About thirty years ago while studying horticulture at the University of Hawaii, a group of Thai students struck upon an interesting idea: Why not use the cheap land and labor of their native Thailand to cash in on an old
About thirty years ago while studying horticulture at the University of Hawaii, a group of Thai students struck upon an interesting idea: Why not use the cheap land and labor of their native Thailand to cash in on an old Hawaiian tradition, the flower lei?
The students took back 34 dendrobium orchid varieties and hybridized them to produce plants that give big blooms all year around. Today, Thailand is flooding the market with cheap flowers and leis.
“It was their time,” says Eric Tanouye, an orchid farmer and vice-president of the Hawai‘i Tropical Flower Council. “We should learn a lesson from them. They saw the niche and went for it.”
The flower lei, born centuries ago in the warm cultures of Polynesia, is today a symbol of welcome worldwide. The lei industry is conservatively estimated at $40 million a year.
In Honolulu’s Chinatown – the epicenter for flower lei making in the state – few leis are purely Hawai‘i‘ian. Indeed, many of the area’s lei makers, themselves recent immigrants, string orchids from Thailand, carnations from South America and California, plumeria from Florida and pikake from the Philippines. And many of the finished leis are exported or sent to the neighbor islands like Kaua‘i to meet demand.
A growing demand for cheap flowers is overshadowing traditional Hawaiian leis while siphoning off profits from local growers.
Even in Hawaii, the birthplace of the lei, Thai orchids seem to be everywhere – on passengers departing cruise ships, around the necks of local politicians, garnishing tropical drinks and dinner plates, and even being handed out hula shows. While fine for garnishes, the orchid’s lack of smell has prompted a call for a shift back to the fragrant flowers that started it all in the first place – plumeria, tuberose and pikake. “What do tourists remember about Hawai‘i‘i? The smell of the leis,” says Kaipo Machado, owner of Leis of Hawaii.
But at 3.5 cents a bloom vs. 5.5 cents for Hawai’i-grown orchid blooms and even more for fragrant or specialty flowers, imported Thai blossoms help meet a big demand for leis.
If supply makes Thai orchids plentiful and cheap, international law makes them ubiquitous.
The orchids are protected by international shipping agreements that allow them to go virtually unhindered through ports around the globe.
It’s hard to quantify the impact that imported Thai products have on Hawaii’s industry. Thailand supplies about 75 percent of the orchid plants and blossoms in the United States, according to Greg Braun, owner of Asia Pacific Flowers in Puna on the Big Island. Some 46 million plants, blossoms and leis – lumped together by federal inspectors as “floral products” – entered Honolulu alone last year, with an estimated street value of $8.5 million.
At least 15,000 acres of orchids are under cultivation in Thailand – five times the acreage of all flowers grown in Hawaii. Orchid farms here can generate up to $100,00 per acre – a high figure – but not good enough to compete with the land-rich Thais.
But if you can’t beat them, join them. That’s what the plant and flower growers here have done by importing and themselves growing Thai orchid varieties.
Consequently, the Thai orchid has been literally grafted into Hawaii’s lei industry, even as shipped direct from Thailand continue to fill gaps in demand.
“You might consider nearly all orchids on the lei stands Thai orchids,” Tanouye says.
Hawaii’s total floriculture industry (which includes everything from flowers for lei, sprays, mushrooms, and all nursery and greenhouse crops) was valued at $75 million in 1999, climbed to $83.4 million in 2000, $88 million in 2001, and $92 million in 2002.
Almost half of Hawaii’s total lei flower supply last year was imported and only $4 million came from locally grown lei flowers, mostly high-value tuberose, pikake and plumeria. Demand for those fragrant blooms has seen steady growth: up 14 percent between 1998 and 1999, and another 20 percent between 2000 and 2002. It looks like those traditional, fragrant lei flowers are making a comeback. “There’s been a kind of renaissance with the plumeria lei,” says Peter Fithian, president of Greeters of Hawaii. “Back in the 1950s, hotels would give plumeria leis to their guests, and passengers arriving on ships got them. Today, that tradition is returning in the hotel business, but not very much with the ships.” Local Kaua‘i lei makers, however, have noticed a jump in the demand for plumerias, particularly since the steady arrival of Norwegian Cruiseline ship Pride of Aloha.
“We get a lot of orders for the cruise ships for plumeria,” says Val Takiguchi of Flowers Forever in Lihue. “But plumeria are seasonal. So we often get big orders shipped in from places like Molokai.”
Greeting companies, the primary force behind the marketing of Hawaii as the lei capital of the world, are insisting on using only locally grown and made leis.
Still, while plumeria, pikake and tuberose are cheap in season, Thai orchids are cheap year around, reminds Leis of Hawaii’s Machado.
“Plumeria can compete in price some of the time, but we have to get them from our Florida suppliers in the off-season,” he says. Of Hawaii’s 718 plant and flower farms, only a handful grow lei blossoms. That’s because the plant and flower industry here, like their Thai relatives, are geared for the export of whole plants and sprays, which can retail for twice as much on the Mainland, and upwards of $13 per plant and $5 per spray bunch locally.
Mike Inouye, president of the Hawaii Tropical Flower Council, estimates that roughly 90 percent of Hawaii’s flower growers export to wholesalers in the Mainland and Asia.
“The lei blossom industry here is a sideline of the cut flower and spray industry,” says Braun. “Now what’s happened is you have mostly large exporters like myself who ship a million cut flower sprays per year. The rejects and off grades become lei blossoms.”
Supply, then, becomes a major problem during demand spikes and the busy season when Hawaii’s flower suppliers and lei makers are particularly dependent upon imports.
The Hawai‘i‘i Visitors and Convention Bureau’s May Day promotions in 2002 required some 30,000 mixed leis to be distributed among 17 cities around the world. The HVCB had six weeks to pull it together, “exhausting what was available here,” Fithian says.
The result was that about 40 percent of the leis reportedly were made with foreign flowers. “Thailand orchids were the only flowers allowed into places like New Zealand and Australia,” says Fithian. The HVCB got a deal, too, because, after factoring in labor costs, Thai leis were a bargain at about $1.50 per lei compared to $3 per lei for Thai orchid leis made in Hawaii. Prices could be less if leis are shipped in bulk direct to the buyer. The mainstay of Hawaii’s lei industry continues to be special events during the busy March through June season – such as graduation and Mother’s Day – when lei and flower stands around the state throb with activity. Growers, distributors and lei makers agree that imported flowers are imperative to the survival of Hawaii’s lei industry. But the prevalence of the Thai orchid has some here wanting a piece of the action.
“I don’t care about Thai orchids coming in,” says Harold Goo Sun, owner of Kapena’s Leis on Oahu. “They are here to stay. I think the real problem is that some leis are coming in already made. They should send in the loose blossoms and allow us to make them here.”
The state plans to promote sometime in 2005 a grown-in- Hawaii label for leis and other products, including macadamia nuts and coffee, according to Calvin Lee with state Agriculture Department. When it happens, it could help redirect demand for authentic leis and bolster the local industry. But some see this as counterproductive.
“What we should be doing is going out into the world and being good learners just like the Thais were good students,” says Tanouye.
Meanwhile, Hawaii’s lei industry remains a victim of its own success. Until the market generates the necessary incentive for growers to push for new strains, technological advances and niches, Hawaii’s lei industry will remain dependent on the inventiveness of others who will continue to profit from Hawaii’s symbol of aloha.
