Lonely hearts may dread Valentine’s Day, but for some industries, February is boom time.
Cardies product manager Petra Marais said the chain definitely saw higher sales around Valentine’s Day. “Compared to the rest of the year, it’s anything from 20% to 25% higher.”
Marais said schoolchildren tend to buy gifts for between R20 and R30, but for customers over 30 “the value is almost endless; let’s say between R80 and R200”. She said it was difficult to say what the trend was, but the average gift was about R50. Cardies sells cards and soft toys, with some ranges exclusive to the chain.
Marais said Valentine’s Day was the second-most important holiday after Christmas for Cardies, ahead of Halloween, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and Easter.
Demand for red flowers soars in the week preceding Valentine’s Day, according to Jan Coetzee, a quality controller for Multiflora. Red roses — the universal symbol of love — sell for between R1,50 and R2 a stem during the year, “sometimes not even as much”, said Coetzee. This Tuesday, they reached R9,80 a stem at the Multiflora market. Many rose farmers grow flowers especially for this time of year.
Because buyers only want red roses and carnations, the prices for other flowers are not good at all, said Coetzee. Other holidays, such as Mother’s Day and Secretary’s Day, see demand increasing across the board.
Multiflora does not release sales figures, but Coetzee was prepared to say that Tuesday had seen its highest-ever one-day turnover since the market opened in 1945.
“The problem with economics is that you can’t repeat an experiment,” said Dawie Roodt, chief economist at the Efficient Group, explaining that it is difficult to research the effect of Valentine’s Day because it occurs every year and is never cancelled. It’s possible, he said, that Valentine’s Day expenditure, “such as the odd bottle of champagne”, would have been incurred anyway during the year.
“There will obviously be an impact on certain industries, but that’s small change if you look at the broader economy. Economic performance is always measured against a previous year, so there would be no change from that perspective,” Roodt said. February is also the start of the new school year, which probably has a bigger impact than Valentine’s Day, he said.
But there’s good news too. “People feel good and that’s just as important as actual spending in an economy. We don’t measure that in GDP figures, but it would give us a psychological advantage.”
But surely a psychological disadvantage from lonely, broken-hearted consumers would be just as likely?
“Maybe then, instead of the champagne, they’ll buy a bottle of brandy,” chuckled Roodt.