Decorative plant rental business is blooming

By Sri Wahyuni

JAKARTA (JP): Starting a business doesn't always require lots of capital.

Take two entrepreneurs, Mauritius L. Budi and Iin Hasim, catering to the promising markets of decorative plant rentals and floral arrangements.

Budi, art director and owner of Maurist Florist in Kebayoran Lama, South Jakarta, started to make a business out of his hobby in 1986.

He had just Rp 2 million to set up his firm. Today, he has about 5,000 palms and phylodendrum palms for rent. Two thousand are in pots -- half of these are rented out, and the remainder are on hand for their replacement. The rest of the palms grow at his 6,000-square-meter plantation.

"Palms and phylodendrums are chosen because of their endurance," Budi explained.

Iin Hasim went into business with a few dozen potted plants from her own collection in 1976.

Now she owns PT Inkarla, a company with two nurseries in Cilember and Cibodas, both in the Puncak mountain area in West Java, and an agrotourism resort in Cibodas.

The nurseries supply orders to Jakarta.

For its separate floral arrangement business, Inkarla needs at least 200 bunches of flowers daily during weekdays, and three times that number during weekends. The bunches are priced at Rp 7,500 each.

Peak demand occurs during celebrations such as Idul Fitri, Christmas or Valentine's Day. The amount can triple at those times.

These figures exclude the plants needed for the rent-a-plant business, which caters to around 100 high-rise offices.

Inkarla's biggest customer is the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Cengkareng, which rents no fewer than 3,000 pots a day. The airport is also one of Inkarla's oldest customers.

The average monthly rental is between Rp 10,000 and Rp 15,000 per unit, "but there are also other factors which can make it lower or higher," Iin Hasim said.

The location of the customer's site is important. Rates are lower for customers in Inkarla's primary business areas of Jl. H.R. Rasuna Said, Jl. M.H. Thamrin, Jl. Jend. Sudirman, Jl. Gatot Subroto, Cengkareng, Cililitan and Kota.

Also affecting the price are the number of rented plants and the species of plants requested.

"The more pots the customers rent, the cheaper the rental price is," she says. "The more exclusive the plants rented, the more expensive the price."

Except for those specially rented to the airport, all of Inkarla's plants are grown hydroponically, with pumice as the medium. Although the hydroponic system using wet sand and peat as the nutrient solution instead of soil may sound more complicated, Iin Hasim says she prefers it over conventional methods.

"It's more practical for us," she said, adding that maintenance of the plants was efficient.

"We don't have to go to customers everyday just to water the plants. All we have to do is control the water level in each pot once a week."

She said customers also prefer this system because they are not continually disturbed by workers tending to the plants.

"That is why most customers prefer to rent the hydroponic plants, even those rental rates are usually higher than the conventional ones," she added.

Maurist Florist does not use hydroponics because of a lack of expertise, according to Budi.

He says he has to change the soil in the plants once every three months. Watering and maintenance are done once in three days. Every 10 days, he replaces the plants with fresh ones. The old plants are replanted at the plantation.

Offering about 1,000 pots for rent, Budi has a monthly gross earning of around Rp 15 million. This excludes his earnings from the sale of floral arrangements, whose prices range between Rp 50,000 and Rp 500,000 each.

The price of the floral arrangement is dependent on a number of variables. The most important is how much the customer actually wants done in the arrangement and the ability of the florist to fulfill the request, he says.

"This business requires a touch of art," Budi said. "As a businessman in this field, we have to be able to read messages well and formulate them properly through the floral arrangement. What we sell is not just flowers, but messages."

Adhering to this principle has brought the company an annual sales increase of 15 percent, he said.