This is an interesting question , i'm selling phals to flower shops ,
and most of them are asking for white phals they need biiiiiiig flowers,
insane numbers of flowers on the stem and cheap price.
At this moment i'm trying to introduce new hybrids into their display (
like Everspring for example ) but the response is low when it comes to
spoted flowers.
The feedback i have from flowershop is the following :

- most peoples buy plants as a gift , and need something that "show off"
with long spray of big flowers ( "wow this must be expensive" effect )
- they buy white because, if gift, you can't go wrong with that color
since they don't know where the person that does receive the plant will
put it ( white matches a lot interieurs )
- peoples will not buy something that is too complicated , they assume
that a complicate flower design might need a complicate care program.
- untill today growers ( industrial ) focus on pink and white plants
because of the demand
- single color plants are more easy to sell when it comes to packing and
selling a lot ( more easy to grab 12 white / 12 pink than 12 similar
looking spoted plants to sell in cartons of 12 where all the plants have
to be less or more identical )
- big advantage of phals is the lenght of the flowers, even the worst
gardener will keep the plants blooming for at least one month ( while ,
for example with Cattleyas , 2 weeks seems to be an average, and don't
expect non orchid amateurs to buy plants at 30 $ that will only bloom
for 2 weeks )

It would be interesting to have feedback from other sellers , how they
try to introduce new plants in the market ( at this moment i'm trying to
introduce local European orchids as garden plants ... )

O.

Bacchae wrote:
Maybe I am just an uneducated bumpkin but why do there seem to
be so darned many white Phals out there? What are Phal
breeders hoping to achieve? Is it simply lip colour or are
they going for bigger and bigger flowers or more per stem or
what have you?

I don't mean to sound like I don't *like* white Phals (I have
two) but I am curious as to what people are trying to achieve
with them such that there seem to be so many that are just
barely different.


- Sandy