Richmond, Va. (NewsradioWRVA.com) - As Valentine's Day approaches, a floral expert at Virginia Tech expects the industry and sales to be equally as strong. The industry has rebounded very well as compared to the beginning of the pandemic.
That's a far cry from what was happening three years ago when the pandemic started. Virginia Tech Floral Design Instructor Barbara Leshyn says that people stopped having events and the need for flowers vanished. She says people lost their jobs, from the grower to the shipper and there were even some growers in South America who couldn't sell their flowers to anybody and had to burn them.
Once people emerged from lockdown, the industry gradually rebounded to where are now. Leshyn says the floral industry is doing even better this year as compared to the time before COVID arrived.
But, there are still challenges.
She says that the practice of buying flowers is trending older and the effort is on to try to aim marketing toward younger people. She says while you're paying more than you did for flowers pre-pandemic, you're not paying that much more than you did last year.
