we have declined requests from one large discounter to provide bare
root rhizomes at this time. The labor/material costs are difficult to cover
at their "discount" purchasing price. In my opinion, that is why the
discounters will always have misnamed iris. Unless you can supply 5,000
Thornbird color packaged, tagged, and delivered for less than $1.50 each you
needn't bother to apply.

Cliff Snyder                        Austin, TX
Rainbow Iris Farms            Zone 8

P.S. A fair portion of the iris come from US soil, are processed by a
middle-man then shipped on to the discounters. Thus, don't necessarily blame
the discounters alone.




>From: Irisborer@aol.com
>
>In a message dated 5/15/1999 12:42:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
>StorYlade@aol.com writes:
>
><< So!  These people collect all of the extras from the big guys, mix them
up
> good and slap on a label? >>
>
>Yup..... and THEN they'll tell you they do that (not sell mislabeled
plants,
>but sell irises way out of season in plastic bags) because.......
>
>"that's what people want"
>
>True story.
>
>And who gets the bad name???   Irisdom.
>
>Kathy Guest in East Aurora, NY - who spoke on a program last year with one
of
>the villians and she was none too happy when I begged folks not to buy them
>(before I learned she SOLD them, of course)
>
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