Flower Co-ops, Flower Hubs & Collective Selling Models That Work

An Alaska peony grower who helps lead a growers' cooperative summed up the problem most farmers run into:

“ Growing a crop and also handling sales, markets and marketing, all at a high level, is more than one farm can usually manage. ”

That squeeze is even tighter for specialty cut-flower growers juggling many crops, and for a northern peony grower who may have only six or seven weeks of harvest to earn the year's income from a single crop.

After spending a couple of years studying ways to market flowers together, that grower and a small group of fellow peony farmers launched a peony growers' cooperative in Alaskain 2015, and she now serves as its director. The group chose the co-op structure because it rewarded members for working together instead of each farm going it alone.

A few years earlier, in 2011, flower farmers in the Pacific Northwest had organized a wholesale growers' market in Seattle for much the same reason. One of its founders told us the farmers could not find a better way to handle both growing and selling, and that despite the meetings and extra work, the real value of the co-op is that the growers own it themselves.

The co-op has since passed its tenth anniversary, a milestone its member-owners reached through their own labor, persistence and loyal florist customers. That co-founder runs a flower farm in Washington's Skagit Valley with her partner, and, like the Alaska director, she hears every season from many groups of growers hoping to start something similar where they live.

Because so many Pacific Northwest growers take part in the Seattle co-op, the Slow Flowers community has followed its growth closely, from the first planning meeting in June 2011 onward. That story is told in The 50 Mile Bouquet, and the meeting helped spark the Slow Flowers Movement.

Over the past decade, interest in co-ops, collectives and shared marketing has grown quickly, alongside the wave of new flower farms and florists' rising demand for local, seasonal flowers. There is no single template to copy, though, and that has frustrated some new groups.

Look closely and you will find several workable paths. Here we cover three common structures for a regional wholesale flower hub: Legal Cooperative; Multi-Owner LLC; and For-Profit Wholesale Business.

Many groups blend or adapt these three structures, yet together they make a good starting point for understanding how flower farmers sell collectively. The Hensley's team drew on conversations with growers who have built regional marketing hubs to explain how each model works and why it appeals.

“ The farmers could not find a better way to handle both growing and selling. For all the meetings and extra work, the best part of the co-op is that the growers own it. ”

— Seattle wholesale growers' co-op co-founder, who co-owns a Skagit Valley flower farm in Washington State. She hears from many farmer groups each season who want to build something like the co-op, which has now passed ten years in business.

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The founders chose a co-op because their members were spread over a wide area. Seattle was where they wanted to sell, and it had no local-flower market. The Skagit Valley farms first imagined meeting in a parking lot and selling from their trucks, but Oregon members facing a drive of six or seven hours needed cold storage on arrival. That led the group to lease a building, and the project grew from there.

Optimism and persistence carried the co-op through. The co-founder says the group started without enough capital for the step it took, and the first several years were stressful and lean. It worked anyway, though not in the textbook way a business course would recommend.

Today the co-op also serves as an incubator for new flower farms. Interested growers can start as contract growers, keeping most of each sale while a share covers staff and operating costs. They can later apply for provisional membership, which brings their share closer to what full members receive. Staff and members mentor provisional growers to make sure the fit works both ways, and after a probation period they can apply and interview for full membership.

A Minneapolis consultant who specializes in shared-ownership businesses has advised small cooperatives in many sectors for decades, including producer and marketing co-ops. She has worked with the Seattle co-op on governance and management for several years and is preparing a USDA-funded case study on it that will be made public to benefit the industry.

Put simply, she says, a co-op is a business owned and democratically run by the people who use it, with one vote per member. It also needs articles of incorporation, an annual meeting and minutes that give members a reasonable view of the finances. Some states do not require bylaws, but good bylaws clearly spell out what the group is, what it does and how it will operate.

“ Members team up to sell, and they also work together on advocacy, education and regulation, raising awareness and changing how buyers see local flowers. Florists are key allies in that shift. ”

— A Minneapolis consultant on shared-ownership businesses

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Beyond the basics of defining roles, communication and finances, she notes that the payoff from value-added agriculture is not only financial. Co-op members also work together on advocacy, education and regulatory issues, and the Seattle group is changing how buyers think about local flowers, with florists as important partners.

Co-ops also have the protection of a federal law, the Capper–Volstead Act, which gives producer cooperatives a limited exemption from antitrust rules. In practice, it lets farmers in a formal co-op process and market their products together, including agreeing on prices.

The Alaska peony co-op began when growers wanted an alternative to depending on one distributor, an option the director had weighed for her own stems. She volunteered to research choices and settled on a cooperative. Starting funds were modest, raised through a small buy-in from each founding farm. Members have come and gone as growers retired or closed, but the structure has stayed the same: each farm contributes a share of every stem sold to cover marketing and operations.

“ The co-op has three aims: education, sales and support for members. Anything that does not serve one of those aims gets turned down. ”

— Director and co-founder of the Alaska peony growers' co-op, on how forming a co-op made the founders settle their business goals and stay focused on them.

Third-party photo. Variety: 'Duchesse de Nemours'.

The co-op has roughly ten member farms at a time and no physical facility. Because its buyers are outside Alaska, a central warehouse made no sense, so the business is run almost entirely from the director's phone and laptop.

She explains that starting a co-op made the founders answer basic questions about their business, and they still return to them:

• Why did we start?
• What are we trying to achieve?
• What are our mission and vision?

Revisiting those questions keeps the group from drifting. Its three aims are:

• Education
• Sales
• Supporting members

Proposals that do not advance those aims are declined. Written procedures keep harvest, grading and packing consistent when peonies ship to buyers in the Lower 48.

The director reports that sales have grown sharply year after year, with a recent season roughly doubling the previous one in just a few weeks of harvest. That season the co-op sold every stem it could source, from members and even from non-member farms, to test the market's limits. The result showed both what is possible and what the co-op needs next: better software and help with sales, which she has since added.

The Seattle co-founder says her own farm's revenue rose substantially after joining, even after paying the co-op's fee. On a small farm, she could never find time to do all the growing and all the selling herself.

The consultant adds that joining a co-op carries some risk. Members have to believe the market will grow for everyone. They may earn less per stem, but they gain time and stability and can focus on what they enjoy most, growing flowers.

“ The region already had strong growers and supporters, so the founder simply started making calls. ”

— The owner (left) of a Virginia flower farm and one of the co-founders of a mid-Atlantic flower collective, organized as a for-profit LLC with multiple owners

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“ Members have different priorities, such as sustainability or local flowers. The director's aim is for every business involved to be viable, with each grower earning a living wage and each designer enjoying steady income. ”

— The collective's director of operations (right)

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Despite having "cooperative" in its name, this newer mid-Atlantic flower collective is legally a for-profit limited liability company owned by a group of flower farmers and florists serving the greater Washington, DC area.

Its operations director says the hub model is working well for now. The founders wanted to launch fast, so they chose a multi-member LLC, and they may decide later whether to become a formal cooperative. Some non-owner growers appreciate not having to attend meetings or help run the business.

The collective started in late 2020, when the owner of a young Virginia flower farmtalked with one of her florist customers, the owner of a local design studio, about how a shared flower hub could help the regional market.

She began calling growers and supporters she knew. Her goal was to bring everyone together: florists needed to learn about local flowers and understand pricing from the grower's side, and farmers needed closer ties with designers and studios to learn what they want.

In early 2021, a group of flower farms and florists formed the LLC, each putting in a modest amount of startup money. That paid for the first walk-in cooler and the website.

Ongoing income comes from annual membership fees paid by both growers and florists, plus an optional extra fee for florists who want early access to the weekly availability list.

“ Bringing everyone to the same table matters: florists learn about local flowers, pricing and the grower's view, and farmers learn what designers and studios actually need.  ”

— Co-founder of the mid-Atlantic flower collective

Shown above:
Back row: growers and farm owners who supply the collective.
Front row: florist owners and buyers, plus another supplying grower.

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This collective works differently from many hubs. Growers set their own wholesale price and receive all of it, and a per-stem surcharge added on top funds the collective and pays its director.

Sales run through an online store. Each week growers report what they expect to harvest, the director posts it, and buyers pre-order; the sale is confirmed once the flowers are cut.

Demand quickly outgrew the small walk-in cooler the group first set up in rented warehouse space, so it had to move. The director explains that running two sites with two coolers created new logistics problems, and the group was arranging its own vehicle to move flowers. Nearly everything about the business changed in the first year, and staying flexible and communicating with every stakeholder made that year a success.

After leaving its first site, the collective built a large staging cooler at one grower's barn, central for most farms. The service area spans roughly a three-hour drive. Growers deliver on a set morning each week, orders are packed there, and drivers deliver the next day. The smaller cooler moved to a florist's studio in Northern Virginia for small-order pickups.

The director wants every small business in the collective, growers and designers alike, many of them woman-owned, to thrive. Members have different goals, from sustainability to supporting local flowers, but hers is that each grower earns a living wage and each designer has dependable income.

“ The founder pictured a beautiful flower market, and in some ways it is one, but most of the work happens behind the scenes. In practice she built a logistics and communications business, very different from designing arrangements alone in a studio. ”

— Founder and owner of a Twin Cities wholesale flower market, a for-profit wholesale market focused on locally grown flowers raised without synthetic chemicals.

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Several years ago, a Twin Cities wholesale flower market opened in a St. Paul suburb, renting space and a large cooler at a regional organic food hub. Its founder had previously run a retail flower shop and had spent years building relationships with the Minnesota and Wisconsin farms that supplied it.

The market sells to wholesale buyers and focuses on local, chemical-free flowers. As more designers learned that local flowers were available and wanted them, opening a marketplace seemed like an obvious step. She imagined an attractive flower market, and it is one, but getting flowers to customers takes a lot of unseen work.

She considered a cooperative before deciding to set the market up as a for-profit business she owns herself. Wholesalers are often seen as middlemen, but a big part of this market's success is her commitment to the farms whose flowers she sells.

She already knew some growers when she started, and they stayed with her while everyone figured things out together. What she built, she says, is really a logistics and communications company, a long way from arranging flowers alone in a studio.

“ Farms and buyers both trust that she has their interests in mind; her aim is a system that makes selling and buying easier for everyone who takes part. ”

— The market's founder with guests at a Slow Flowers gathering held at the market

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The market now carries flowers from more than 20 small farms in Minnesota and Wisconsin and is open to wholesale buyers two days a week. Buyers pay an annual fee to shop.

Farms are not required to sell exclusively through the market, so each can use whatever mix of outlets suits its location, crops and season. With several years of sales history, growers now know roughly how much they can move through the hub, and the founder hopes that volume makes up for the lower per-stem price of wholesale compared with retail outlets such as farmers markets. Pricing is not published and varies by crop.

She wrote a grower guide covering harvest and prep standards, including stem length, bunch size and how to arrange buckets. Farms drop off weekly orders at the food hub, and her team sorts pre-orders before the market opens to florists later in the week.

The pandemic sped up plans for online ordering, which became the only way the market sold during the first part of one season. On market days, farms can choose to fill pre-orders only or also bring extra stems for walk-in buyers.

Both farms and buyers now know she is looking out for them, and her goal is simply to make the system easier for everyone involved.

“ Selling together works when everyone steps in and accepts shared risk. ”

— A Minneapolis consultant on shared-ownership businesses

She has spent decades advising small cooperatives of many kinds, including producer groups and marketing co-ops.

A guide to producer marketing cooperatives, published in 2021 by a cooperative consulting firm with nonprofit and university partners. Third-party resource; all rights reserved by its publisher.

These three models are not the only options, and groups often adapt them. One variation, related to the sole-proprietor model, pairs small or new farms with a lead farmer who sells their flowers, usually handling customer communication and regular deliveries, and sometimes covering other needs or costs for an agreed period.

These arrangements tend to work when there is trust between growers who mainly want to grow and growers who are also strong at marketing and sales. The setup suits small or new farms in a compact region that lack the sales experience of a more established grower willing to act as their broker or distributor.

Every one of these models depends on cooperation and on goals beyond profit alone, for the good of the wider industry and the local-flower movement. The growers described here, and many others across the country, are part of a big change in how flowers are sold. As the consultant put it, selling together means everyone stepping in and sharing the risk.

• A guide to producer marketing cooperatives • 2021 PDF from a cooperative consulting firm with nonprofit and university partners. Third-party resource; all rights reserved by its publisher.