The World Cut Flower Commission is stepping in to build what the trade has never had. I Speak Flowers consists of two things: written standards defining what a flower shop is, and a public register of the shops that meet it. Any shop meeting the standards is listed, whether or not it holds a membership. No shop can purchase a listing, and no shop can purchase a more favorable position within it.

In the press: the floral trade publication Thursd put the question to the trade in August 2026 — Defining the Flower Shop – Who Really Speaks Flowers?

That is a straightforward proposition to describe and a difficult one to establish. The floral trade has attempted collective undertakings of this kind repeatedly over the past three decades, and each attempt has ended. This page sets out that record in full, including the parts that do not flatter the present effort. Readers are entitled to it before forming a view on whether this attempt will prove different.

The question no one has answered

A consumer searching for a local florist — through a search engine, a mobile application, or an artificial-intelligence assistant — will receive a confident answer. That answer may direct them to a flower shop several streets away, with a cooler on the premises and a designer working behind it. It may equally direct them to a call center several states away that has purchased the phrase “local florist” alongside the name of the consumer’s town, accepts the order, and forwards it to whichever shop will accept the margin.

The two are indistinguishable on a screen. There is no register against which either can be checked, because no such register has ever existed. The trade has never recorded, in writing, what a flower shop is.

The directories that do exist are owned by interested parties. The largest, findaflorist.com, is owned and operated by Teleflora, and its entries are Teleflora’s own member florists; the company’s florist-facing material describes the complimentary listing accompanying membership and the monthly subscriptions that secure a higher position. This is not a concealed arrangement, and a membership directory is entitled to list its members. It is simply not an independent answer to the consumer’s question, because the register and the vendor are the same party. The pattern recurs throughout the category: a wire service, a marketplace retaining a percentage of each order, a subscription directory, or a trade association listing those who pay it dues.

This has been tried before

Six substantial attempts are documented across three countries and thirty years. Each is better recorded in the public archive than is generally appreciated within the trade.

PromoFlor — United States, 1994 to 1997

A federal marketing order established under the Fresh Cut Flowers and Fresh Cut Greens Promotion and Information Act of 1993 and administered by the National PromoFlor Council. It funded a consumer campaign under the name “Think Flowers.” Revenue derived from an assessment of 0.5 percent levied on approximately 900 wholesale handlers, 150 importers, and 200 larger producers. In a mail referendum conducted in June 1997, 58 percent of the handlers casting valid ballots voted for termination. Assessments ceased on July 29, 1997.

One finding warrants particular attention. A study conducted at the University of Florida by Professor Ronald W. Ward determined that the campaign generated $6.60 in additional handler revenue for every dollar expended, and had brought approximately 10 percent more households into the market. The program was demonstrably effective at the point at which it was voted out of existence. The Council’s own chairman observed afterward that the wholesalers expected to be rewarded immediately. The assessment had fallen upon the layer of the supply chain least able to pass the cost to a consumer and least able to observe the resulting benefit.

The Flower Promotion Organization — United States, 1999 to 2013

Following PromoFlor, the trade adopted the opposite structure: voluntary contributions in place of a compulsory assessment, drawn from American and Colombian growers, importers, and wholesalers. The consumer campaign ran under the name “Flowers. Alive with Possibilities,” and regional programs operated on matched funding.

The organization concluded its affairs in February 2013 by distributing its remaining assets — $600,000 to the Floral Marketing Research Fund and $300,000 to the Society of American Florists’ public relations fund. Its co-chairman, Anthony Vollering, stated the reason on the record: the absence of a continuing revenue stream, and the absence of an industry commitment to fund a broad consumer campaign.

The compulsory approach failed at the ballot. The voluntary approach failed for want of any party obliged to contribute. Both routes have now been attempted in the United States, and both are closed.

The California Cut Flower Commission — California, 1990 to 2020

A state commission funded by a compulsory assessment on California growers with sales above $250,000, subject to a continuation referendum every fifth year. In April 2020, 36 of 44 eligible producers voted, and 21 of them opposed continuation. The commission was suspended with effect from December 31, 2020, after thirty years of operation. Its co-founder, Dave Pruitt, attributed the outcome to a lack of organizational focus and to declining participation among a membership whose numbers were themselves in decline.

Its marketing arm, Certified American Grown, continued as an independent trade association funded by voluntary dues, with approximately 70 founding members. A compulsory assessment was thereby replaced by optional subscription. Certified American Grown also certifies farms rather than shops, and therefore does not address the question set out above. The organization now operates nationally as American Grown Flowers, under the Certified American Grown seal, and represents flower and foliage farms across the United States. Its consumer marketing, including the “Origin Matters” message and American Grown Flowers Month each July, promotes where a flower was grown. Like the campaigns before it, it markets the flower, not the florist who sells it.

Bloemenbureau Holland — the Netherlands, 1970s to 2024

The most substantially funded collective flower-marketing body yet established, financed by a levy of 2 percent on grower and wholesaler turnover and collected by the Dutch auctions. The levy was effectively compulsory for as long as the great majority of stock passed through the auction clock. Direct sales subsequently bypassed the auctions, and the levy base diminished accordingly. Wholesalers declined to contribute at rates equivalent to those paid by growers. The organization proved unable to demonstrate a measurable return on its expenditure. Royal FloraHolland ceased collecting the contribution on January 1, 2024.

The Flowers and Plants Association — United Kingdom, 1984 to 2015

Incorporated in December 1984 and dissolved on March 10, 2015 according to Companies House. The public record establishes the dates and the status but not the cause, and no cause is asserted here.

Florists For Change, subsequently Real Local Florists — United States and Canada, 2011 to 2014

This is the attempt that most closely resembles the present one, and it is now largely forgotten. A group of retail florists organized themselves to act, in their own words, as the voice of traditional retail florists. In June 2012 they filed a United States trademark application for the words REAL LOCAL FLORIST.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office issued an office action in September 2012. It received no response. The application was recorded as abandoned on May 15, 2013 for failure to respond. The organization renamed itself Real Local Florists Inc. in 2014, and no evidence of activity after that year has been located.

The florists concerned had identified precisely what was required. What the organization lacked was the standing administrative capacity to carry the filing through.

A seventh case, which is a warning rather than a failure

FTD was founded in 1910 by fifteen retail florists and operated as a florist-owned cooperative for eighty-four years. In July 1994 its board resolved, by ten votes to nine, to sell the organization to a private investment firm for $112 million. It filed for Chapter 11 protection in June 2019, was acquired out of bankruptcy by a private equity firm, and was merged into From You Flowers in 2023. An institution owned by florists may pass out of florists’ hands upon a single vote, after which it belongs to whichever party next acquires it.

Why each attempt ended

Across the United States in 1997, the United States again in 2013, California in 2020, and the Netherlands in 2024, the same three causes recur.

First, free-riding once contribution became optional. The benefit of a consumer campaign accrues to the whole trade; the cost falls upon those who elect to pay it. Those bearing the cost are aware of the disparity.

Second, a mismatch between the layer that paid and the layer that benefited. Wholesale handlers funded consumer demand that arrived at the retail counter. Growers funded a category-wide improvement from which every seller of stems benefited equally.

Third, the absence of demonstrable return within an acceptable period. PromoFlor was returning $6.60 on the dollar and was terminated regardless, because those bearing the cost could not observe the benefit in time to vote for its continuation.

Any new institution that lacks a structural answer to all three will join the record set out above. It is preferable to state that here rather than to have it discovered later.

Why the Commission is stepping in

The Commission is stepping in for four reasons. The first three distinguish this effort from every attempt described above; the fourth explains why it cannot wait.

1. No previous attempt was worldwide. Each stopped at a border. PromoFlor and the Flower Promotion Organization stopped at the borders of the United States. The California commission stopped at a state line. Bloemenbureau Holland stopped at the Dutch auctions. The Flowers and Plants Association stopped at the boundaries of the United Kingdom. The flower in the vase, meanwhile, had commonly crossed three countries to reach that vase, and the consumer seeking a shop neither knows nor has reason to care where a trade association’s jurisdiction ends. An undertaking confined to a single country is a national trade association. This is the first attempt to establish the standards for florists everywhere.

2. No previous attempt marketed the florist. The record repays rereading on this point. “Think Flowers.” “Flowers. Alive with Possibilities.” A levy assessed on stems. A certification scheme for farms. Each of these directed its expenditure toward persuading the public to purchase flowers, and each left unaddressed the question of the party from whom the public should purchase them. The one group that attempted to address it allowed its trademark application to lapse.

3. No previous standards were written by flower shops. This is the decisive distinction, and the public record is unambiguous. Every mark of this kind ever filed in the United States has been owned by a trade association, by a software company, or by a wire service. The Connecticut Florists Association registered a collective membership mark reading “A Real Florist!” with first use recorded in September 1990, maintained it for twenty-seven years, and allowed the last registration to be canceled in 2017. A software company in California holds the live registrations today, licensed to florists who subscribe to its platform. A wire service requires its own logo to be displayed in the window of every member shop. Not one of these standards was written by the people who run flower shops.

I Speak Flowers will be written by flower shops. They determine what a flower shop is — not a wire service, and not an association.

Why it has to be now

4. The way customers find a florist is changing now. Every attempt described above took place in a market in which a consumer seeking a flower shop consulted a search engine and formed their own judgment from a page of results.

That is no longer the prevailing condition. A growing proportion of consumers now put the question to an artificial-intelligence assistant, which does not return a page of options. It returns a single answer, in a sentence, assembled from whatever written sources exist. It cannot visit premises. It cannot distinguish a cooler from a call center. It reads what the trade has published concerning itself, and it reports what it finds.

What the trade has published consists of wire-service membership directories, subscription listings, and marketplace platforms. That is therefore the material from which the answer is constructed — not through any party’s bad faith, but because nothing else has been written down.

This is the consideration that renders thirty years of unsuccessful attempts urgent rather than merely instructive. Each previous effort competed for a share of consumer attention. The present effort competes to be the source that an automated system cites in answer to a question no person will hear asked. A standard existing only as a common understanding among florists is invisible to that process. Standards published in plain language, accompanied by a register that any party may inspect, are not.

The opportunity to record the standards in writing is available now. It will not remain available indefinitely, because the answer is being assembled in either case.

How it works

The Commission takes no orders and no percentage, sells no placement, and is owned by nobody who earns money when flowers move. Membership and the vote on what a flower shop is belong to flower shops alone. The Q&A’s set all of that out in full. Three points bear directly on the argument above.

Position cannot be purchased. A six-shop group and a single-shop florist appear identically, ordered by distance from the consumer. There is no enhanced tier, because enhanced tiers are the mechanism by which the existing directories ceased to carry meaning.

The standards are published. A shop may read them, assess itself against them, and appeal a determination. A register that cannot be inspected is an assertion rather than a standard.

It is worldwide from the outset, because the problem it addresses is worldwide.

No undertaking is given here as to orders received, and no figure or percentage is promised. What is being established is a written definition and a public register. On the evidence of this page, the trade has never possessed either.

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Every factual assertion on this page derives from a primary source: Federal Register notices, the California Department of Food and Agriculture, United States Patent and Trademark Office records, Companies House, filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, court records, and named reporting in the trade press. Where the record does not establish a cause, none has been asserted. Corrections may be submitted and will be made publicly.

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