Demand blooms, profits dip in Shanghai flower market

Tweet

SHANGHAI: Shanghai could be the most romantic city in China - if measured by consumption of flowers. In fact, Shanghai's taste in flowers has flooded the market with florists, who are now struggling against the tight margins and tough competition. The city has long been the country's biggest consumer of fresh flowers, and this year Shanghainese could end up consuming more than 700 million stems, according to the Shanghai Agricultural Commission. That would be about a tenth of the nation's overall flower consumption, Shen Luoya, an executive from the commission, told China Daily. A Shanghainese buys 35 to 40 stems of fresh flowers each year, compared with the national average of only six or seven.