Mick, I would take my business off your barometer list. :-) Trust me.
There are subsidies and there are subsidies.

Keith, I would suggest it is not important if other people can make money
selling orchids, but only that you know how to determine if YOU can.
Knowing if you can involves knowing how to collect realistic data on
expenses and avenues to market and how to use a spreadsheet to show you
exactly how profitable or unprofitable each avenue to market is. Among the
many avenues to market you might identify are things like 'flasking' for
pay, shows, mail order, walk-in, internet, eBay and other auctions and lots
of other methods less obvious, like maybe traveling to societies meetings to
give lectures. Any of these can be avenues to income or additional expense
burdens depending on all types of numbers you need to estimate and collect
to feed into your spreadsheet. If you can lay out a spreadsheet and
honestly estimate costs and income needs, you can figure out how to make it
work and how to price your plants or at least why you can't or shouldn't try
any or all avenues you can identify.

Also, remember your own income needs and abilities. Know what your time Is
worth. This has to be one big area where people don't estimate/track
honestly. As Mick has suggested, in order for full time orchid growing to
keep him afloat, he has to determine if his business can support him and his
life AND judge if it can support him as well as other ways he has to make an
income. There is sometimes more to making this determination than what a
spreadsheet can tell you, but remember YOUR time is money. It is an
expenses the business must pay for.

Don't fool yourself that all you want to do is pay for the costs of your
hobby. By that I mean a business has its own costs and takes time away from
your hobby. You will be doing MUCH more than just growing plants to pay for
heating bills. Approach it as a business and honestly track your expenses
and time. One of the things I see people doing who say they are only trying
to pay for the hobby is under reporting to themselves the actual costs of
selling and running their business. You need every penny tracked in order
to know how to price. Don't price something at $25 just because others are
doing it, etc.... I think statements like, "If I include all the time I
spend doing shows and working out in the greenhouse then I wouldn't be
making any money." are silly, but I hear them all the time. It is either a
hobby or a business.

You need a certain asset base in order to even hope to make a projected
income. It is just not possible to make $10,000 a year with an asset base
of $100. There is a calculation out there somewhere that should help you
determine if your spreadsheet figures are possible or wishful thinking or
somewhere in between.

Knowledge of how to use a spreadsheet and knowledge of accounting and
bookkeeping are an asset you MUST have in your pocket unless you plan to pay
somebody for this expertise, which would make this knowledge an expense most
new businesses can't afford.

I am not sure I agree that the orchid industry is broken. I think it is
changing rapidly with unpredictable and unforeseen results and many tried
and true avenues to market no longer work as well as they did just a few
years ago. But I am not trying to present myself as somebody who has a clue
how to make it work. :-)

"Mick Fournier" wrote in message
.. .
Keith,

In real life I work for a large New York syndication as their project
executive building a $200,000,000 hotel in Fort Lauderdale. It pays good.

But, without this job I could not keep my business selling
orchids-in-flasks open for long. You almost have to get into selling
orchids for love of the hobby, because you won't get rich on the business.
No one can compete with the Chinese and Koreans who are buying up huge
tracts of land outside Orlando Florida to take over this industry on a
huge scale. I personally watch Krull Smith
http://www.krullsmith.com/
in Apopka near Orlando as my barometer... if they ever close shop then all
the smaller guys (left in America at least) selling orchids in outlet or
third-party centers better sell off their orchid stock and run for the
hills. I also watch Al's Orchid Greenhouse as my second barometer
http://www.orchidexchange.com/
Al Pickrel could write the book on growing a hobby into a real business.
You could learn a lot from him and Ray Barkalow above.

Land close to high population areas holding high sales potential is too
expensive to buy to justify growing just orchids. Orchid greenhouses need
to be out in the boonies with good ground water onsite that can be pumped
up and cheap electricity. When you are in that area then the cost of
transporting your orchid goods to market will eat your shorts after you
factor in additional driver/handling labor, insurance, workman's
compensation, and normal screw-ups killing your plants in transit.
Growing the orchids might be easy for you... but getting them into the
actual consumers hands (ie retail stores) along with the high costs of
constant marketing is a problem seriously impacting your profit amount.

Mick
www.OrchidFlask.com

=======================================

"Keith Kent" wrote in message
...
I know there are some growers/sellers here ,those of you that have turned
your hobby into a bussinnes i have a personel Q! Do you make enough
money(profit after running costs) from selling orchids for it to be the
only income?

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