VALENTINE BOUQUETS ARE WORLD TRAVELERS
Valentine bouquets are international travelers
Long before buyers scramble to grab that last bunch of roses at the grocery store or flower shop first-thing on Wednesday morning, Denver’s wholesale florists will have scrambled for days to get them there.
This isn’t the first Valentine’s Day rush for Amato Wholesale Florist in north Denver. Amato broke into the wholesale business in January 1974. (The company started as a carnation grower in 1958.) They ship flowers
across Colorado, but also to Kansas, Wyoming and Nebraska.
President and CEO Heather Weickum was born in that first year after the wholesale business started. She grew up rollerskating on the warehouse’s concrete floors after hours. Her father was a co-founder and eventually became the sole owner of the business.
“This place was my only sibling growing up,” she said.
Now Weickum runs the company and employs 70 people. Amato projects they will sell 130,000 stems of flowers over Valentine’s holiday, tallying up hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit. The most popular varieties of roses can cost a retailer more than $70 per bunch.
Amato can stock several hundred varieties of flowers at a time in their warehouse, and more than half of those are roses. They come in a rainbow of hues and gaggle of names, many inspired by the flower breeder’s daughter, mother or lover. Some names, such as Hot Nina, Lola and Jessika, call to mind an old flame. Others read like perfume ads tucked in a magazine: Pearl Avalanche, Sweet Unique, Cool Water. And then there are the names that know exactly to whom they’re selling: Sweetness, Engagement, Soulmate. Rose breeders trademark these names and can receive royalties from other plantations that grow their variety.
Most roses are natives of Ecuador. The year-round sunshine and high-altitude soil in the country’s mild and mountainous north-central provinces breeds big-headed and bright-colored blooms, Weickum said. One of every four roses bought by an American was raised by an Ecuadorian. While Amato curates cut flowers from several countries — including Israel, Thailand, Holland and Costa Rica — most, by far, are from Colombia and Ecuador.
America’s love for Ecuador’s flowers bloomed during a favorable trade agreement forged in 1991 between the United States, Ecuador and three other neighboring South American countries. Even after that agreement ended in 2013, the connection burned on: In 2014 the United States imported $186 million worth of flowers from Ecuador, a record high. Ecuador has grown into the third-largest cut flower exporter in the world. (Another top buyer of Ecuadorian flowers is a country unlikely to receive a rose from the U.S. anytime soon: Russia.)
Weickum pins the rose’s perennial popularity on its reputation and accessibility.
“Roses are a staple, roses are a classic, roses are well known,” she said. “People who want to express themselves with flowers — they do it with roses.”
But for all the rose’s heated reputation and heady symbolism, the cut flower industry behind it is well oiled and labor-intensive. Roses are transported from greenhouses and fields to delivery hubs in bunches swaddled Flowers are immediately wheeled into the cold heart of Amato’s operations, a 10,000square-foot cooler. Most of Amato’s stock, including roses, prefer a room set between 34 and 36 degrees Fahrenheit. Too cold, they freeze. Too warm, they wilt. Too dry, they shrivel. A special room is set aside for tropical flowers sourced from Hawaii and other equatorial destina- tions, which demand temperatures in the 60s and even more humidity.
The Amato team has pulled long hours since the first holiday flowers were delivered on Feb. 6. Now, Amato’s coolers are now stuffed to brim for Valentine’s Day, but the wholesaler’s team moves with balletic precision and grace as they wheel dollies packed with product through narrow paths. It helps that many Amato employees have worked there for a decade or longer.
Head receiver Alfredo Giles, a nine-year Amato’s employee, enjoys the team’s passion for their jobs, and the friendships they’ve formed on the cooler floor. But no one is a bigger fan of his job than his wife.
“Every time I get home she says, ‘You smell like flowers,’ ” Giles said. He makes sure to bring home her favorites, roses and lilies.
Carrie Miller, an Amato salesperson for 13 years, had a magnetic connection flowers from an early age. As a little girl she would hop her grandparents’ fence to pluck blooms from the neighbor’s garden to make into arrangements. As she loads dozens of flowers onto a dolly at Amato, the petals blend in with a colorful full sleeve tattoo on her left arm of peonies, irises, sweet peas and, yes, roses.
“I was born to do this,” she said.
Weickum expects the holiday crunch time to continue through a final push on Valentine’s Day morning. Then Amato’s coolers will have a couple months to breathe before a rash of floral festivities arrive: Easter, prom season and the wholesaler’s number-one seller. Valentine’s Day is Amato’s second busiest holiday — Mother’s Day reigns supreme.
“Everybody has a mom,” Weickum said. “Not everybody has a sweetheart.”