The movement to establish Women’s Day on March 8 as a floral holiday is gathering steam. Lane DeVries, head of Sun Valley Group in Arcata, CA, offered in-store promotional materials to retailers at the recent International Floriculture Expo, and told The Produce News in early September that a half-dozen or so supermarket chains will be using the materials in 2013.

“Women’s Day started in America 100 years ago, and it is still an American holiday,” Mr. DeVries told The Produce News. “Now let’s turn it into the flower holiday, which it is in Europe.” He had proposed a campaign to make March 8 a floral holiday in a guest column in The Produce News in January 2012.

“Women’s Day in eastern Europe is huge,” Mr. DeVries pointed out at the IFE show. “And in Italy it is bigger than Valentine’s Day.” In Europe, the event is called International Women’s Day, a title Mr. DeVries shortened since it began here. In China and Russia, it is a national holiday. “Yellow is really the most popular flower color in Europe for Women’s Day,” he added in an interview.

The Sun Valley point-of-sale materials have photos of tulips, care-and-handling instructions for tulips and bear the Sun Valley logo. They come in groupings of six or four items. Sun Valley is offering free digital copies of the items so retailers can print them in-house. Or Sun Valley will print them with the store’s logo for $110 for the largest set to $39 for the smallest. So far, most of the stores have ordered the digital copies and are printing the materials themselves.

Materials include theme posters with slogans like “Celebrate the women in your life with flowers” and “Fresh flowers for the women who make your days bloom with happiness.” The posters come in two sizes with tulip care-and-handling instructions on the back. Other items include bucket flags, hang tags and bucket sleeves with a Women’s Day logo and photos of women with tulips. Sun Valley also offers special bouquets for Women’s Day

Officials at supermarkets in the Midwest and Northeast told The Produce News that Women’s Day is a big floral holiday at their stores that serve European immigrant groups who had celebrated the day in their native lands.

Christian Maldonado, a sales associate at Silver Vase interviewed at IFE, said the timing of International Women’s Day, between Valentine’s Day and Easter, would fit well. “This is an additional sales stock week anyway,” he said. “We’d be getting ready to ship for Easter. What we need is a communications program with point-of-sale materials.”

Joep Paternostre, chief executive officer of Bloomaker in Waynesboro, VA, also interviewed at IFE, was cautiously optimistic. “It would fit nicely in our growing cycle,” he opined.

The first women’s day celebration was held in the United States in 1909 and was called National Women’s Day. It was adopted by other countries and became an international celebration in 1910. Last March 8, 268 events were held in the United States to inspire women and celebrate their achievements, up from 74 events in 2011.