When bloom's gone, you cultivate your market
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Despite reports of steady growth, many residents aren't feeling it
Voyager doomed by changing Japanese market
'Fancy new buildings' keep job crews happy
By Glenn Scott
Advertiser Staff Writer
Inside a Beretania Street storefront, Renee Gray runs The Floral Specialist.
Gregory Yamamoto • The Honolulu Advertiser
One part of her business is supplying flowers to dozens of Japanese weddings a month. Another is creating themed pieces for corporate meetings. The challenge for Gray and her 3-year-old business is to bend as both of these key markets undergo change.
Renee Gray on the right and sister Bernadette Gray of the Floral Specialist making wedding floral pieces.
While most categories involving Japanese visitors are down this year, weddings remain a ringing exception. This wedding boom isn't the anomaly it may seem. If Japanese consumers are seeking lower costs at home as well as on vacation, a combined Hawai'i wedding and honeymoon offers a huge bargain against the price of staging a more formal event in Japan.
In fact, Gray says there is an unmistakable change taking place as Japanese brides become astute in bargaining for better deals. "Before, they would pay anything," she says. "Now, they price it around."
The shift has prompted more competitive pricing among florists in a market where profits once were more automatic. In that changing landscape, Gray keeps her staffing lean and diversifies.
To balance the wedding scene, she subcontracts with meeting planners to supply corporate gatherings. Last year, she says, handfuls of high-tech companies from the Mainland held splashy sessions to motivate employees. This year, as companies prune costs, those accounts are drying up.
"There are still small groups coming, and they're staying just as long," she says. "But they aren't spending as much on frivolous things like flowers."
In pursuing market niches, Gray has downplayed retail sales and laced her business into two different sides of the tourism economy. Now, each side has become a focal point of the economy at large.
"Last year was very, very good," she says. "This year it's steady enough. We're paying the bills. We're getting by."
She isn't satisfied with that. She's working on a new Web site that is attracting more queries, especially from Mainland brides. She has new ideas percolating to broaden creative services and increase flexibility.
"I'm continuously thinking of new things," she says.
