Tulips are a dime a dozen here, literally. A lot of the time they are free at the stores. Seriously. The common tulips at big box stores are often a few bucks per bag with a mail in rebate equal to the purchase price.

If you want to make money with tulips in the US market then forget about organics, nobody cares about organics for tulips or any other strictly ornamental, takes care of itself plant. It's just a bulb after all and if one wishes to be organic they will grow that bulb out organically. Nobody is gonna eat it so who cares if it was grown in plutonium before we got it?

If you want to make money with tulips in the US then you need to grow unique or hard to find varieties that have particularly striking colors or patterns. That is what gets the money here, not how they were grown.

If you are going to offer common tulips then you have to compete on price and the current rate for common tulips is free to next to nothing.

One thing that might get people to pay a premium for organic bulbs is that the bulbs were grown with minimum disturbance/pollution/'evil inputs', as compared to chemical fertilizers, fungicides, etc. BUT most people, especially for something that they are going to grow on, as they want to (organicly or conventionally) for flowers in the next spring, rather than something that they have immediate contact with, like cut flowers, aren't willing to make the "sacrifice". While Europe may be ahead of the USA in public awareness and actions, so far, most Americans aren't that concerned - for food, maybe, but not bulbs. I wish it were different.... Good luck with your project.

Thank you for your insights. I am laughing as I write because I suspected this may be the case. I also posted this on another forum and I had a reply basically saying 'what is organic & eco-friendly about transporting a bulb 1000's of miles'. They make a good point and so do both of your replies.

Thanks again, I think I am beginning to realise that the USA market is not going to take off (or grow - forgive the pun).

cheers

Phil

The thing against your making a killing in the USA Bulb Market isn't so much the organic thing, except peripherally - it's the ecomomies of scale. The larger percentage of tulip bulbs sold in the USA come from Holland and are grown conventionally, but the growers/inporters deal in bulbs by the thousands, if not the hundreds of thousands. They can afford to buy, sell and ship bulbs for a whole lot less money than you can afford to do it, especially organicly. While I just read an article that says the inputs are less expensive and the return is greater growing crops organicly in developing countries, Holland isn't developing - only your business plan is! I don't know about organic costs (fertilizers, etc.) and regulations in Holland/the EU, but I'll bet they aren't cheap!

Please do let us know what you eventually decide to do for your project, and good luck with it.