Florists along the East Coast say they are heartbroken, as the harsh winter weather moving across the region has wilted away their Valentine’s Day profits.
Stores from Richmond, Va., to New York said they were trying to deliver flowers to recipients before the storm hit but, overall, sales are down.
“You can have the perfect rose, everything can be perfect, but if you can’t get it to the recipient, then everything is broken,” MariEllyn Dykstra-Donnellan, owner of Dykstra Florist in Spring Valley, N.Y., told The Journal News.
Dykstra-Donnellan’s area is forecasted to get more than a foot of snow Thursday, and she added that customers have been willing to get early deliveries.
However, florists fear that they will lose out on last-minute sales if the snowfall is heavy.
"We know that there is not going to be that many walk-in customers if, in fact, it snows the amount they say it is," Stacie Lee of Lee’s Flowers, in Washington D.C., told WJLA.
Bill Gouldin, the owner of Strange's Florist in Richmond, Va., said 80 percent of the Valentine’s Day business for his store is accomplished on Feb. 13 and 14, according to WRIC.
"We just didn't feel that it was conscionable to keep taking orders when the weather conditions were so questionable,” he added.
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