Our supplier, Pat Riccardi, has been a stalwart supporter of our annual Holiday Wreath Project, and this year was no exception. At the planning stage, we were not sure how many wreaths we should order. We were limiting sales of fully decorated wreaths, but we didn’t know if our customer base from 2019 would return, whether people had found alternatives and moved on to new suppliers (one actually did email to say he had ordered from LL Bean thinking we weren’t back in business but promised to return next year), or if inflation might create a general cutting back of non essential purchases. As it turned out, we did have quite a few leftover wreaths, and on Thursday were able to return those bundles we hadn’t untied. Pat reported he had sold all the wreaths we returned by Thursday afternoon! There were such supply and quality issues this year that there hadn’t been a 12″ base wreath in the flower market for three weeks. He had hidden ours in a truck at the Flower Market protecting them from marauders until our delivery date.
The wreaths are made in small shops around Canada, and he purchases them from an aggregator for different suppliers, which accounts for the differences in sizes of some, and how tight, full, or loose some are as compared to others. Up until this year we assumed the wreaths all came from one source. Pat’s attention to detail and protectiveness underlines the advantage of dealing with one person for over twenty years. We thank you, Pat.
