Kitayama Brothers Floral News: February 2015

Friday, February 27, 2015

Women’s Day 2015

Confess, who knows when and what Women’s Day is?

(March 8th is International Women's Day) It was first celebrated in the early 1900’s as a way to start recognizing women’s rights. The earliest Women’s Day observance was held on February 28, 1909, in New York. It is celebrated mainly in Europe and Asia where people buy flowers and other gifts for the women in their lives.

The American flower industry wants to make this an American holiday. We were not sure how to promote this holiday but according to my daughters, if the holiday benefited women and women’s causes they could support it. I thought that was a great suggestion.

Therefore on this first Women’s Day promotion,

KB is donating 10% of our sales on March 6^th to two groups:

Walnut Avenue Women’s Center in SantaCruz

Monarch Women’s Center in Watsonville.

KB is also advertising in the Santa Cruz Sentinel on March 1, 4 and 6

listing our customers who are also donating to local women’s causes on Women’s Day.

IF possible, please support one of these businesses.

Whether you buy flowers or not, on March 8^th let the women in your life know

how much you appreciate them.

http://www.kitayamabrothers.com/index.php/womensday

RHK

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Flowers in the City

Flowers for Valentine’s Day and Chinese New Year collide in San Francisco

This past weekend I was in San Francisco on Friday and Sunday.

When the weather is in the 70’s, there isn't a more beautiful city in the country.

SF Flower Market

On Friday morning, I went to SF Flower Market to check out how business was, and how our customers were feeling. Our good friend and customer, Karman Kwan seemed pretty happy about the holiday. He said he was sold out and was glad that he didn’t have as many roses like his neighbor Shibata Floral. Hopefully Shibata sold out, too.

Karman Kwan

Around the rest of the market there was a good selection of branches, spring flowers and ranunculus; all are now in good supply. Everyone seemed to be in good spirits which is nice to see around Valentine’s Day.

Chinatown Flower Fair

On Sunday 2/15, my family and I took a trip to San Francisco to see what was going on at the Chinatown Flower Fair. Chinese New Year is Thursday 2/19 and this is the year of the Ram/Sheep. As you can see there were a lot of shoppers, it is the biggest holiday of the year for the Chinese and Vietnamese communities.

I was a little disappointed with the flower offerings. There were a smattering of gladiolas, orchids and some nice pots of narcissus, but otherwise it was all fake flowers and plastic stuff. There is great potential for flower sales, someone step up! You can get your flowers from KB.