• by Sarah Mahoney  @mahoney_sarah, February 4, 2008

While "green" flowers have been on high-end consumers' radar for several years now, this Valentine's Day may well be the tipping point. Sam's Club, owned by Wal-Mart, and 1-800-Flowers have begun selling Fair Trade-certified flowers, making the once-niche products available to the flower-buying masses.

The Fair Trade certification, administered by TransFair USA, a nonprofit group, is available only on a handful of imports, including coffee, tea, vanilla, chocolate, and sugar. It joins several other floral designations, including VeriFlora, administered by an independent company, and the 10-year-old Florverde, an effort of the Colombian floral industry.

While the differences in the designations are potentially confusing to shoppers who want to dig deeper into the intricacies of Central American child labor laws or the relative toxicity of various fertilizers, the bigger picture is that increasingly, consumers are looking for more evidence that they're buying earth-friendly flowers, not toxic little pesticide bombs.

Even supermarkets are seeing increased consumer demand: Both Giant Food Stores and Martin Food Stores sell Fair Trade-certified roses, proudly identified by signage, sleeve labels and brochures in the floral department.

While the Society of American Florists (SAF) doesn't have solid sales figures for the fair-trade or organic segment of the $21 billion flower market, Organic Bouquet, a California company that helped pioneer the category, has predicted that by Valentine's Day 2012, the U.S. market for environmentally friendly roses and flowers may exceed $100 million.

"From what we've seen, demand for organic products is somewhat of a niche," says Jennifer Sparks, vice president/marketing for the Society of American Florists. "It will be interesting to see where it goes. And it's a long education process for consumers."

Part of what makes the ins-and-outs of floriculture seem foreign to U.S. consumers is that flowers are foreign. Almost 80% of all cut blooms are imported, with Colombia providing 59% of those imports and Ecuador 18%. And for Valentine's Day, Sparks says 90% are imported, with the bulk being roses from Ecuador. (Stateside, California cranks out 73% of the U.S.-grown flowers.)

And while Americans are used to perfect flowers, most aren't aware of what it takes to produce them: Many trade groups point to dangerous levels of pesticides and other chemicals, as well as poor agricultural techniques, and labor violations.

Certainly, the term "fair trade" has become increasingly familiar to shoppers. It has risen from 7% consumer recognition in 2003, says a TransFair spokesperson, to 27% in the U.S. in 2007.

"It's been surprising how many consumer inquiries we've had," says Alina Alvarez Alzugaray, a spokesperson for Inbloom Group, the Doral, Fla.-based company that is the distributor for Sam's Clubs' fair-trade flowers. And not all of the appeal is the do-gooder label, she admits. "Because the flowers ship right from the farm to the consumer, via Fed Ex, there's more "vase" time. Our roses--and we have more than 365 varieties--last for 7 to 10 days, and many varieties last for 15 days."

Meanwhile, it's difficult to overestimate the impact of Valentine's Day on the $21 billion flower business: A recent National Retail Federation survey reports that this year, 35.9% of all adults, and 58.2% of men, plan to buy someone flowers on Feb. 14.

Last year, SAF says, Americans bought 214 million roses for Valentine's Day, and Feb. 14 flower sales account for 25% of annual dollar sales. (V-Day ties with Mother's Day for second place, while Christmas/Chanukah comes first, with 30%.) But in terms of fresh flowers, Cupid comes in No. 1, with 40% of dollar sales. And it's typically the busiest day of the year for florists.

Red roses are always the biggest hit, accounting for about 48% of purchases. But more sophisticated consumers are shaping different trends, says Sparks. "Monochromatic arrangements, with flowers of just one color, are very popular right now," she says. "And so are monobotanical bouquets--a bunch of irises, or tulips, or Gerber daisies."

And in terms of color, there's even a green rose. "Green roses are also in demand this season," says Alzugaray. "People really seem to like the green shades, especially the varieties called Jade, Limbo and Green Tea."