As the end of the year approaches, the New Year's Eve flower market is also starting to flourish. As a new battlefield for flower consumption in recent years, e-commerce platforms such as Dingdong Maicai have successively launched various New Year's Eve flower products, and have made advance stocking plans for the Spring Festival period.
Buy flowers online, cheap and convenient platform. New Year's Eve flowers will sell 20 million branches
Passing through the flower street is the Chinese New Year. Buying New Year's Eve flowers is a traditional custom in southern China, but with the increasing diversity and convenience of channels for purchasing New Year's Eve flowers, many consumers in other regions are also accustomed to buying flowers to decorate the atmosphere during the Spring Festival.
Dingdong Maicai has been selling fresh flower products since November 2020 and is one of the early fresh food platforms to test the waters of fresh flowers. After going online, the business scale has been increasing year by year, from daily consumption of "buying vegetables with flower bundles" to gradually launching gift bouquets for major festivals. By 2024, the annual sales of Dingdong Maicai's fresh flowers will exceed 200 million.
Yu Shui, the project leader of Dingdong Flower, introduced that the Spring Festival is a major milestone for the platform's flower business. Seizing the trend of online flower consumption, the platform has continued to make efforts in the flower supply chain and the development of specialty products, and the sales of New Year's Eve flowers have grown rapidly in recent years. In addition to traditional New Year's Eve flowers such as Phalaenopsis, kumquat, and narcissus, there are also new flower materials with festive colors and long vase insertion periods such as Australian wintersweet and North American holly, which are popular during the Spring Festival.
Based on previous years' experience and big data predictions, Dingdong Maicai has already planned the stocking of the New Year's Eve flower series in advance. The sales of Australian wintersweet, North American holly, transit bamboo, and red willow are expected to increase significantly during the holiday season, and the stocking volume will reach more than 10 times the usual level. Yu Shui said that this year's New Year's Eve flowers have started selling, and the sales peak usually starts from the 23rd day of the twelfth lunar month (Northern Chinese New Year) and reaches its peak on New Year's Eve. Dingdong has also developed many new products for the Spring Festival in 2025. For example, Zhangzhou carved narcissus, retro purple Australian wintersweet, potted money tree, potted money seed, etc. On the whole, it is expected that the overall sales volume of this year's New Year's Eve flowers (from Christmas to Yuanxiao (Filled round balls made of glutinous rice-flour for Lantern Festival) Festival) will exceed 20 million, with a year-on-year growth of 50%.
Order based agriculture empowers upstream production areas, allowing villagers to cultivate a thriving lifestyle
Online New Year's Eve flower sales are booming, driven by the platform's continuous investment and cultivation in the fresh flower supply chain. In order to further strengthen the control of upstream quality, Dingdong Maicai chooses to enhance the competitiveness of fresh flower products through direct sourcing from the production area, order agriculture, and self built supply chains. At the same time, the close cooperation between production and sales continues to empower the upstream, not only bringing stable orders to the upstream and promoting the healthy development of the industry, but also helping practitioners in the production area to increase their income.
Recently, Yu Yong, a worker at the Weihai Colorful Flower Planting Base, has been in a good mood. He, who usually works as a farmer at home, has become a team leader since last year, leading several villagers to do the maintenance, sorting and processing of North American holly on the base. Without having to travel far, working at the doorstep every day, during the 3-4 month holly season, each villager can earn over 15000 yuan in income.
The Rainbow Flower Base is one of the direct harvesting bases for Dingdong to buy vegetables. Starting from 2021, both parties have initiated a cooperation in the harvesting and sales of North American holly branches. Zhang Yanmei, the market manager of the base, recalled that at that time, the offline channels of the base were more inclined towards large-sized products such as potted plants, but Dingdong's focus on urban homes and office scenes mainly helped the base promote the sales of products such as pruning.
In the process of cooperation and communication, we found that Dingdong is very good at product development and cultivating consumer mentality, "said Zhang Yanmei." Previously, North American holly was mainly cut flowers or potted plants with a size of 45cm or more. However, Dingdong Maicai has added a 35cm specification suitable for office and small family scenarios through consumer insights. Through their own supply chain processing capabilities, they have integrated holly into Christmas bouquets, helping us sell while also opening up new ideas for us
As the cooperation between the two parties gradually improves, the sales of holly in North America on the platform have doubled every year. Starting from 2024, Dingdong and Colorful will launch a contract agriculture cooperation, with the platform outputting flower material standards to the base, allowing upstream planning of labor and production in advance without worrying about price fluctuations and sales issues. The production area can focus more on improving the quality of flower materials. During the 24-25 season, Dingdong Maicai placed an order for 500000 North American holly branches in advance with the base, providing hundreds of relatively stable job opportunities for local farmers.
The base has orders, so we don't have to worry about sales. We come every day during the off-season, so we can earn a lot of money without delaying the Chinese New Year, "Yu Yong said." North American holly fruits are booming, and our lives are getting more and more prosperous