Why Picking a Niche is Everything as a Small Scale Flower Farmer

When we first started out as flower farmers, we were trying to do it all. Farmer’s markets, selling on consignment at local businesses and coffee shops, subscription services, DIY buckets, full service weddings - you name it, we were doing it.

But after a while, we stopped doing everything, focusing down on the income streams that worked best for us and also were the most profitable for us (you can read more about us shifting our focus here)

We decided instead of trying to do everything and cover every single niche in our locale, we decided to just pick a niche and stick with it.

This was immensely helpful not only in ensuring that we were more successful and efficient with our business, but also that we were able to decrease our risk of burnout and actually work harder - but on the areas that were providing us with the best chance of success.

I personally love having picked a niche as a small scale flower farmer in particular, but I’d like to walk you through in detail today how we picked our niche

Let’s Talk ABout niches

Niche in this case with flower farming refers to the fact that you’ve chosen to focus on a certain area of growing. It’s like your little space or home, or perhaps a nest (which is what the word niche is based on - the french word for nesting nicher, likely referring to a rock dove or pigeon of some sort making a nest and home in a little stony recess of a cliffside)

When you’ve chosen your niche, it allows you to focus your efforts and energy towards honing down this area, allowing you to theoretically gain more skill and expertise and efficiency in your niche. As opposed to gallumping all over in an attempt to do everything to become successful, it allows you to just focus and hone in on a singular area.

Take for example if you decided to become your local rose grower - you would focus on growing the roses that are best for cutting and are in demand, growing little to no other crops and just focusing on growing the best roses possible.

This comes with a huge advantage that I wanted to cover in depth with you. Here are a few advantages you’ll gain from focusing on your niche

You Become More Efficient

When we stopped growing everything under the sun, suddenly things got a lot more efficient.

  • Instead of buying fifty packets of seeds, we just purchased a dozen . Same number of seeds, we were just growing more of the same varieties.

  • And of those seeds, we were just growing out flats of the same varieties which made for more uniform development and growth, and had the additional benefit of creating “backup” plants in case you had spotty germination or die-off from a tray

  • Cultivation techniques and setups became more uniform, so there was less guesswork and less finessing to accommodate different needs from different plants that were growing in the same space - we would just pick a row and then fill it full of the same flower.

  • We also had more of the materials that we needed at the correct times. While it might seem a bit boring to be harvesting the same flower for weeks on end, it actually is quite more effective because you’ll be able to have a reliable source of the material for all your needs (selling to florists, using in designs and bouquets) and it becomes far more consistent and reduces the headaches and stress of not having enough flowers for your orders.

  • Additionally, we found that our customers liked the consistency as well. If they wanted lisianthus or brightly colored flowers in mixed bouquets or marigolds or sunflowers, they could get them from another grower or source, but if they wanted flowers for a very specific palette and feel (mostly muted colors with high-end foliage and fillers that were focused on weddings) we had them in abundance for fifteen weeks.

  • It also helped to ensure that my mind was more efficient and effective. By removing all the different cultivars and varieties and just focusing on a few important varieties, this left me with a lot of free mental space which allowed me to be able to focus on marketing, building a customer base, brainstorming and creating more innovations and systems to help around the farm, and really becoming stronger and more resilient.

  • By becoming more mentally efficient, I was in better health and wellness overall. The summers don’t seem quite as rough, because we already have everything planned and working well. I have more mental capacity to handle other matters, I’m well rested and hydrated because I’m not scurrying in a chaotic fashion across the field, and I am overall happier too.

  • At the end of the year, we actually were more profitable. While it may seem limiting to grow fewer flower varieties and focus on a niche, it helps to reduce the waste and mistakes that may happen with experimentation or spreading yourself too thin. We cast the net a bit less wide, and found that we were able to accumulate more steady sales because people knew what they were getting, and we were able to focus on creating a great product and great experience for them.

  • We were able to focus on the customer experience as well. When things are repetitive and predictable, it becomes second-nature - so we’re not struggling to harvest, condition, design or package our designs. This allows us to focus on answering customer questions, ensuring smooth transportation or pickup, doing follow-ups with larger accounts, and constantly communicating with our customers to ensure that they remain happy and even refer other customers to us.

You can see the cascade of advantages of finding your niche and not scattering yourself - it all kind of falls into place when you do so.

But what are some other advantages?

You’ll Develop an Organic branding

When you develop a niche, it’s inevitable that people are going to start categorizing and classifying you into a sort of brand or identity.

People love categorizing, and this is no exception - eventually you’re going to be known for something (hopefully something good and positive!) and the best way to have control and cultivate this is by creating a niche for yourself.

Let’s talk about the rose grower example again. Theoretically as well, you would become known as the local “rose expert” and word of mouth would likely spread regarding your high quality and rare roses, drawing attraction from customers (whether florists or direct retail) that gives you a sense of identity and branding.

Perhaps you could not only become an expert in cut flower roses, but also start niching down into all sorts of rose things - making soaps and soothing lotions and sugared rose petals and ecodyed hand towels and silk ribbon out of rose petals for added products.

Or perhaps you could become a local rose expert, offering consultation services for people (or businesses and institutions) who need help with taking care of their roses (or want to grow roses).

You see, branding doesn’t come from a logo or necessarily what you write on your mission statement or on your bio page, it comes from what it is that you do day in and day out and how you shape your business (through your actions and interests) over time.

If you become known as the rose person, you’ll gain a following from people who love what you do - and that’s where that organic branding comes from.

You Stop Competing with Others

Here’s the thing - I don’t have to worry about what the other growers in my area are doing.

We are all drastically different in terms of what grow, who we are, what our goals are, even how we grow our flowers that I don’t think we have much to overlap on besides the fact that we all grow flowers.

(I honestly think it’s so interesting that each grower develops a personality based on what they grow or don’t grow, to the extent that when scrolling on Instagram I can start identifying growers based off the content of their harvest buckets alone!)

But let’s say that I was also trying to grow for wholesale. Wholesale to florists to make it easier, which means that I would be selling the “raw” flowers to them so they can create designs to then sell to the retail customer.

Since I am working on a small scale, I could potentially supply a few florists with materials. That depends on the florists having weddings that fit with the materials that we’re growing and on their budget as well, but with the materials we grow it could be quite feasible.

So how does that factor into competition?

It doesn’t, because I’m only supplying a few florists. I’m supplying them with a very specific color palette (including our custom strain of zinnias in lovely soft pastel wedding colors) that they can’t get anywhere else, but even still there are dozens of florists and floral designers around town.

Even if I were to expand to five or six florists, it likely would still leave plenty of other florists around town that could be potential clients for other flower farmers.

Because I’m working on such a small scale with my growing space, I can’t possibly fulfill the demand for all the florists in our area - just the few that I have could potentially buy me out if they have a larger event that they’re designing for.

Another example - I could grow an entire 1/4 acre of ‘Peaches n Cream’ dahlias for florists, and I would likely still not be able to fulfill demand. Even if word got out that you could get fabulous dahlias from us consistently every week and demand rose, there would be a cap on how many dahlias I can harvest every week.

And this specific scenario would only happen because we decided to focus and grow our business with a very specific niche.

The good news is that there are TONS of niches that you can potentially focus on, including (but not limited to):

(Note: This doesn’t mean that other growers may not feel competition. We had a particularly nasty experience with a few local growers that felt we were edging in on their businesses. Which we were not, but be prepared to deal with that mindset as a small scale grower).

You’re Able to Pivot Quickly

“But wait!” you cry. “What happens if someone else comes and tries to replicate my niche?”

If imitation is the biggest form of flattery, then you have a lot of flattery going on in the flower farming world. And where one person succeeds, they will create dozens of people who are inspired and want to do the same thing - so you have a lot of other people following suit.

And if you’re worried about a large-scale grower coming in and swooping up your niche, let’s talk about that too. This happened to us - we were the only large scale grower of ‘Cafe au Lait’ dahlias for a few years before a larger grower started growing them on a scale that we couldn’t compete with.

But one of the advantages of being a small grower is the ability to pivot. So while they went all-in on Cafe au Laits, we simply shifted away and started experimenting with other dahlia varieties, including experimenting with growing single collarette and anemone varieties that our florist customers loved and worked tremendously well for our workshops (as well as being far more productive and easy to grow from seed) and we honestly never looked back.

If we were a larger farm that had gone all-in on Cafe au Lait dahlias, only to find that we were being outcompeted or they weren’t selling well anymore we would have a much harder time moving. Like a giant barge that is moving slowly but very forcefully in a specific direction, it requires so much work and momentum to switch course or gears - while the little tugboats are able to swim in circles around them.

My advice: be the tugboat.

And that’s whats wonderful about being smaller scale. You can change on a dime because it’s far less prohibitive to switch a 1/4 acre of growing space versus multiple acres of growing space. It’s also possible to switch your business model much more quickly and readily.

Especially throughout the quarantine/lockdown period, we found that we were able to pivot and adapt far more quickly to the changes in business as a small scale business compared to a larger one. And we still continue to do so to meet the needs of our market and business.







And that’s why niches are so important. And in today’s society, we are always expected to do everything but the reality is that in our society specialists are rewarded - while generalists tend to fare less well. But on a personal level, it makes so much more sense to focus on a niche to be able to delve into it more and give it the care that it truly deserves.

And at the end of the day, our customers come to us not just for the product that we have, but for who we are. What is our inspiration, what is our focus? How do they feel when interacting with us, how do they experience our product or service, and how do they feel when they remember us?

That is something that every business has, no matter their size and scale. And that is truly the impact that you have on your customer and with the community. And in the end, that is truly what matters.

I hope you found this useful. If you’re interested in reading more about small scale flower farming, here are a few blog posts you’ll be interested:

Why We Decided to Downsize Our Flower Farm

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