Moscow blooms City's flower market in bud

A rose is a rose, Gertrude Stein once said to illustrate her idea of literature in the Parisian avant-garde of the 1920s.


These days in Moscow roses are a booming business for private entrepreneurs willing to risk their capital on fickle taste, Uzbek export gangs, and a handful of flower-growing cooperative farms just outside the city.


But the literary lions who might have read Gertrude Stein shun roses. For them violets, narcissi, or forget-me-nots are a mark of taste. For Bolshoi artists and the fashion conscious, parrot tulips and tiger lilies are chic.


Bank chairmen and commodity-exchange bosses don't exactly scorn the rose. For their parties they order hundreds of long-stems in grand multicolored baskets. But for their offices and apartments their first choice is artificial flowers.


For Dmitry Gerasimuk, a former graduate of the Institute of Military Interpreters, professionalism in the flower business is not the same thing as art or style. He is the founder of Arista, one of Moscow's new retail florists, and a specialist in supplying flowers by telephone order.


For his business, the two imperatives are finding a reliable supplier of flowers and raising the profit margin.


"Perhaps people will be surprised at this", he said, "but if you know what flower you want and allow a few day's time fo order it, you can get almost anything here in Moscow -- even orchids".


The flower business, like all others, has been changing rapidly since January. At that point, Gerasimuk said, the traditional wholesale distributor of Moscow's flowers, Mostsvettorg, lost its monopoly. The retail outlets it had controlled were forced to find their own suppliers.


At the same time, the traditional sources of flowers were interrupted, especially during wintertime. Uzbekistan provides most of the roses and carnations that Muscovites like to buy during winter. Azerbaijan is also a major supplier. But taxes on flower shipments and transportation difficulties have made the southern suppliers less than reliable.


Prices have jumped, but so has the demand among Muscovites for greater variety in flowers. One estimate indicates that the price has gone from 8 rubles for a 1991 summer rose to 50 rubles for an Uzbek rose in January. Now, depending on size, color and freshness, the Uzbek stems can range from 50 to 150 rubles.


Most Muscovites buy their flowers from vendors plying the metro trade, who are in turn supplied by cooperatives. Uzbeks and Azerbaijanis control the larger volume trade at the main city markets.


The business of supplying flowers to the market and metro outlets is still controlled by the southerners, the cooperatives, and a successor organization to Mostsvettorg. Individual growers, including some very creative babushkas, also sell their flowers, though they prefer to set up their stands near the higher-class metro sta-tions and the cemeteries.


For an entrepreneur like Gerasimuk and his company, the optimum' strategy in the flower business today is to go after the higher profit margin to be earned from artificial flowers and from the larger volumes sold through company orders.


Arista negotiates regular contracts for fresh flowers with the cooperative horticultural farms in the Moscow region. There are eight main growers who produce most of their flowers under glass. But in the current market, a fresh Moscow-grown rose retails for 35 to 50 rubles. By comparison, an artificial rose sells for 50 to 200 rubles. A dried rose is about 70 rubles.


But Gerasimuk finds dried flowers in very short supply. Artificial flowers are imported, mostly from China, and they can be ordered quickly. Between placing an order with a trading company dealing with China and receiving the shipment, Gerasimuk said he usually waits from 2 to 4 weeks.


He started his business with his wife, a designer, a telephone receptionist and a delivery driver. He expanded to open a retail outlet in the Perovo district, which sells arrangements of artificial flowers, cut flowers, and a selection of potted leafy plants and violets.


His next move is to open a small factory for receiving shipments of artificial flowers and turning them into permanent wall and table decorations.


"You need more than one product line", Gerasimuk said, "and these days with inflation, people like to have something that lasts a longer time".


The rising banker likes nothing better, he said, than to show off a bonsai on his bookshelf, and a potted palm in his anteroom. Since he is so busy making money, the fact the plants don't need water is an asset Arista can charge for.