Rather than another tour of the many cultural and religious sites of Quito, Ecuador, we woke up bright and early once again. But this time, it was an hour and a half long bus ride to visit a rose farm and company called Casanto Miray. First, we visited the farms where they grow the roses, then we visited the separate packaging site where they prepare the roses for export to other countries. We spoke with two different employees of the family business and got to see first-hand many of the supply chain aspects and challenges that we’ve learned about this past semester.

At the production site, Ruth gave us a very detailed lecture on how complex the rose industry can be, not only tying in what we’ve learned about in our Plus3 pre-travel components but also many of the topics covered in the first-year business course Managing in Complex Environments. With the rose industry being so international yet all coming from one place, this one company has to manage not only the tastes and preferences of many different countries, but also how their clients have changed over time due to political issues.

One thing that was interesting but maybe not surprising was that the United States tends to buy roses with more bright, neon colors while countries like Russia buy more neutral, natural colors like white and red. This can bring up issues with the recent wars in Russia, as they now have produced flowers that are not being sold to their typical clients. They’re able to dye the flowers at the farm any type of color for any type of market. And all types of clients exist in the flower industry. They do big and small orders, and any type of custom orders. Surprisingly, a popular holiday for an increase in flower sales is Halloween! They showed us an awesome photo of a custom flower they designed for a client in which the rose bud resembled a pumpkin carving! And a funny example that Jorge Luis shared is that they can dye “black roses for emos”. Maybe I’ll try to find a black rose at the florist once I’m back in the United States!