S diplotricha punter #7
This is new. Where to start? We’ve just finished (or are about to) a major redesign of our website, which includes this blog. We also changed servers, moved to another host, and added a shopping cart, among other things. It got me to thinking how much the hobby, and my part in it, has changed over this time. (The plant shown at left is the first Saintpaulia species I grew, and still one of my favorites–appropriate, I think for the nature of this post).
Back in the early 70′s when I first started growing plants, violets, and violet societies, were still in the late stages of their golden age. There were plenty of hybridizers, commercial sellers, and serious growers. Back then, the local violet club would be concerned about finding meeting rooms large enough! Of course, many of those at the meetings were there more to socialize, and most were women, actually, ‘housewives’–a species now nearly extinct. Back then, I was the oddity–the only man in a room full of women, nearly all of whom 20 years or more older than me.
What made me want to go to a meeting anyway? New plants for my collection! A few of the members with larger collections would order from some of the many commercial growers and hybridizers, or travel to their greenhouses to get the latest varieties. I wanted to be first in line to collect the ‘left-overs’, or beg for a leaf, or use my status as only ‘young man’, and new member, in the room to my advantage. I also wanted to learn everything I could from people I figured knew a lot more than me about these wonderful plants.
Ten years later, I was a veteran, of sorts. I had begun to exhibit, and actually win. Back then, it really meant something. People were serious about growing showplants. 400 or more entries in our local show wasn’t unheard of and, unlike today, most of those were large standards. I can’t describe the awe I felt when I attended my first AVSA convention show at the old Syracuse Hotel in 1982. Just after that, I started to hybridize, had my first decent hybrids by 1985, and began selling them, part-time. I entered my first commercial display table that year, in Orlando, travelling 2 days by train to get there. Looking back, this show marked the end of an era. I took 3rd place that year. Not noteworthy, until you consider that there were 12 (yes twelve!) commercial displays at that show. No show since has even approached this number. By the mid ’80′s the hobby had begun to change, and the market for ‘hobby’ violets had begun to shrink to the point that it could no longer support the number of profitable commercial growers that it had.
What happened? A number of things. African violets had lost, or begun to lose, their status as ‘special’. They were no longer something people had to search for, and cherish once they were found. Blame this on the ubiquity of the mass-produced violets–the Rhapsodies, Melodies, Optimaras, and the like. I once could find the latest Granger (remember them?) varieties at the local Woolworth (remember them?). With the coming of Holtkamp, and Wal-Mart, there was no longer a market for such varieties. Stores could make a bigger profit on the mass-produced plants, and since they were so cheap, could treat them as a disposable, easily restockable, impulse-purchase, product. Growers like Grangers, and others, who produced specialty varieties, at necessarily greater cost, no longer could profitably compete.
Of course, it’s not that simple, and Holtkamp isn’t entirely to blame (and I don’t mean to). As I mentioned, ‘housewives’ became extinct, or at least much more rare. No longer could women afford to choose a hobby over a career. With the disappearance of these women came the disappearance of the ‘weekday afternoon’ violet clubs–common then, very rare now (one positive side effect is that the hobby became more ‘man friendly’). As a ‘common’ man’s hobby, African violets will always lose in the trade-off between disposable income and disposable time. Now having more of the former didn’t translate into more people buying and growing violets–they never had been priced out of the means of most people. Having less disposable time, though, did have an adverse effect. Less time to research catalogs for the latest varieties, attend to plants, and attend meetings. As time became less disposable, violets became more so. Violets became something to be purchased on an impulse, grown as long as time and interest allowed, then disposed of–an indoor ‘annual’, so to speak.
Having already been forced to change, this evolution was accelerated further with the tremendous changes in information technology of the late ’80′s and early ’90′s. Up until that time, societies still served an important function–information. With the exception of a few, out of print, books at the local library, the local club was the only place where an interested grower could acquire reasonably accurate, up to date, information on care and varieites. Once that information, and the knowledge of most every grower on the planet, became easily accessible via the internet, societies themselves became expendable. In other ways, though, it brought the hobby to everyone, and presented new opportunities for the commercial growers and hybridizers that remained.
Why on earth, then, did I decide to choose selling violets as a career? Easy. It’s what I love to do. It’s what I was meant to do. It’s what I’m good at. It’s introduced me to most of my current friends. It’s introduced me to the one person I would have never met otherwise, Olive, with whom I can spend the rest of my life with, doing what we both love to do. I’m one of those extremely rare people who can’t, and won’t, complain about the grass being ‘greener’ elsewhere.
I guess, at this point, you could call me successful, if we define success as being able to make a modest living doing what he wants to do. Some of this was by design. A background in business and economics (a college professor) helped. Absorbing almost everything I could from fellow growers, exhibitors, and hybridizers, helped more. Spending most every spare dollar and free day attending and travelling to meetings, shows, and conventions helped to. Not knowing any better, or choosing to ignore it (the prospect of personal bankruptcy) probably helped the most. When you want something bad enough, you take greater risks.
Good fortune and wise decisions, at the right time, probably made the difference, though. The first of these is simply deciding to do it, taking the leap when I was young enough, and ambitious enough, to do so. Career changes are easier when one hasn’t invested time in one, and hasn’t the financial and ethical obligations of raising and supporting a family as an older adult. Living in poverty is surprisingly easy when one is young–it is a relative term that used once one has survived it and been spoiled by a better life. The second was deciding to move to Naples in early 1992, into a century-old barn, where ‘Rob’s Mini-o-lets’ would become ‘The Violet Barn’. This meant being able to grow tens of thousands of plants, not merely the thousands that I could in the basement of the house I was renting at the time. Growing them doesn’t mean selling them, though. More good fortune, and wise thinking, was launching our web-site just afterwards–nearer the beginning of the internet revolution, rather than having to catch up later. What began as a small business getting checks in the mail from ‘little old ladies’ became instant shopping and payment online.
By 1997, the business had grown beyond a one-man operation. This was the first year to actually turn a real profit. I could begin to pay off my debt and hire some help. Then the best stroke of luck. Meeting Olive (actually she chose to meet me), somebody who shared my passion, and not being foolish enough not to marry her–after 6 months of mostly internet and phone courting (3 weeks of which actually spent together), and a 9-day engagement. Wednesday will mark 13 years together, most every day of which we spend together with our plants. Things could be better, as it could be for most everybody in today’s world. Things have changed a lot in nearly 40 years. I’ll the the last to complain.
…Rob
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