<Begin Segment 38>

AI: I think a lot of people don't really have a very good idea of who are the main customers for a greenhouse business. So, you were mentioning that the wholesale houses would be a primary customer. Could you explain a little bit about who the primary customers would be?

KO: Well, the primary function of the wholesale house was to take the material being grown from all these greenhouses, and selling to retail customers at a... and they took their percentage, which was 20 percent, I think, or 15 percent at that time. But over the years, the growers always felt that the wholesale house was giving them the short end. So eventually, a lot of the growers started to go out on their own, selling their own merchandise. I don't know if it was simply because of the way they felt the wholesale houses were treating 'em or they felt that they had more opportunity going out and selling it on the open market themselves. But, if you talk to some of the Japanese growers that was in, that started in this area years before the war... you know what they used to do is, they'd cut the flowers during the day, and the next day they would bottle these flowers up and hop on a bus, or a trolley, or whatever they had, go into town and walk from florist to florist [Laughs] trying to sell their merchandise. It wasn't just the Japanese who did that. Swansons over here in Ballard, he was mentioning that his father also used to do the same. So that part wasn't unusual, but it's kinda' a far cry from what's happened these days, with having trucks and everything to take it down yourselves. But the thought of having to go down from door to door selling what you had, and if you had quite a few left by the end of the day you were at the mercy of the buyer, because you had to get rid of it. That's how far this business has changed I think, and for the good.

<End Segment 38> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.