You're reading: Holidays of love help retailers rake in cash

For card makers, Valentine’s Day (Feb. 14) and Women’s Day (March 8 – men, forget at your peril!) are big holidays indeed.

Top it up with Men’s Day (Defenders of the Fatherland – Feb. 23) and you get sales of 30 million cards in a nation of 46 million, says Larysa Gorchakova of Svit Pozdorovlen, a Zaporizhya-based company that prints greeting cards.

The generous giving of candy, flowers and cards have made the early spring season somewhat of a favorite with businesses that come to expect a thaw in the sales around this time.

For flower sellers, the hottest day is about to arrive. Ukrainians spend about Hr 500 million on flowers on the eve of March 8. Oleksandr Koshelyuk, head of marketing at Kamelia wholesale flowers company, says that the highest demand is for spring blooms – tulips, daffodils, mimosa and irises.

According to Institute of Sociology research, 35 percent of Ukrainian men plan on buying flowers for March 8, as they consider it the main attribute of the holiday. That’s more than seven million people.
However, sociologists don’t know how much Ukrainians spend on gifts during this early spring season.

For card sales, March 8 is second only to Valentine’s Day. “Western Ukraine does not celebrate it [March 8], they celebrate Mother’s Day later instead,” says Gorchakova. She says that out of 60 million cards sold in Ukraine annually, a third goes on Feb. 13-14.

“Valentine’s Day is the second best time after New Year’s for those in this business as people buy heart-shaped cards of all type,” says Gorchakova, whose greeting card company is one of the biggest in this market.

The sale of chocolate surges twice – on Valentine’s Day and before March 8.

– says Roman Babet, deputy head of AVK

However, the card business has been in slow decline over the years as people get more used to the Internet, sending free digital cards instead of paper ones.

“The crisis has also affected us, since many companies cut their expenses even on cards and decided to congratulate their clients and employees digitally,” says Gorchakova.

Confectionery companies, however, don’t have that problem, hoping for sweet sales in March.

“The sale of chocolate surges twice – on Valentine’s Day and before March 8,” says Roman Babet, deputy head of AVK, one of the largest confectioneries with factories churning out sweets in Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Luhansk and Mukacheve.

“Women’s Day is definitely a much better season for sweets, as people buy them for their relatives, friends, and colleagues – not just for their spouse or girlfriend or boyfriend,” he says.

Babet says that tying sales figures to specific holidays is hard to do, since many people stock up on sweets. They often fear a price hike before holidays.

That fear certainly comes true with flowers: two days before Valentine’s Day, flowers doubled in price this year. Wholesalers claim that their holiday mark-up was 50 percent, while the rest went into the retailers’ pockets.

In the city center, a single long stem rose grown locally was sold for Hr 30, a Dutch rose – Hr 50, and tulips were Hr 20 each. Prices are expected to get even higher right before the March 8 hysteria starts.
But traditional presents like flowers, candies and cards have also been giving way to original presents whose share is growing each year.

In the West, people often choose presents that take effort, and are special – like a home-cooked meal, cake, handmade cards and the like.

– says Alena Tokar, marketing manager at Story magazine.

Sales of original presents though specialized website originaloff.com.ua crept up 10 percent in the first months of 2012, compared to last year.

Ukrainians have also picked up on the global trend of buying certificates for services at Pokupon and Groupon companies that arrived in 2010.

This February’s hits were certificates for movies, hair treatment, visits to urologist and gynecologist in private clinics, blocks of “Love is” chewing gum and soap-making classes.

A sales manager at originaloff.com.ua also said that “handcuffs, heart shaped hot air paper balloons and sex bells – a colorful bell with ‘sex’ written on it – were the hits of this Valentine’s Day.”

As good as Valentine’s Day and Women’s Day are, this retailer said that the biggest surge of demand for original presents is Feb. 23, when Ukraine celebrates the Defender of Fatherland Day. Flasks of all colors and shapes were the most popular choice.

But marketing specialists are still unimpressed, saying that Ukrainians are too materialistic and lack creativity.

“In the West, people often choose presents that take effort, and are special – like a home-cooked meal, cake, handmade cards and the like,” says Alena Tokar, marketing manager at Story magazine.

“Ukrainians are rather lazy and few are able to make an effort like that, since it is much easier to just buy something and get it off your back.”

Marketing, not love, is the real driving force behind these holidays, Tokar says. They “are created or sustained by marketing. Valentine’s Day came to Ukraine just five or six years ago, and is very fashionable now,” she said.

“As far as March 8 goes, it was heavily promoted by the state in Soviet times, and now by marketing.”

But that is not likely to stop millions of men from queuing for flowers come March 8.

Kyiv Post staff writer Svitlana Tuchynska can be reached at [email protected]