Floral supply business puts down roots in Milford
MILFORD — National Floral Supply’s continued growth has the florist planning to sprout up in Milford.
Andrew Hamer, president and managing partner, said the company has outgrown its facility in Orange, prompting the move to the city in which he and his wife live. Hamer said the company plans to move from its Orange location to 497 Bic Drive this summer.
“We needed to add to it,” Hamer said about the need to move from its Orange facility. “We are building a 4,200square-foot state-of-the-art cooler to keep the flowers at 34 degrees to prolong their life. We are going from an operation with several smaller coolers, walk-in coolers, to one larger cooler, which will be more efficient.
The company is finalizing construction plans with an estimated groundbreaking next month. Hamer said he hoped to be operating out of the new building by late summer.
Being a Milford resident makes moving to the city more appealing, he said. But it also helps that the facility and location is just what they need.
“We didn’t want to go farther north or too far south on I-95, and for distribution purposes, we need to be very close to I-95,” Hamer said. “And the property came up in Milford, which fit our needs.”
The company makes deliveries all over Connecticut, and into eastern parts of New York State, including the Bronx and the Hudson River Valley area, he added.
The new location also is convenient to some property that one of his partners owns, Hamer said. This will give the business a chance to grow flowers locally.
“That was also a factor in our decision-making,” he said. “Our goal was to grow our flowers, which is beneficial to our sales because we need locally grown flowers.”
National Floral Supply has been in business for almost 100 years, but Hamer and his partners purchased the business in November 2019.
“My partners and I have import operations down in Miami, Fla., where we service wholesale florists throughout the country,” he said. “National was a customer of ours. So we purchased the company and integrated it with our farms down in Ecuador, our Miami operations, and now our wholesale distribution operation in Connecticut.”
After purchasing the company in 2019, Hamer said the partners had two difficult years due to COVID, but they’ve managed to double the size of the business in the three years they have owned it.
“We sell to retail florists, floral designers, event planners and specialty markets. So during floral holidays, like Valentine’s Day, we would be in the hundreds of thousands of stems,” he said. “We had an excellent Valentine’s Day, and the reports we’ve been receiving state that our customers had a good Valentine’s Day as well.”
Hamer said with the coming move, he hopes to become a greater contributor to the city.
“We look forward to being part of the Milford business community,” he said.