Northwest Arkansas flower shops face tariffs impact around Mother's Day

Yahoo

08-05-2025

NORTHWEST ARKANSAS (KNWA/KFTA) — As Mother's Day nears, some Northwest Arkansas businesses are raising flower prices due to tariffs, while others are finding ways to keep holiday costs steady.
The current presidential administration has added a 10% tax on all imported goods, including flowers. Local flower vendors and wholesalers said this has caused suppliers to raise flower prices for their businesses.
Samantha's Garden
In Bentonville, Samantha's Garden has been 'brick and mortar' since 2020, but owner Diana Thompson said the business has been around since 2017. Thompson compared Mother's Day to the business's version of 'the Superbowl,' and that Samantha's Garden has seen impacts of tariffs, especially going into the holiday.
'It's been a struggle… We've definitely been impacted by the tariffs,' said Thompson. 'It has been a lot of meetings and us talking and working through with our trucking companies and also our vendors, our suppliers, and doing a lot of negotiating.'
According to Thompson, the owners decided that Samantha's Garden would not raise prices for customers, despite the higher costs the business now pays due to the tariffs.
'We didn't want to pass that tariff charge or those extra charges to our customers,' said Thompson. 'We believe that flowers are something, especially this time of year, that everybody should be able to enjoy…'
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However, that requires those who work at the Bentonville business to take a different route to make up for lost revenue, which leads to cuts elsewhere.
'Usually this time of year, we bring in a lot of other freelancers, which increases our costs, but we chose to not do that this year,' Thompson said. 'So, we're really leaning on our team that we have in-house to be able to make sure that our costs stay the same.'
She said the team has worked longer hours to make ends meet.
'We're just going to hang tight and believe in faith that this is going to pretty much wrap up fairly quickly,' said Thompson.
Eden's Botanicals
While Thompson's team has taken cuts to avoid charging customers more than usual this holiday season, Fayetteville-based Eden's Botanicals has found their own way to adjust with the tariffs.
Business owner Eden Garrett said the business aims to partner with local flower farmers in the area and shop small, but certain flowers require a different vendor.
'For the flowers that we cannot get local, either the type of flower it is, or kind of the seasonality of it, we do use a wholesaler,' said Garrett. 'They get flowers from all over the world. So, you are going to see some impacts from tariffs. We haven't seen any really drastic quite yet.'
With the impacts they have seen, however, Garrett said the business has tried to focus on arrangements that fit customer budgets, even if it means 'eating a little bit of profit.'
'So really it's not going to affect how much they spend and might just kind of affect how big the flower arrangement might be,' said Garrett.
She said, in her experience, it's normal for the flower market prices to fluctuate based on holidays, and compared the changes to gas prices, but has seen a slow increase recently likely due to tariffs.
Though both businesses are experiencing the impacts of the tariffs on their shops, the owners said they feel hopeful about how their businesses will profit in the long term.
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