MARKETING OF WILDFLOWERS IN AUSTRALIA

Current Actions
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Over the last 10 years several projects funded by RIRDC (Rural Industries Research and Development Commission) have addressed the subject of market development for the wildflower industry. The recommendations for each of these projects have been very similiar:

A. Education of florists and floral students is needed to that they know what wildflowers exist, when they are available and how to use them;

B. Promotion and marketing is needed to the consumer to increase demand for our diverse and unique wildflowers; 

C. Current market research is needed to identify how best to communicate to our publics, and what the current buttons and opinions are; and

D. Basic media coverage is needed in magazines and other pertinent publications and audio-visual to get the word out.

Our current marketing strategy for the domestic market is to get the above done -- not just more paper and publications recommending action, but actual targets achieved and the market built (with consequent increase in sales).

The first thing to tackle has been a situation with our Australian floral supply chain -- the majority of florists are unaware of what Wildflowers exist, how to care for them to get the best vase life, or how to use them in floral design.  A project was run to rectify this situation and the new floristry training package, to be released and launched in 2010 by Service Skills Australia, includes full information on wildflowers now, and this is a compulsory section of the curriculum.

 
To follow on with this and provide the needed information to existing and already trained florists, an education campaign was launched in June 2009 and will continue through till June 2011.  This is a RIRDC funded project adn the campaign is: 
a.       Posting key seasonal information on websites that are frequented by florists.
b.      Publishing detailed listings of seasonal flowers as well as highlights on 6 – 8 products each Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter in the quarterly Interflora magazine ‘In Focus’. This started last Spring and has been met with great response from the Interflora members.
c.       Publishing seasonal listings in the Australian Flower Industry magazine each quarter.
d.      Getting articles on wildflowers in main stream glossy magazines.
e.      Creating a work manual for all florists that contains listings of what is available, when. This would include traditional flowers, tropicals, wildflowers, and foliages. The vision for this manual is that it will become the only work manual that contains all the information on flowers available to Australian florists, and will be a great tool for purchasers, a great training tool for staff as well as a sales tool to show customers what flowers are available in any one month, the colours and the combinations possible.
 
All of the above is aimed at educating the supply chain – and thus increasing the potential sales for flowers in general. Though wildflowers have been the starting point for this campaign, and are an integral part of what we are trying to increase consumption of domestically, through the work manual we will be achieving much more than this.

 

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