Re: how to improve traffic at iris club sales.
iris@hort.net
  • Subject: Re: how to improve traffic at iris club sales.
  • From: S*@aol.com
  • Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2011 12:32:49 -0500 (EST)
My club has our sale every fall.  We will take the left over irises  and 
pot them up to sale at the spring show.  However, due to our dry  climate, the 
potted irises are rarely in bloom by the show.  Nevertheless,  we still 
sell out.   It is strictly voluntary whether club members  want to do this.  We 
sold the potted irises for $5 to $10. 
 
Last year we had about 100 pots.
 
Scarlett
Las Cruces,  NM
 
 
In a message dated 11/18/2011 6:35:04 P.M. Mountain Standard Time,  
IrisladyLJobe@aol.com writes:

We would  have hundreds of rhizomes so we didn't have the room to pot them  
up  or display them at the sale.. The pictures did the job for us. Our 
object  
besides making money for the club, was to encourage new people to grow  
iris.  They would buy the cheap ones to try. The "old timers" would  come 
back 
each year  and get the better expensive ones ( that the  club members 
didn't 
buy). We would  have a covered dish the evening  before the sale and 
members 
could buy then. From  there we all went  to get the sale set up. The sale 
was 
also a great place for  getting  new members.

Leslie Jobe
Zanesville, Ohio



In a  message dated 11/18/2011 8:02:09 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,   
baxleyeugene@yahoo.com writes:

Switch  to potted iris in bloom  only in your sales. Pot up as many iris as 
 
you
think you can sell  the year before the sale in 1 1/2 to 2 gallon pots.  
Paint a
wide  white stripe on each pot with plastic paint and when it   dries
sufficiently write the name of the iris, hybridizer and year of   
introduction
on the white paint with a black paint pencil. Price should  be  six to ten
dollars. 

Schedule your sale at bloom time  instead of in  the Fall. 

In
your advertisement have at least  one iris in bloom and  in color. 
Advertise 
on
television, in  newspapers or where ever you can. The  color pictures of 
iris
attract  iris people both club members and non  members. They also  attract
people who formerly were noniris people. Iris in  bloom,  either in a 
garden 
or
in pots, is like an elixer and it opens the   pocket books when present at 
an
iris sale.

In 2009 I potted, in  one  gallon pots, my excess TB rhizomes as I
worked  my iris and  placed  them in simishade behind an out building. They 
were
for  backup in case of  loss. In the Spring of 2010 I moved them to a  low
concrete block wall that  seperates my lot form the one next door.  Each 
pot 
had
a metal marker in it.  In 2010, when I was on the  region 24 tour, the
participants of the tour  wanted to buy those iris  which I did not have for
sale and all but 5 to 8  out of 60 or so were  left on the wall when the
tour left. 

In my  opinion if you  reduce the price of iris as the sale goes
along people will  wait to  buy cheap iris. I think it is better to destroy
excess iris  rhizomes  then people will not expect to buy cheap rhizomes the
next   year.

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