Business Spotlight: Flowers by the Bunches

John Schweke views his business, R&S Memorial Decorations LLC, as a ministry of sorts.

Often when customers buy his products, which include floral arrangements for graves, they’re coping with grief from the loss of a loved one around Memorial Day.

“It’s a hard thing to do. They want to get something that reminds them of a loved one,” he says.

Schweke’s stores open every year around Memorial Day in towns in southwest Missouri and northwest Arkansas. Last year, R&S Memorial Decorations operated seasonal stores in 14 communities.

“We start setting up Feb. 1, we get done by April 15, and we tear them all down June 10. And I get a day off. Then, we start for the next year,” Schweke says.

The 19,000-square-foot warehouse at 9323 W. Chestnut Expressway functions year-round, fully stocked with floral arrangements for retail purchase, delivery to wholesale customers or stored for delivery to the Memorial Day stores.

Dick’s 5 & 10 in Branson buys about 75 percent of its floral products from R&S Memorial, says co-owner Dave Montgomery.

“They’re a big deal to us. They’re one of our best vendors,” Montgomery says. “We buy Memorial Day flowers from them, but we even buy product year-round now.”

Montgomery says Dick’s 5&10 has been a customer for 35 years. “We get compliments on their products,” he says.

With a target market of churchgoing people older than 50, Schweke estimates that 60 percent of sales are bunch plants and 40 percent are headstone sprays. He says revenues are up from last year by about 40 percent but declined to disclose figures.

Dry goods stores led the way
Schweke’s father, Russell, who retired in 2006 at 72 due to health reasons, started the floral wholesaler in 1963 after running three dry goods stores: Ava Dry Goods, Sparta Dry Goods and Payless Variety Store in Houston.

The concept for R&S Memorial, Schweke says, arose when his father believed he could make Easter baskets and Memorial Day arrangements to sell in his stores less expensively.

“Wal-Mart put dry goods stores out of business, and he shut down also,” Schweke says. “He had a warehouse full of flowers. He didn’t know what to do with it, so he rented a big building at St. Louis and Glenstone that was about 1,000 square feet, and every other day, we were taking a van load in and a van load out.”

As a result, Schweke began opening the Memorial Day stores for six weeks at a time in 1979.

In the Chestnut Expressway warehouse, workers year-round assemble the floral headstone sprays and arrangements before they are shipped by truck to the stores beginning in February.
R&S Memorial has a tractor-trailer that is used in setting up and stocking each store, and four 15-passenger vans are used to keep the stores stocked daily.

“During the month of May, those vans are on the road for eight- to 10-hour days, six days a week,” Schweke says.

Flashes of retail
R&S operated a retail site for 25 years on North Glenstone until closing the store in 2006, the year Russell Schweke retired. John Schweke says he closed the store to focus on Memorial Day operations, adding that his father worked at the Glenstone store seven days week, something he didn’t want to commit to.

Another retail opportunity popped up in 2009, when Schweke’s wife, Alexa Hoke Schweke, helped open a Christmas temporary store at Battlefield Mall after clearing a warehouse of holiday floral arrangements, trees and other items. What she called “a garage sale Christmas store” is back this year, though now it includes holiday items she purchased at market. The store, which operates across Battlefield Mall in the former MC Sports location on Glenstone Avenue, is filled with trees, ornaments, wreaths and greenery.

Plans for a full-time retail location other than the warehouse isn’t something that interests either of them. Time with grandchildren, a cabin in Arkansas and possible travel come first, Schweke says.[[In-content Ad]]