Shelves are empty and prices continue to rise.
"This season has been very challenging cause there is a shortage of flowers."
What used to cost 4 or 5 dollars has doubled in price. Making it difficult and more expensive for the consumer.
They are looking for the single leis cause you know graduation is about more quantity than quality. The goal is to get the leis up to here; so you don’t want to be spending 30 – 60 dollars a lei to get it up to the eyeballs."
And many order requests overwhelming lei makers are for those being shipped off island.
Mostly its locals wanting to ship to the mainland graduations and we are not capable of handling that kind of volume because we have to try to keep flowers in the store to sell."
"Been very limited cause we don’t know what we are getting in and once we get our orders we will say ok call back…and they have been really nice calling back. If we can fill it we will do our best to fill it."
And those who try to sell their local product to other local businesses are finding big competition from abroad.
" It looks like imitation maile, it looks real thick but doesn’t have the smell like what we picking like this lei."
"We thought we were going to come here and make some money but everyone is hurting now a days."
Lei makers say bad weather here and in other places including Thailand, where a lot of the orchids come from, have negatively impacted their product.
"Its been, I mean there’s not enough tuberose to go around and we just got to figure out what we got and put the smelly flower with the regular flower just do lots of different stuff to get everybody a fresh lei."
"And I heard now they are getting a little bit desperate that they are filling it in with plastic spacers."
See the original article at: KHON2 Local News
