Piping Rock new owner

Slippertalk Orchid Forum

Help Support Slippertalk Orchid Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
This makes me think, is the industry starting to fall apart? I have been doing this since the early 1980’s and saw the rise and fall of many large-scale nurseries. My first job outside of my family business was for an orchid retailer in Cupertino California who dealt strictly with only plants from OZ. I went to OZ many times when I worked at that shop and saw massive scale and scope of the operation. Over the years afterwards, things were scaled back and less diverse (imho). Was it due to changing ownership a couple times? Likely yes, but was it also a change in the industry? Around the same time things were starting the downhill trend, it was also when imported Phals started to show up at box stores.

I used to go to The Rod McClellan Co in So SF. Watched them fold and sell off the land. Bay Breeze Orchids…the list goes on and on. Older businesses with no new blood to carry the torch. I’m rambling, sorry. Just depressing that this thing that I love is seemingly dying on the vine.

Tyler
 
This makes me think, is the industry starting to fall apart? I have been doing this since the early 1980’s and saw the rise and fall of many large-scale nurseries. My first job outside of my family business was for an orchid retailer in Cupertino California who dealt strictly with only plants from OZ. I went to OZ many times when I worked at that shop and saw massive scale and scope of the operation. Over the years afterwards, things were scaled back and less diverse (imho). Was it due to changing ownership a couple times? Likely yes, but was it also a change in the industry? Around the same time things were starting the downhill trend, it was also when imported Phals started to show up at box stores.

I used to go to The Rod McClellan Co in So SF. Watched them fold and sell off the land. Bay Breeze Orchids…the list goes on and on. Older businesses with no new blood to carry the torch. I’m rambling, sorry. Just depressing that this thing that I love is seemingly dying on the vine.

Tyler
Tyler,
It’s not dying! There are a couple of us youngsters who are opening nurseries (though we are few and far between). I’ve been meaning to introduce myself here for some time, and I reckon I’ll make a separate post about it once the website is fully fleshed out, but my name is Dennis and I run a nursery out of Columbus OH called Flask & Flora. My goal has been to revitalize orchid interest in the midst of the aroid/tropicals insanity among younger growers and its so far, so good! My passion is in Catt species, Paphs, and Oncidiums (and I find myself accidentally growing Pleurothallids of all types, too). I am always on the lookout for select plants, so if you older experienced guys ever need to offload nice ones…I will gladly be your species dumpster 😂

-Dennis
 
Tyler,
It’s not dying! There are a couple of us youngsters who are opening nurseries (though we are few and far between). I’ve been meaning to introduce myself here for some time, and I reckon I’ll make a separate post about it once the website is fully fleshed out, but my name is Dennis and I run a nursery out of Columbus OH called Flask & Flora. My goal has been to revitalize orchid interest in the midst of the aroid/tropicals insanity among younger growers and its so far, so good! My passion is in Catt species, Paphs, and Oncidiums (and I find myself accidentally growing Pleurothallids of all types, too). I am always on the lookout for select plants, so if you older experienced guys ever need to offload nice ones…I will gladly be your species dumpster 😂

-Dennis

I've seen you in the purge group, welcome!
 
I'm sure like a lot of things trends will rise, fall, rise in a cycle and the same probably holds true with orchids.

However, I do believe it is important to connect the hobby with social media as much as possible.

The interest in house plants in general increased during covid and you can see it in the number of people belonging to Facebook groups of such.

In my opinion, these social media platforms should also encourage the face to face interactions in local clubs and societies. It benefits everyone.
 
Tyler, this is what I've been wondering too - I have been trying to figure out if it is a Slipper thing, a CA thing, a retirement with no new blood thing? Or fantastic established growers retiring and selling to people who aren't really serious? I don't know, but it is frustrating as hell to try to find good NBS Phrags right now. As I've mentioned, I moved here in 2009 and we had already lost a lot of the CA growers, but I really expected to come back to a glut of good, easy to find, kovachii hybrids available widely everywhere and I'm pretty much resigned to just eBay and asking all of you...it's just strange but I guess not surprising. I didn't expect it.

I'm excited Flori-Culture seems to be "expanding" here...Anyone know anything about Emerald City Orchids in Tacoma? They're having a plant market with Andy's and Ecuagenera coming up for it from Southern CA ....Ecuagenera also is making the rounds to other plant markets in CA (tho not Sacramento....) I can't seem to get them sell good stuff on their regular IG sales tho - mostly aroids...THEY seem to be expanding...but not with orchids? 😒

Maybe I need to start working on all the Houseplant people here....I'm doing an orchid podcast for work in a few weeks... ;)
 
Tyler,
It’s not dying! There are a couple of us youngsters who are opening nurseries (though we are few and far between). I’ve been meaning to introduce myself here for some time, and I reckon I’ll make a separate post about it once the website is fully fleshed out, but my name is Dennis and I run a nursery out of Columbus OH called Flask & Flora. My goal has been to revitalize orchid interest in the midst of the aroid/tropicals insanity among younger growers and its so far, so good! My passion is in Catt species, Paphs, and Oncidiums (and I find myself accidentally growing Pleurothallids of all types, too). I am always on the lookout for select plants, so if you older experienced guys ever need to offload nice ones…I will gladly be your species dumpster 😂

-Dennis
Welcome, I’ve got a few group chat aroid friends in the bmore / dc area that buy a LOT of orchids from your online offerings. I’ve been encouraging their interest in orchids.. have yet to get one to step foot in a society meeting. Getting close.

It’s hard to say where the hobby industry is going, the landscape is definitely changing. I would say moving away from the larger nurseries which specialize in breeding, and moving towards import models where we import from Hawaii, and Florida to sell online. You also have the larger international companies like Ecuagenera, which are on the rise.. since the pandemic they dominate many of these markets.. online sales, live sales, pop ups, and breeding programs… they import large quantities of tropical plants to the US twice a month.

This follows the changing times I guess with the rise of the internet, social media and our younger society thriving with online plant purchases and the ability to grow plants indoors and under LED lights.

IMO the most recent model to rise then disappear was Kelly’s High Desert Orchids. It happened so fast, and she was fully invested in the warehouse approach to growing all her plants under LED’s. I know she had another opportunity come along and she’s still heavily involved in the industry. But I believe this will be our new norm.. where smaller individual businesses pop up, are successful, then discontinue. I don’t believe we will be seeing a lot of long term multi generational orchid nurseries.. unless they reside in a geography where they can grow under shade cloth year round. I think the greenhouse nursery model under glass is cost prohibitive unless you have a side hustle/ service.

Luckily the love of orchids is strong and there is a large foundation of knowledge and interest world wide for the next generation of growers to push forward. Will be interesting to see where we are in 10 years.
 
Houseplants had their big surge during covid but the pendulum is swinging back again, all the Facebook groups are drowning in people who have lost interest or realized how badly they overspent and are desperately trying to dump their collections. Prices have fallen drastically and there aren't many plants moving quickly. I've seen the same in cactus groups as well, it's a dead market at the moment.

Orchids seem to have stayed fairly stable by comparison, we didn't see a huge surge in popularity but we're not crashing now either. It seems like you either have the orchid bug or you don't and there isn't a lot of opportunity to convert "regular" plant people. I don't know what the answer is but I've watched a steady decline in the US orchid industry since I started in the early 90s. I think there is a limit to how many people can find success buying wholesale plants from Hawaii and Florida to flip, if every vendor is selling the same plants then there is no reason to pick one over another other than price and most will be driven out of business, starting with people like Kelly who had much higher overhead costs than a greenhouse/shadehouse grower.

We've been building toward opening a nursery of our own, with a website in the works now, with cacti, succulents, and select tropicals being the financial bread and butter and orchid breeding as more of my passion project subsidized by the faster grower and more lucrative plants. Whether that works out or not I'm going to keep doing as much as I can afford to in the orchid world and hopefully some of the young newer growers coming up find success to keep the hobby alive.
 
Last edited:
Dennis:
hope you didn't say no to paphs and visited Sam's nursery before he sold most everything.... I know he has populated many many growers with really great quality breeding plants and I feel (IMO) that his breeding will go on because of that....
It is sad to see the end of nurseries like McLellan, Stewarts, Jones and Scully,,, but as previously mentioned New growers will take the lead..... My worry is that paphs go the way of Phals, and cloning will take over in that line of orchids one day... Gone are the hobby phal breeders, as it isn't cost effective... As long as the slippers are not in that breeding dilema, we will survive..
 
The hobby still lives on. I love orchids and I believe that this is just a slow period in the orchid hobby. I live in Montana and I have not met a single person who collects orchids like I do. They usually just ask me how many ice cubes they should use, which results in me having a heart attack or just not being there friend anymore: this was a total joke ;). The two types of orchids I see in nurseries and stores are the all to common phalaenopsis and overpriced supposedly rare orchids that flower shops sell to act like they have high status: the mark up is huge from growers like Sam who sells the plant for 40 to nurserys selling to the general public for $90+. The reason people do not collect in remote areas of the US is because they have no one for help except the label that say 2 ice cubes a week, and the over priced plants that make them steer clear of them. Besides all of this I am living proof that the hobby still lives on. In the fall I will be starting college and am super stressed about all my plants. I can only take at most 6 of my 150 plus plants. Thankfully my mother has a green thumb and is willing to take care of them: she was the one who got me hooked with the two phalaenopsies that she kept alive in the kitchen for years. I do not believe that this hobby is bound for death but rather that we need to wait for young growers to come out of the shadows and get connected with this great community. Education, social media, and preaching the great word of orchids will be the solution to regaining numbers, because finding nurseries that sell orchids is hard to find due to so many being super small and not well known. Also everything costs so much that new growers will struggle in these times to start there own nurseries: maybe it can become like a law firm were you become partner and buy-in lol.
Hope this helps and gives hope that there is still a future were all of us can gossip on slippertalk about all the new paph crosses ;) ;) ;)
 
Sam sent out his final flask list on Sunday night to a handful of people and that was the last of them. It was almost 20 years ago that I approached him and started buying his flasks and publishing online my various Chronicles as by trial and error I tried to develop a practical approach to growing Paphs from flask in a home environment. While I wish him a happy and long retirement, a little part of me is very sad to see him go.

That said, I am getting a taste lately of just how running a high end orchid business has changed since the last time I did it on an ongoing basis. Selling plants here on ST has been wonderful and I will continue in the next couple of months to divest the older seedlings I got from Sam in his final sales- but I have serious doubts about what I am going to do in a year when the piles and piles of compots and trays start getting to a good size for resale.

Get too far outside the small number of serious collectors and it has become a brutal business. I have given up selling at shows. Now that so many specialists are online, even though a number have recently retired, orchid shows are less of a necessity to finding rare plants. And the majority of those who attend are more price conscious than ever at all costs. I attended one recent show where an amateur grower was selling anemic seedlings for $5 each. They were still compot sized- almost fresh out of flask size- and barely rooted in 2 inch pots. But they sold like crazy to newbies because they were the cheapest thing at the show. Society sales are difficult too since societies in general are so much smaller now and also heavily populated with people who grow mostly rescue plants.

And even with years of practice, packing and shipping takes a lot of time- not to mention maintaining a website. Shows are easy by comparison- a few times a year, you pack up your stuff, go to the show, make a few thousand dollars and go home. Perfect retirement income situation caring for plants and occasionally selling a lot of them all at once. With the online approach, constant attention is required plus sales tend to be more spread out. I don't think I am going to have the time to do it relative to the return it will generate. Even after I retire, I am pretty sure I do not want to spend 2-3 hours a day maintaining an online business on a scale that would generate net income of $2K a month- which is kind of my benchmark $$ amount to make it worthwhile.

This, I think, is why so few people are stepping up to replace these specialty businesses as the owners retire. Happily there are a few who are doing well, but in the long run that is going to be a small number since the customer audience is also fairly small.
 
Houseplants had their big surge during covid but the pendulum is swinging back again, all the Facebook groups are drowning in people who have lost interest or realized how badly they overspent and are desperately trying to dump their collections. Prices have fallen drastically and there aren't many plants moving quickly. I've seen the same in cactus groups as well, it's a dead market at the moment.

Orchids seem to have stayed fairly stable by comparison, we didn't see a huge surge in popularity but we're not crashing now either. It seems like you either have the orchid bug or you don't and there isn't a lot of opportunity to convert "regular" plant people. I don't know what the answer is but I've watched a steady decline in the US orchid industry since I started in the early 90s. I think there is a limit to how many people can find success buying wholesale plants from Hawaii and Florida to flip, if every vendor is selling the same plants then there is no reason to pick one over another other than price and most will be driven out of business, starting with people like Kelly who had much higher overhead costs than a greenhouse/shadehouse grower.

I think you have it exactly right. Since COVID, at the Dallas shows we have had one of the big aroid vendors come in to sell. It was a great boost for foot traffic and brought lots of cross-sales, but at this last show the prices were down dramatically for those plants as were the number of people coming to buy. They still did extremely well, but it was not like 1-2 years ago when there were lines around the building before show opening and a number of varieties selling for $200+ per plant.

The number one reason I think orchids are on a long slow decline in the US is that the hobby is no longer as socially prestigious as it once was. That same reason has had an even tougher impact on the judging program by virtue of the fact it relies on volunteers making a huge investment of personal time and money.

Back in the 1940s to 1960s, being an orchid grower was the kind of thing you put on a resume. CEOs, Doctors, Attorneys- all manner of successful professionals were orchid growers. Most of the ones I knew did have a genuine love for the hobby- that was never in question- but the prestige of it helped many people justify the cost and time involved. Kind of like playing golf really. But even back then, the giant nurseries made their bread and butter money in corsage flowers. And later this transitioned into pot plants as corsages became less popular while growing orchids in the home continued to gain traction.

The mid to late 90s were a major turning point in addition because of Benlate- which completely wiped out a terrifying number of commercial growers and was especially hard on the smaller nurseries that specialized in higher end breeding. The impact of Benlate was to rapidly accelerate a trend that was already in place- and that was the point where the Taiwan nurseries got a very rapid increase in market share. Long before then even some of the top US nurseries were growing out plants in Taiwan and importing them when ready for resale.

Today- for the reasons I noted in my above post and also because of real estate and property tax costs in and around many cities- it is very daunting to run an orchid business. Another reason is that the average US orchid grower who just wants some nice plants they can grow at home are getting an incredible selection of really nice quality plants from US resellers of Taiwan-grown plants of exceptional quality. For a long time, many held that white Phalaenopsis breeding had reached its peak. It was even a topic of discussion at an AOS Judges meeting in Houston many years ago. And yet in 2023, you can now walk into a grocery store and sometimes find a NO-ID plant with bigger and better flowers than any of the great Hakalau series of crosses Carmela produced in the 80s and 90s which were the gold standard.

And so now the country that used to just produce cheap orchids is now also producing some of the best breeding stock and crosses in the world.

One reason Sam did so well was that he was not just growing orchids as a retirement side-gig. He really lived it. One of the last times we talked in person, we talked in earnest about my potential plans to follow his path someday, and he told me that he spent more days of year on the road than at home. He was giving lectures, visiting nurseries and doing all things Paph all over the world all of the time. His breeding program was not just his own top clones- but his own top clones crossed with OZ plants, Toyko Orchid Nursery plants, top clones from Europe and Taiwan. He lived and breathed and loved Paphs like most of us never could dream of doing. But even with so few other vendors operating at his level, that is what it took for him to achieve what he has.
 
Well said, Tony and Tom.
I wish you all the success, Tony!
I thought about going into business but gave up on the idea due to the practical concerns pointed out above.
I will stay a hobby grower/breeder and really do not see me running a business. The best yet will be having a larger collection than now, which is not that big so that is very much achievable. will my interest still hold then? I'll never get tired of growing and blooming Paphs I like, so no doubt about that part. 😁
 
In short, the number of hobbyists compared to 20 years ago has been divided by 50 or more. Real serious collectors of orchids are even much rarer.

In the 90's and early 2000's, there were a lot of orchid nurseries that were started as an expensive exotic dancer, out of other activities. California nurseries, you had the millionnaires, the real estate brokers, the MGM shareholders, etc... that had their orchid nursery, many famous ones in fact. So they did not need to be profitable at all as well. A flock of hobbyists existed, and a vivid orchid scene.

It is very certain that nearly all growers are selling maybe 10-20% of what they used to sell 10-15 years ago, no matter what some delusional individuals might claim... Many newly started business will sell 100% of what they produce, for some months, or maybe a couple of years, then when they scale up, they crash. People who wanted this and that have it, so there are no more customers. It is very common.

As an example, Paph bellatulum, 800-1000 plants were covering the EU market for a year about, in the early 200s. Now, there are stocks of 20-30 plants by a couple of nurseries, virtually unsold, and very few in orchid hobbyist collection around Europe, after all.

Many businesses that were buying species by 200-500 plants/species in Europe and the US are down to buying 10-20 plants, big maximum, per species. I saw orders passing for 5 of this species, 10 of that species, wholesale prices. Of course it is not interesting at all to supply.

At this game it means as well that it is not at all profitable to make an orchid species nursery anymore. There are many people who 'want' plants on Internet and Facebook, but when they are available, the number paid really and purchased are in the single digits.

Paph rothschildianum, when the 50, maybe 100 US hobbyists who want plants in the US will have enough, a few plants from a few crosses, minus those they killed, the market is very, very full for several years.

That's the mistake of many nurseries too, they get a species/propagate it and suddenly get 20 orders x 1 plant or the like. Great success! Well, no because the remaining plants will occupy space in the greenhouse for the next 2 to 10 years and they become very toxic. I visited a couple of German growers, they kept/repotted all the unsold plants religiously. Now about 2/3 of their nursery is filled with things that are for some really beautiful, many are OK or ugly, but that they will never, ever sale. Each year costs them money, and some plants in 12cm pot have easily a growing cost of 20-25EUR, as they are there for a decade, repotted, handled, etc... from time to time. They are worth maybe 12-15eur. That's what kills many businesses, unsold stocks.

Paph sanderianum is very rare in the trade, not because it is not available, but if 10 adult plants can be sold in the US per year on average today, that is a big, big maximum. Many people who wanted it got it already.

Many Facebook profiles say they want so badly to buy manymanymany, and so many people want it. Say 'here it is 150us for an adult plant', and those 'potential customers' disappear overnight. Real life and real business are not predictable by forums or Facebook, and a few sometimes make a lot of noise, that seems to be a huge crowd of potential hobbyists or customers, but there is nothing behind. Or maybe sanderianum at 12-15us adult would sell a bit more, but not even so many...

There are stocks of BS sanderianum in several EU and Taiwan, Japan nurseries, they can't get rid of them.

Problem they are not interested to get a 'pro' order from the US or Europe to buy a huge wholesale quantity of 10 plants of sanderianum x 40us. Only the time of reading the email is making them lose money even! And if they try to charge more, no trader/nursery would be interested to import and resell.

I have a better future doing limited editions of some pot plant crosses, begonia, etc... than making species for sure, which I do because I love them, but that is not a commercial reason.

So most of the nurseries who have motherplants can't afford to make their own crosses and propagated them, 200 seedlings per cross already floods completely the EU and US market. There are a few exceptions, but they are more pot-plant/decorative plants.

Plants are available for cheap in Taiwan, and Thailand, and they can buy from brokers ( rarely from the actual nurseries anymore, except friendship), as a kind of backyard growers/traders. Ready to use and resell, whether they are the real thing or not. That's what the future brings us.

As for new growers taking the lead, I would say that definitely no. Those days are fully gone in the US and Europe. To select really top quality plants, one needs to grow a lot of seedlings per cross, with their own parent plants. There will be highly specialized operations, but never again the size of the Orchid Zone, Stewart, or the likes, in terms of surface, number of varieties, and number of plants produced and sold. This is simply impossible.

The scary part is that I see for the future more 'swappers' who buy this and that from Taiwan or Thailand, sell it, and nearly never grow the plants themselves, become the trend. No experience in orchids, just the nice photos and let's sell with a profit. There are more and more of this type around.
 
A few ramblings to add to the fodder:

The volume of orchid sales has increased and increased, supplanting poinsettias a few years ago. Why? Price and logistics.

The allure of growing orchids began with royalty and high society and that continued through the wealthier class until a few decades ago. When I began in the early '70's, That single-growth $35 paph was out of my reach. Getting the Jones & Scully catalog was as if someone had published a new version of the bible, but back then, a typical cattleya seedling listed was $45. Pricing was based upon exclusivity, not cost, where "exclusivity" was based upon "the prestige factor" as well as the limited local market. There was no internet to easily disseminate availability, so an orchid range survived mostly on supplying cut flower to florists and had limited plant sales, which tended to be local.

To me, the sole source of knowledge about availability was the AOS Bulletin. In there I learned of the orchid ranges across the country with an occasional input from overseas. Ray Rand and Rod McClellan were high on my list and pre-CITES, I imported plants directly from Mr. Kolopaking.

At the time that I could find an immature cattleya hybrid in 3" pot from J&S for $40. my business travel allowed me to find in-bloom, mature plants of the same hybrids at a cut flower nursery in Brazil for $3.50. If I let them keep the flower, they took $0.50 off the price.

Back in the late '90's. I imported about 500 Asian cymbidium species a month from a grower in Taiwan. My delivered cost for a bare-root plant consisting of 2-3 mature growths plus a new one, in-spike, was $3.00-$4.00. Now, wholesale, large-volume shipments of spike-initiated phalaenopsis are a fraction of that.

To me, the demise of the big nurseries isn't due to a lack of demand as much as it is competitive pricing pressures and the cost of running such an operation and the value of the property in the world of expanding population and greed. Sure, the contaminated Benlate issue wiped out some, as did hurricane Andrew, but those were "special cases"..

When EFG moved to Deland FL, I visited them relatively often (my Mom was in Daytona). There were rumors of a family rift causing the move, but they told me that the $20,000/month greenhouse heating bill in the Chicago area was the true issue. (No kidding.)

Rod McLellan's "Acres of Orchids" (45, under glass, if I remember correctly) was in South San Francisco. Today, that land is worth billions. I don't believe a single one of us would continue to operate a nursery there.

I started First Rays in 1994. Back then, white and pink phals were the "norm", and my niche was going to be those rarer ones with red/orange/yellow flowers - colors of the sunrise - which are still my favorites. It didn't take me long to realize I wasn't going to compete with the emerging supply from Taiwan, so I simply focused on "what I want" and shared them. The business expanded steadily for over 20 years, despite being part-time, and when my position at work was eliminated, by being able to work at it full-time, it doubled in a year, surpassing my professional income before that. (I was rehired as a consultant, which eclipsed that...). Once I retired, I could have happily continued, but the overall costs of taxes, maintenance and utilities were steadily increasing pressures that pushed my to relocate, and let's face it; the wear and tear of aging puts pressure on one, as well. That, of course, also means that I have less space for plants, as well, and means I'm not buying many.
 
The volume of the orchid market crashed completely, if we think about hobby market/plants.

What happened was that the market was indeed overtaken by Phalaenopsis industrially produced, that are absolutely not suitable for any hobbyist as of now. They are hormon treated in many countries to ensure a higher number of spikes, and hormon treated 2 times so they have the proper spike height, to be fit in the supermarket and shops.

In Europe alone, 200 millions Phalaenopsis were produced 2 years ago for the pot plant. about 21 millions were profitable, another 50-55 millions were sold at cost, the remaining, with various losses on the cost price. Usually subsidies, or a new loan, would help them to survive until the next year, hoping to be in the profitable plants, instead of the losses. I have to know because I was involved as an expert in the finances of some of the largest nurseries that ever existed for Phalaenopsis... 1 spike phals are always sold with a loss of minimum 30cents, usually 1 eur+. 2 spikes with 16 flowers have a profit of 20 cents. 2 spikes 10-14 flowers total are sold at break even. If any flower is damaged, etc... usually a loss of some cents per plant sold, etc...

The US produced orchids are nearly to a full stop, they are imported at best as flasks, more and more as nearly finished/finished plants. The few large scale labs that exist, like Hark, are focusing on cloning their own varieties of Phalaenopsis for the mass market.

As for the lack of demand, yes it is absolutely extreme as of now, and the number of hobbyists has totally crashed compared to 20 years ago. There is a demand for Thai or Taiwanese cattleya in flower/sheat, or for Phalaenopsis pot plant, for sure, at very cheap prices. Odontoglossum, paphs, phrags, their days are gone compared to before.

The Orchid Zone had no problem 20 years ago to sell 1000-2000 plants per each of their cross at premium prices, a lot on the US internal market, a lot export. Now, it is impossible, worldwide, to sell 1000 Phrag besseae every 3 months. Before it was, and there were a lot of end customers. The same for all their Maudiae, Parvis, etc... hybrids.

Taiwanese have stocks of paphs, dendrobium, etc... species and hybrids that are beyond imagination, unsold. Some nurseries have a few hundreds adult sanderianum, impossible to sell. Some others, hundreds of stonei, impossible to sell. Parvis hybrids? Maybe 30, possibly 50 to the US and Europe per cross, and the market is full. Before, 500 Magic Lantern or Lynleigh Koopowitz were sold to many hobbyists within weeks.

They checked what they can sell to the US and Europe, maybe 10,20 plants of some of the species and done, so now they target more the Asian market ( including Mainland China, Korea, Thailand etc...).

When you have a vast experience of who has what, which I do... I can recognize on US shows, Tokyo Dome, European show, mass propagated stuff sold to the hobbyists, and that's where I realize that the pot plant Complex at 4.5-6.5 eur in flower sold to supermarket unnameed get awards, and high prices all around the world. Simply because it is no longer worthwhile to make Complex paph crosses for the hobbyists, top quality, so many just chose from the pot plant market, unnamed, and give them a name. Dendro Hibiki is a Dutch pot plant, and some recently traveled as laevifolium all around the world, etc, etc...

But both the offer and the demand are only a fraction of what they used to be. Most of the large pot plant mass producing nurseries are completely struggling, with profit in the cents per plant, which means that sometimes they lose a lot of money, after all... They will show 1 variety, 1 batch, and be proud of the big profit they did with that one, but forget to mention the 30 batches sold at break even, and the 50 batches sold at 20% of the cost price just not to lose 100% of the cost price. That's tthe reality of today's market....
 
Welcome, I’ve got a few group chat aroid friends in the bmore / dc area that buy a LOT of orchids from your online offerings. I’ve been encouraging their interest in orchids.. have yet to get one to step foot in a society meeting. Getting close.

It’s hard to say where the hobby industry is going, the landscape is definitely changing. I would say moving away from the larger nurseries which specialize in breeding, and moving towards import models where we import from Hawaii, and Florida to sell online. You also have the larger international companies like Ecuagenera, which are on the rise.. since the pandemic they dominate many of these markets.. online sales, live sales, pop ups, and breeding programs… they import large quantities of tropical plants to the US twice a month.

This follows the changing times I guess with the rise of the internet, social media and our younger society thriving with online plant purchases and the ability to grow plants indoors and under LED lights.

IMO the most recent model to rise then disappear was Kelly’s High Desert Orchids. It happened so fast, and she was fully invested in the warehouse approach to growing all her plants under LED’s. I know she had another opportunity come along and she’s still heavily involved in the industry. But I believe this will be our new norm.. where smaller individual businesses pop up, are successful, then discontinue. I don’t believe we will be seeing a lot of long term multi generational orchid nurseries.. unless they reside in a geography where they can grow under shade cloth year round. I think the greenhouse nursery model under glass is cost prohibitive unless you have a side hustle/ service.

Luckily the love of orchids is strong and there is a large foundation of knowledge and interest world wide for the next generation of growers to push forward. Will be interesting to see where we are in 10 years.
Pete, You may be right, but I can tell you there are major cost barriers in shade-house land, too, at least in Hawaii. Land prices, regulations, sky-rocketing utility costs, and high taxation make any sort of ag business difficult, particularly the orchid biz. We have lost many, many legacy commercial orchid nurseries and seem to be well on the way to losing more.
 
I have a different take on the decline of commercial slipper nurseries in the United States.

Like many of you, I have been growing orchids, mostly slippers and a few species I picked up from nurseries over the years, since the 1980's. I still have divisions I got from Ron C. at Taylor Orchids and Ray Rands and even a few from Tom Nasser and Joe Kunish. I saw this coming long ago and wasn't shy about picking peoples brains as to why.

While the orchid industry may have been in slow decline, what kicked the business over the cliff in the United States was Phrag. kovachii and what happened to Selby and George Norris. Not sure how many of you were in touch with George at the time and the people he dealt with. That singular situation led to a few things in the domestic (US) orchid business and hobby trade.

One, while CITIES regulations were noted, they were largely ignored prior to that. After the kovachii saga many large nurseries and hobbyists were too afraid to do anything. For years US hybridization and propagation of slippers dried up. Not that any of these folks, commercial or hobby, were involved in that. Afraid the same thing would happen to them, commercial breeders started to scale back. At that time Paph helenae was relatively new and the first batch of primary hybrids were sought after and producing some spectacular plants. Same for Paph vietnamese. Same for Paph gigantifolium, a parent producing some of the best and most sought after primary hybrids. Where are all the domestic US breeding lines based on these species? I will not support an argument based on a variation of "nobody wanted them". The market was very strong. After kovachii, commercial dealers felt they needed to justify every plant in their nursery, not only as a safeguard against a raid, but to the ever growing "I am holier than thou" minority that would viciously attack the reputation of any commercial nursery with a suspect plant. I remember Ron C. from Taylor orchids put a blooming Paph helenae in one of his exhibits 20 years ago and it was a huge scandal on a predecessor e-mail distribution list to this site. Death was wished upon Ron, as was incarceration. The same things we see thrown about here at even a whiff of a jungle plant (the majority of this crowd don't want to acknowledge that they themselves have illegally sourced plants in their own collections labelled as legally imported or hybrids that come from illegally sourced parents). As a result, creativity and innovation in our slipper nurseries dried up. Nobody would touch a mother plant, from any source, unless the seller could produce a CITIES, even if they had that plant from prior to CITIES. Stock became stale, the same thing coming and going. Interest and the market dried up too. Why has Sam done so well? He sourced a lot of his plants from overseas. No way to get a decent gigantifolium to breed with in the US. Not to beat a dead horse to death, how many of you have a gigantifolium or anitum hybrid in your collections that originated from Taiwan? Yep, you are supporting the illegal sourcing of mother plants. Taiwan doesn't care and does not honor CITIES. The kovachii saga scared the pants off the commercial and hobby slipper trade in the US and it has never recovered. By now, even if mother plants can be obtained, the US is so far behind the rest of the world, why invest the time or money to try to catch up?

Two, as mentioned prior, this situation led to a vocal, yet small minority of hobbyists attacking the reputation of any US commercial nursery with a suspect plant, be it illegally sourced or not. Several commercial dealers, one of whom is a frequent contributor to this site, made allegations and reports to the federal government that his competitors were engaged in the illegal plant trade leading to more disillusionment with slipper breeding and in the hobby after investigators showed up at their business. Not sure what led to this, but it happened. You want 6 plants of Paph helenae to start a breeding program? "No way".

As such, our own slipper orchid business dried up from lack of interest, innovation, creativity, and fear. Oh, there are other factors, the internet almost killed the AOS, cell phones make selling plants from home quite easy (you no longer need to take out an ad in the AOS bulletin and wait for phone calls or mail orders to arrive) and orchid shows, some of the best of the best, have folded (New York Orchid Show, Eastern Orchid Congress, etc.,). However, no singular event had as much influence or push on slipper orchids in the US like the kovachii saga and the resultant assault on the commercial orchid industry that followed.

Best,
 

Latest posts

Back
Top