It is almost never the flowers. It is the glass, the corrugated, the cellophane and the ribbon — and the wedding you quoted in March is still being delivered at March’s price.
In force since 8 September · what hit florists
Canada’s counter-tariffs on US goods reach a flower shop through the hard goods rather than the stems:
- Glass containers — at 50% — vases, cylinders, cubes, bud vases, votives
- Corrugated cartons, boxes and cases — at 50% — shippers, gift boxes, hat boxes, delivery trays
- Plastic sacks, bags, tableware and kitchenware — at 50% — sleeves, cellophane, liners, bouquet bags
- Clothing, textiles and protective garments — at 50% — ribbon, burlap, netting, aprons
- Paper and pulp products — at 50% — tissue, kraft wrap, envelopes, enclosure cards
None of this is coming. It arrived. The counter-tariffs came into force on 8 September, they cover more than 700 US products and $27.6 billion of imports at rates of 15%, 25% and 50%, and they are already inside your wholesaler’s price list. Goods that were in transit on 8 September were not caught, which is why the first invoices after the date looked normal and the next ones did not.
The stems run the other direction. The US Section 338 measure has been in force since 22 August 2026 at a flat 50%, it covers roughly $28 billion of Canadian exports, and cut flowers are confirmed on the list — so any Canadian grower shipping stems south is caught, and CUSMA does not exempt captured goods. The list is 554 specific tariff subheadings, not categories. Customs advisers keep giving the same instruction: screen by code, not by category. A product one line away from a listed code is untouched.
For a shop that buys rather than grows, the exposure is quieter and it sits in everything that is not the flower. Talks between Ottawa and Washington have broken down, so plan on this lasting rather than lifting.
What we do about it: the New Markets Review works out which lines on your wholesale and hard-goods invoices are actually captured, what your signed wedding and funeral book is now costing you at today’s container prices, and what to build next. It also covers who else in the world would buy what you make. See what you receive →
What this actually does to a flower shop
Floristry has an unusual shape: the part of the order that moved most is the part the customer never chooses and the shop often gives away.
- The container costs more than the design change. Glass at 50% and corrugated at 50% hit vases, cylinders, shippers and gift boxes. Most shops have a recipe sheet for stems and nothing at all for the vessel.
- Weddings and funerals are fixed-price contracts. A wedding is quoted and signed weeks or months before delivery, and a funeral-home price sheet is usually set once a year. The gap between the quote and the delivery is where the margin goes.
- Everyday work is anchored to round numbers. $75, $95, $125. Customers and funeral homes price to those points, so a 50% move on wrap, tissue, ribbon and sleeves gets absorbed by the shop instead of passed on.
Three things to do this week
- Reprice the container, not the recipe. Pull your last three hard-goods invoices and mark every glass, corrugated, plastic and ribbon line. That single page tells you more than any stem price list will.
- Ask your wholesaler for country of origin on your top twenty hard goods. Vases, boxes and ribbon have non-US equivalents far more often than flowers do, and nobody offers them unprompted.
- Add a hard-goods clause to every event contract you send this week. One sentence that lets you restate the container and wrap portion if supplier pricing moves before the delivery date. It is much easier to add now than to renegotiate in June.
What it looks like in practice
Worked example · a two-designer retail florist in Guelph
Six staff, two delivery vans, a storefront on a main street. Everyday and sympathy work is a little over half the year; twenty-two weddings are already signed for next season at $2,800 to $11,000 each, with deposits taken. The shop buys roughly 900 glass containers and 2,400 corrugated shippers a year, sets a price sheet with three funeral homes every January, and imports nothing directly — everything arrives through two Canadian wholesalers.
The vase is the tariff, and the shop gives it away. Glass containers are at 50% and corrugated boxes are at 50%. The website says “arranged in a complimentary glass cylinder”. So the line that moved hardest is the one line in the shop with no price attached to it, 900 times a year, invisible to every order screen.
Those twenty-two weddings are futures contracts and nobody calls them that. Priced in spring, delivered next summer, costed on pre-8-September glass, ribbon and corrugated. Textiles are at 50%, glass at 50%, boxes at 50%. A builder would never sign that without an escalation clause. The shop has signed it twenty-two times.
The South American roses are the part we would not guess at. Both wholesalers consolidate stems through Miami. The flowers are grown in Colombia and Ecuador, not the United States, and Canada’s counter-tariffs apply to US goods — so most likely they are not reached. We would put that to the wholesaler in writing and have a broker confirm it rather than print a number, because origin is a per-shipment fact.
Then the other half. Here we rule something out instead of selling it: fresh stems cannot go to Australia or New Zealand. Biosecurity on live plant material makes it effectively impossible and no trade agreement changes that, so anyone pitching this shop an export plan for fresh product is wasting its time. Dried and preserved work is a genuinely different question — it is shelf-stable, it ships as a manufactured good, and it is the only part of this shop’s output that could realistically travel. The US gift route also changed shape: the $800 de minimis exemption ended on 29 August 2025, so every parcel south now clears formally and carries a merchandise processing fee of about US$7.85 on a manual entry plus duty. One documented case had a $37 item land at $60.17. HS codes have been required on all cross-border shipments since 1 September.
What we would build:
- A recipe card that carries the container: every arrangement costed with its vase, box, sleeve, tissue and ribbon at today’s invoice price, repricing itself the day a wholesaler price list lands.
- An event book showing the margin on all twenty-two signed weddings at current hard-goods costs, flagging which are underwater and which are still open to a clause.
- A hard-goods reorder screen that shows country of origin and a non-US equivalent for the top forty containers and wraps, before the order is placed.
- A funeral-home rate sheet that can be revised mid-year with the arithmetic attached, so January stops being an annual bet on glass prices.
The tariff costs this shop a few thousand dollars a year. The twenty-two signed contracts are where it turns into real money.
What you receive
Six things, built for your shop, starting within 48 hours of checkout.
The core is a written review: deep research across your wholesalers, your hard-goods suppliers and the sector, with a human checking every finding against the actual schedules and discarding what is wrong. You also get a private AI knowledge base trained on your website, wholesale and hard-goods price lists, recipe cards and event contracts — yours to keep, and able to answer “which containers moved most this quarter?” with a source you can check. Running through both is a scoped plan of what we would build, with real hour estimates.
Alongside those: a slide deck, a one-page infographic, and video and audio overviews.
See a complete worked example → — every artifact, unredacted.
What we would build for your flower shop
- A recipe and container costing tool that prices stems and vessel together and flags which arrangements have gone unprofitable since 8 September.
- An event and wedding margin model holding every signed contract against today’s hard-goods costs, with renewal and delivery dates in view.
- A hard-goods sourcing screen surfacing country of origin and a non-US equivalent vase, box, sleeve or ribbon before you reorder.
- A storefront that only sells what you can actually build — substitution rules, container options priced honestly, and no more hand-written apologies about the vase.
And beyond tariffs: the ordering, delivery routing or event-proposal system you have been putting off. See our case studies.
And the other half — who else would buy this?
A flower shop cannot export a Tuesday delivery, and fresh stems will not clear Australian or New Zealand biosecurity, so we are not going to pretend that exporting fresh product is the opportunity here. What does travel is the dried and preserved work, any own-brand hard goods you put your name on, and anything you know how to teach or license — design courses, wedding templates, a subscription platform — because software and services cross a border with no freight, no duty and no customs paperwork, and the same research that finds a buyer overseas is the research that finds you a non-US vase supplier.
CETA leaves 98% of EU tariff lines duty-free, and opens public procurement worth about $3.3 trillion a year.Japan
Under the CPTPP, Japanese tariffs on worked wood products went straight to zero, which matters for mounted and framed dried work.Australia & NZ
No translation, familiar contracts, opposite seasons. Strict biosecurity rules out fresh stems entirely.Getting found
Ranking for what a buyer in another country actually types, not what a local customer searching for same-day delivery does.
Two things worth knowing
There is money for this
Ottawa has $7.5 billion behind tariff-hit businesses, including non-repayable contributions up to $3 million and working capital loans from $250,000. We do not run those programs and we take nothing from them. The full list →
The vase might be remissible
A remission process is open for inputs that genuinely cannot be sourced outside the US. If a specific container, wrap or mechanic has no non-US equivalent, that is the argument to put in writing. How remission works →
Questions we get asked
We buy everything from a Canadian wholesaler. Are we affected?
Almost certainly. Flower wholesalers and floral-supply houses source hard goods heavily from US manufacturers and pass counter-tariff costs down the chain. It arrives as a revised price list rather than a customs bill, which makes it easy to file under inflation and miss entirely.
Are cut flowers tariffed or not?
It depends which border. Cut flowers are confirmed on the US Section 338 list, so a Canadian grower shipping stems south is caught at 50% and CUSMA does not exempt captured goods. Coming north, the categories verified on Canada’s list that reach a flower shop are hard goods — glass, corrugated, plastics, textiles, paper. Do not assume either way on any single item: Section 338 is 554 specific subheadings, so screen by code, not by category.
Should we buy a year of vases now?
Selectively. Non-perishable, high-turnover glass and corrugated can be worth holding if you have dry storage and the cash. Glass is heavy, breakable and space-hungry, so the holding cost often beats the duty avoided, and the in-transit exemption for 8 September is long closed. Work it out on your real usage rates rather than a hunch.
Can we still send an arrangement to a US address?
Yes, but the economics changed before the tariffs did. The $800 de minimis exemption ended on 29 August 2025, so every parcel into the US clears formally and carries a merchandise processing fee of about US$7.85 on a manual entry plus duty — one documented case had a $37 item land at $60.17. HS codes have been required on all cross-border shipments since 1 September. For small gift orders that is usually the deciding number, not the tariff rate.
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- Grocery and local retail
- Retail and e-commerce
- Event production
- Farms and growers
- The full rules, in plain English
- Where else in the world would buy this?
The worked example above is an illustration, not a client, but every tariff fact in it is real. Operational and strategic guidance from a software studio, not legal, customs, or tax advice. Confirm classification and duty liability with a licensed customs broker. Last reviewed 19 September 2026.