The Bench Test: Working Out the Real Stem Price in an Auction Bunch
Photo: florist workbench with flower stems and bunches in auction warehouse, via easyweddings-wordpress.s3.amazonaws.com
Most auction lists are built to make bunches look cheap. A headline price of £4 or £5 has a nice ring to it, especially when you are buying volume for retail or a Saturday event. But bunches are not what you sell. You sell usable stems, and the gap between the two is where plenty of good-looking bids turn into expensive bench-filler.
The bench test is simple: before you bid, work out what each lot costs per stem you can actually use. Not per stem in the box. Not per bunch on the catalogue. Per stem that will make it into a jar, a hand-tie or a ceremony piece with enough life left to do the job.
Start with the stem count, not the bunch price
A bunch is a packaging unit, not a quality promise. Ten stems at £5 is 50p a stem on paper. Twenty stems at £7 is 35p. But if the ten-stem bunch arrives with two broken heads, one short stem and one blind bud, you are not buying ten stems. You are buying six usable ones, and that £5 bunch is suddenly 83p per usable stem. The twenty-stem bunch may still win, even at a higher headline price, if sixteen stems are clean and saleable at 44p each.
That is the waste-weight price. Every lot carries its own dead weight: stems that are damaged, undersized, off-grade, past their best, or simply not right for the job you had in mind. The trick is to make that dead weight visible before you commit.
Grade is a guide, not a guarantee
Auction grades help, but they are not a substitute for reading the notes and looking at the photos properly. Grade can tell you about stem length, head size and general condition, but it will not tell you whether a bunch is right for a tight wedding palette or a bucket of mixed retail bunches. A lower grade can be excellent value for market work and a false economy for event work, because event buyers are paying for consistency and timing as much as for stems.
Ask yourself what the grade means for your bench. If you need 60cm stems for a tall arrangement, a 40cm lot is not a bargain at any price. If you are making posies, shorter stems may be fine. If you are buying for a Saturday wedding, a lot that needs three days of conditioning is not the same product as a lot that is ready to sell on Friday.
The usable-stem formula
Use a rough formula, then adjust it with your own experience:
Usable-stem price = total lot cost ÷ usable stems
Usable stems = total stems × (1 - conditioning loss) × (1 - expected sell-through waste)
Total lot cost should include the hammer price, auction fees, delivery, and a sensible allowance for conditioning time. If you are doing a proper job, add in the cost of the stems you will throw away because they do not sell at full price. That last part is easy to ignore. It is also where mixed baskets can bite.
For example, a mixed basket of 100 stems at £35 looks like 35p a stem. But if 12 stems are damaged or off-grade, and another 15 are likely to be downgraded or unsold in a mixed retail bucket, your usable-stem price is closer to 48p. That is still fine if your retail bunches are priced with that waste in mind. It is not fine if you were comparing it with a clean 50-stem lot at 45p per usable stem and assumed the basket was cheaper.
Mixed baskets need a split test
Mixed baskets are where the waste-weight price really earns its keep. Do not average the whole basket and call it a day. Split it into the stems you can use for your main line, the stems you can use for secondary work, and the stems you will probably write off. A basket that is 60% good retail stock, 25% event filler and 15% waste is a different proposition from one that is 40% good, 40% filler and 20% waste.
For retail, the question is sell-through. Will the customer buy the bunch at full price, or will you be discounting it by Tuesday? For event work, the question is timing and consistency. Will the stems be open enough, closed enough, and uniform enough when they need to be? A cheap mixed basket can be brilliant for market buckets and a liability for a wedding arch.
Set a ceiling before the clock starts
Once you have a usable-stem price, set a ceiling and stick to it. The auction floor is designed to make you chase. The clock moves, the lot looks better than the one before, and suddenly you are bidding on the story rather than the stems. A ceiling based on usable stems keeps you honest. If the lot goes past it, let it go. There will be another lot, and the bench does not care how exciting the bidding felt.
A cheap bunch is only cheap if it earns its space. The bench test is not glamorous, but it is the difference between buying flowers and buying a problem with petals on it.
