Birth mont flower
Nearly half of the flower industry’s revenue is made during only two days of the year: Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day. This extreme seasonality concentrates a lot of risk for the industry’s suppliers and growers so they’re always looking for ways to transform flowers from rarely-given gifts to a frequent ritual.
Many highly seasonal companies like this try to find ways to sell their products in the off-season—even if it’s not profitable on its own, this is a good way to take advantage of fixed costs. The theme park industry, for example, has gradually expanded its operating calendar by adding Halloween and winter events. The flower industry is doing this too by propagating the concept of birth month flowers, which encourages people to send flowers as a birthday gift year-round. This doesn’t just smooth out revenue, but it also allows flower companies to clear out excess inventory by relabeling it as something timely.
Searches for “birth month flower” yield plenty of social media results, but they also show detailed guides from the flower companies themselves, or from affiliate marketers trying to cash in on the trend and send customers their way. By creating detailed content around the birth month flower concept, they’re able to convince people that a specific flower is a more thoughtful gift—instead of personalizing it, it comes pre-personalized through a backstory, much like products in the astrology industry.
Other companies in the flower industry have also tried to make flowers a more year-round phenomenon, attempting to transform them from occasional gifts to everyday consumables. Freddie’s Flowers and Bloom & Wild both offer subscription flower services, which both extends the length of the transaction and gives flower companies a chance to move inventory that would otherwise expire.
Birth month flowers tie into a broader trend towards more date-centric celebrations, like half-birthdays , as well as so-called “Hallmark Holidays” like Daughters’ Day, Sons’ Day, and Boss’s Day. These have the social function of prompting people to give gifts that aren’t completely random, but they also serve the commercial function of increasing demand.
