Hard Sell for an Easy Rose

Chris Beytes

The rose
A third-generation nurseryman (who also trained as an architect), Anthony’s tap-dance routine started in 1989, when, at his parents’ 50th anniversary party, his Canadian uncles, also in the business, told him about a new rose, Heidetraum, from German breeder Werner Noack, that was the most floriferous, care-free and disease-free they’d ever seen. Intrigued, Anthony said it would be a shame for such a plant to be handled in the usual way: introduced to much fanfare, and then forgotten the next season as growers clamored for the next new variety. He outlined a branding idea to his uncles that was so inspiring, they said, “Why don’t you do it?”

Anthony spent the next two years traveling to Europe to observe this new rose, in every season, to see for himself if it really was as good as was claimed. It was.

The brand
Next, having given Heidetraum a much better trade name, he designed Flower Carpet’s brand packaging: a pink pot that was just different enough to stand out from all the black, green and terra cotta pots in garden centers. A gold-foil booklet tag atop a patented clip-on stake would flutter in the breeze to capture even more attention.

In 1992, he launched Flower Carpet to the Australian industry. Unfortunately, Australian growers didn’t share his branding vision.

“There was a lot of negativity,” he recalls. “They’d say, ‘You can’t put a plant in a pink pot.’ I’d say, ‘Why not?’ They’d reply, ‘Well, we normally do it in terra cotta or black or green and that’s it.”

One of Australia’s largest retail nurseries wanted to order 30,000 roses. “But if they’re in pink pots, I’m cancelling my order,” Anthony was told.

“That was a big order at that stage,” he recalled. “What do we do?” He decided to stick by his guns and insist on the pink pots. The customer cancelled the order.

“He came back to me a year later and said, ‘That was the stupidest decision I’ve ever made in my marketing career, not to stick with the pink pots.’”

Next came New Zealand, then South Africa, England, Holland, Germany and Switzerland. The Dutch growers loved the branded rose and wanted it. Anthony said fine, but told them they had to raise their wholesale price by about 80% over standard roses.

“Tap-dancing on thin ice.” That’s what Anthony Tesselaar calls the delicate art of convincing a skeptical plant-growing industry that consumers will pay more for a plant that performs … and that such plants should be branded to make them stand out in the marketplace, and will cost more because of it.

“I had to convince growers that female consumers weren’t buying on price, they were buying on what they thought was value for money,” says Anthony of Flower Carpet’s early days. “I’d ask [a grower], has your wife ever walked into a shoe shop and bought the cheapest pair of shoes? ‘Never,’ they reply. Well, this is what we’re trying to do with Flower Carpet.”

Plowing new ground is never easy. Anthony found that out through the 100-hour workweeks and many hundreds of thousands of air miles he traveled, convincing growers around the world that Flower Carpet was different enough and good enough to command a higher price … and that its pink pot and gold-foil booklet label were essential to the success of the whole package. But it paid off: To date, consumers have bought 80 million Flower Carpet Roses, and they keep coming back for more.

 “They just laughed and laughed and said you can’t do that,” Anthony recalls. “This whole industry is run by men who only think of the [production] mechanics and the price, whereas women are all about the value,” he says. “So we always have this conflict between the men in the industry and the women who are our
consumers.”

In the end, they relented and agreed to Anthony’s wholesale selling price. They sold 100,000 roses the first year. Compare that to unbranded Heidetraum, of which the Dutch sold perhaps 20,000 roses per year, and at an 80% lower price point.

Still going strong
Anthony may have put in the hours and the miles, but he credits Flower Carpet’s success to Flower Carpet itself—it truly is an amazing plant that delivers on the promise of lots of reward for almost no work. Says Associated Press garden writer and photographer Dean Fosdick: “It has been my experience that you can’t beat the Flower Carpets for hands-off landscaping and long-term color.”

At Anthony Tesselaar International in Silvan, Australia, Flower Carpet roses planted in their trial gardens in 1990 still thrive. They get pruned back to the ground some years, or not at all in others. This summer, a visiting rose grower commented, “They look just like new, young, vigorous plants.”

Which makes Anthony’s job all that much harder. How do you top Flower Carpet? More colors, of course (now there are 10) and advanced genetics. But finding other crops equal to Flower Carpet is challenging. In 20 years, Anthony Tesselaar International has introduced just 13, including Tropicana Canna, Volcano Phlox and Bonfire Begonia. Many, many others haven’t made the cut. They spent six years testing a blue rose at six trial sites around the world, only to reject it. They spent many years evaluating a clematis that Anthony says was “phenomenal” for a month—but ugly for the other 11. He finally yanked it out of the trial garden.

“That’s the tough bit about finding exceptional plants,” says Anthony. “Every breeder is rushing to introduce new varieties, rather than looking for exceptional varieties that will stand the test of time. Varieties that perform not just today, not just tomorrow, but for a long time. We don’t have thousands of plants because this is our philosophy: distinctively different plants that look good in the garden for a long time.” GP