Jim Daly, vice president of Floralife global operations and corporate research, and Alan Tanouye, general manager of North American operations for Floralife, have recently been appointed to industry organizations, the Walterboro, SC, post-harvest products and technical services company announced in a press release.

Floral importers who rely on cargo ships unloading at East Coast docks breathed a sigh of relief in early February as a potential strike was averted that could have flummoxed importers and caused bottlenecks as they tried to re-route shipments to the West Coast.

Officials of the Fresh Produce & Floral Council expect to draw more than a thousand attendees and about 170 exhibitors to its Northern California Expo at the Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton, CA, on April 10. They anticipate the show will feature about 40 floral booths among 160 exhibitors.

A Dutch floral design team from the Boerma Instituut in Aalsmeer, Holland, will give daily demonstrations between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. all three days of the World Floral Expo in downtown New York, according to officials at HPP Exhibitions, sponsor of the annual trade show.

Valentine’s Day fell on a Thursday this year, a day in the week that one industry veteran described as “the sweet spot,” and that seemed to lead retailers and growers to issue sunny sales bulletins, with records broken in most companies surveyed and sales widely up by double digits.

Among growers, importers and retailers, 12- and 16-hour days were not unheard of.

It all came together to make Valentine’s Day 2013 a record-setter. One of the biggest floral sales days of the year fell on a Thursday, when couples are less likely to go out to dinner or entertainment and flowers are the preferred gift. The weather was generally sunny, so shoppers were free to roam and the supply chain remained intact. There was no dockworkers’ strike in the United States, and no big floods or freezes in South America.