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Hold on to Your Customers with Spectacular Flower Displays

It is well known in the grocery industry that fresh, vibrant colors of top quality flower, fruit and vegetable displays are the number one attraction that brings customers into a supermarket. To optimize the visual impact of their fresh flower displays for as long as possible, retail stores must store the flowers in cool temperatures and protect them from premature damage caused by heat and light radiation. Cut flowers are sensitive to the effects of harsh conditions, including excessive heat, UV radiation and ethylene gases created by photochemical processes. UV radiation from general purpose display lighting contributes to flower wilting and accelerates the decomposition process, shortening the shelf life of cut flower displays.

PROMOLUX lamps are color balanced to reveal the existing natural colors of floral arrangements, resulting in displays with the best possible consumer eye appeal. Installing full balanced spectrum lighting from PROMOLUX Lighting International is a simple way to stimulate sales with spectacular natural color rendering. Moreover, since they are designed to reduce heat and UV effects in fresh product displays, PROMOLUX provides safe and effective lighting and extends the shelf life of retail floral displays.

Visually Appealing Floral Displays and Impulse Sales

"Our response to color is intensely emotional, and flowers can be a catalyst for feelings that stimulate more than just our sense of sight and smell."

~ Leatrice Eiseman

It is no accident that colorful floral displays are placed near the entrance of supermarkets to greet shoppers as they enter the stores and where the flowers are easily available to every customer. As much as 80 to 90 percent of a supermarket's total floral sales can be attributed to impulse buying—and the sales technique is most effective when interesting displays can attract wide attention and offer easy access to shoppers. Vibrant colors of fresh floral displays can also be counted on to stimulate impulse buying of other items.

“Color plays a vitally important role in the world in which we live. Color can sway thinking, change actions, and cause reactions. It can irritate or soothe your eyes, raise your blood pressure or suppress your appetite.”

Color Matters,www.colormatters.com/entercolormatters.html

Store designers know that the use of color has a strong influence on consumer decision-making and they count on the strong appeal of colorful flower displays to influence purchasing behavior. “Flowers can enhance the image of a store,”explains Wendy Liebmann, founder and president of WSL Strategic Retail, a consulting firm in New York City that publishes the consumer studies How America Shops. “Consumers walk in to something that is pretty, smells great, and builds the notion of fresh.”

Impulse buying accounts for most supermarket flower arrangement sales. In a relaxed and happy atmosphere, marketers expect that customers wil be more likely to respond to their natural impulses to purchase not only the colorful flowers, but other items as well. PROMOLUX, a pioneer in the field of lamp production technology, adds: "High quality floral display lighting is essential to elicit strong consumer appeal, and PROMOLUX true color rendering is what makes retail floral display lighting effective for marketing.”

Conventional fluorescent lighting that is designed for brightness, instead of defining a full balanced range of colors, usually allows the yellow portions of the visible spectrum to predominate, causing white flowers to appear yellow or greenish, and red flowers to appear brownish.

PROMOLUX, in contrast, utilizes Balanced Spectrum technology, a proprietary phosphor-coating process developed for commercial lighting that not only produces natural, balanced light but filters out damaging ultraviolet, infrared, and harsh visible spectrum wavelengths.

PROMOLUX lamps are color balanced to reveal the existing natural colors of floral arrangements, resulting in displays with the best possible consumer eye appeal. PROMOLUX’s balanced spectrum has been rated with the highest Color Preference Index rating ever tested. CPI ranks colors according to what is most pleasing to the human eye. Under PROMOLUX lamps, all colors are more vibrant and appealing.

Increase Flower Shelf Life

Increased impulse sales with beautiful flower displays illuminated by full balanced color rendering is not the only benefit that PROMOLUX can bring to floral merchandisers. PROMOLUX can also help maximize the benefits of brightly colored displays, by increasing the shelf life of fresh cut flowers by up to 50%, depending on the variety of the flower.

Flowers that look like they have not yet reached their prime and will last a long time after they are taken home are the most appealing and marketable. Shoppers expect commercial flowers to last at least a week, yet it often takes 5 to 7 days for the flowers to reach the retailer once they have been harvested. Floral display cases must be brightly lit for optimal floral merchandising, yet hot spotlights can cause cut flowers to wilt as soon as they are put on display under the lamps. Roses and spring flowers such as daffodils, tulips, and irises are particularly sensitive to heat and light radiation.

UV radiation in floral display cases encourages cut flowers to bloom, triggering them to release higher than normal levels of ethylene gas in a photochemical reaction that stimulates the blossoms to open and eventually decompose. Like a domino effect, the release of ethylene gas causes nearby cut flower buds to bloom, become overblown, and decay prematurely.

Even when some of the ethylene is absorbed from the atmosphere by sachets or filters, the gas is continually being produced by flowers sitting under display case lighting. UV radiation contributes to flower wilting and accelerates the decomposition process, shortening the shelf life of cut flower displays. Increased surface temperatures from display case lighting can also encourage bacteria to grow, causing flowers to ferment and decompose.

Although some heat and ultraviolet light radiated by most floral display case lamps are healthy for living plants, they accelerate organic decomposition of cut flowers. Floral display case lamps that lead flower buds to bloom prematurely, wilt, or ‘blast’and fall off, are responsible for increased product shrinkage and lost sales.

PROMOLUX color balanced lamps prolong the shelf life of floral displays while showcasing them to best advantage due to lower emissions of damaging visible spectrum light and UV radiation.

Beyond superior illumination of flowers on display, PROMOLUX lamps stake their reputation on 86% lower UV emissions than most floral display case lighting. Designed specifically to reduce the effects of excessive heat and UV radiation, PROMOLUX full balanced spectrum lighting is the ideal choice for retail floral and other fresh produce displays.

"An increase in shelf-life of four or five times is common. The general appearance of all products subjected to the PROMOLUX bulb is astounding."

Holly Sales, Pittsburgh, PA

Draw more and more business with an attractive floral department, and your store can become known as the place to shop for all floral purchases. PROMOLUX Safe Spectrum lighting is the ideal choice for retail floral displays. For more information about PROMOLUX distributors in your area, call 1-800-519-1222 and visit the PROMOLUX website at www.promolux.com .

A few flower merchandising tips:

• Make sure consumers can easily see available floral displays in your store
• Set up fresh flower displays that are colorful and eye catching
• Maintain displays of flowers only of the highest quality
• Make the floral department accessible and user-friendly with helpful personnel
• Create variety in the department with frequent changes of display design
• Replace items that make a minimal contribution to sales with items that create sales appeal
• Generate interest with displays that tie in with a national slogan or storewide theme
• Use themes that highlight special products and services
• Present attractive merchandising displays on a consistent basis
• Stick to a regular maintenance program for fresh floral display
• Install Promolux color balanced lamps to help maximize appearance of fresh floral displays and minimize waste.

References

~ Leatrice Eiseman, International Color Expert, http://www.colormatters.com/entercolormatters.html

Color Matters, Color Voodoo Publications, http://www.colormatters.com/entercolormatters.html

http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/GREENHOUSE/NURSERY/guides/econ/merchandising/display.html

Fruit and Vegetable General Processing. Chapter 3: Deterioration Factors and Their Control. Mircea Enachescu Dauthy. FAO Agricultural Services Bulletin No. 119, Rome 1995.

Real Simple: Supermarket Strategies
http://www.realsimple.com/realsimple/content/print/0,22304,1152529,00.html

Dr. Charles R. Hall, Floral Merchandising,
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/GREENHOUSE/NURSERY/guides/econ/merchandising/impulse.htm

http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/GREENHOUSE/NURSERY/guides/econ/merchandising/display.html

“Light is one of the major factors responsible for the deterioration of fresh and dehydrated produce."

~ Mircea Enachescu Dauthy