Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2007 | 7:15 a.m.
Amanda Hagen, certified florist, sits cross-legged in a flower shop on Sahara Avenue, facing the enemy.
Hagen is a woman who spent two years studying flowers in Holland. A woman whose bridal bouquets have been featured in glossy magazines. A woman who handled floral arrangements for not just one, but three first ladies' luncheons.
A woman who needs to sell at least 250 Valentine's bouquets to float her flower shop until Mother's Day.
Hagen faces a flimsy booth set up across the street advertising roses for $9.99 a dozen (excludes red, subject to change, while supplies last.)
"This robs us of what we have worked for as floral entrepreneurs," Hagen says, seething and surrounded - by roses, lilies, hydrangeas, orchids, snap dragons. "I have paid with blood, tears and sweat, every day, to make sure I am providing customers with the best product. And this robs us. It negates everything."
Across the street, flowers are being sold for less than what Hagen spends wholesale. In the booth, a man making up bouquets, a man who asks to be called "Bill the Greek," flips through a booklet of hand-written receipts. The first page falls on a $225 purchase: "roses, with vase, with TB." That's teddy bear.
The season's first floral street vendors started hawking roses in roadway medians last week, and Hagen has been fuming ever since. For florists, she says, there's so much injury in the insult; the competition, the inferior product, and most of all, the sullied reputation of serious flower retailers everywhere.
"I'm an artist. I don't want to be misconstrued for something that can be sold on the street for $5 an hour," she said. "Those flowers look fine, then keel over the next day. It's an embarrassment to me as a florist. It's literally offensive to my eyes."
Flowers in Hagen's shop, The Octopus's Garden, are kept at anywhere from 26 to 74 degrees, depending on the variety.
Across the street, Bill the Greek arranges and wraps bouquets. He sells four bunches in 10 minutes and calls it a slow day.
To make the roses last, he says, pluck off their outer petals daily. To keep the flowers fresh, he says, cut the stems a little shorter every day. He says this standing next to a table-mounted stem slicer, grabbing the roses, striping their leaves and then slicing their stems, hacking once, twice. This way they'll last weeks, he says, ringing the register.
In the temporary tent, red roses are really selling for $39.99. All other colors, $24.99. And there are the teddy bears. Hundreds of the same bear, but different sizes, sitting upright or straddling vases, a sea of synthetic fur bleeding love, love, love.
Bill the Greek has heard florists complain about the seasonal flower salespeople.
"Everyone has to make their money," he says.
One week before Valentine's Day, and one week after, business at the floral shop gets about 80 percent busier, Hagen says. For those two weeks, flowers can sell for twice as much, if not more.
Blame this on distributors, Hagen says. Stems she would normally buy wholesale for 79 cents each are marked up to $1.78. If a florist wants fresh flowers, this cost must be transferred to the consumer. And if the consumer can't appreciate the nuances that separate a florist's toil and a roadside vendor's plastic-bagged bloom, well, guess who hurts the worst?
"It makes it look like we are gouging customers," Hagen says. "The first-time customer will get the impression that flowers are a waste of money."
And what happens if a man selling flowers in the median gets hit? Hagen says. What happens if the vendors aren't paying taxes on their cash sales? What happens if the flowers die on the second day you bring them home?
"You can't take a designer and replace that person with a laborer," she says.
The seasonal flower vendors are required to have a license. Eighteen vendors have applied for temporary-flower sales permits in Clark County; they cost $195.
Street vendors buy their bouquets a month in advance and store them cold until Valentine's Day, Hagen insists, purchasing the product before it's marked up and making a profit later.
Bill the Greek denies this. His flowers come fresh from Central America, by way of Florida, he says. On Valentine's Day, he'll call in backup staff and sell hundreds of bouquets.
"Florists make all their money in two days," he says. "Then they are done for the rest of the year."
His closest competition sits down the street, an impromptu flower salesman who has set up shop on the green of a gas station.
Farther down Sahara, there's another temporary tent, this one with a massive inflatable heart, pulsing with each air injection.
Out of a glass-front fridge, Hagen grabs a bouquet of brand new roses, hard at the bud and platelet red. The roses cost $115. Others start around $60 and can run into the hundreds. Easy.
"We take care of your funerals, your weddings, your anniversary. We're always here," she says, tracing the flowers from bulb to burst. "In time, these petals will unfold."
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