Decowraps spreads happiness through packaging

A rose may be a rose, but how it’s packaged can make a rose — or any flower — something truly special.

That’s what Doral, Fla.-based Decowraps tries to do every day through dozens of packaging options the company offers for supermarket floral buyers and their vendors.

“One way to differentiate flowers is through the way they are wrapped,” says Aileen Flicki, product market manager.

Since 1999, Decowraps, established by Steven Tchira, owner and president, has created and sold sleeves, prefolds, fabrics and meshes, water bouquets, tubes, fast wraps, containers, bags, picks and other wraps and accessories to a number of major supermarket chains and their floral suppliers.

The company started with one product — fine wrap sheets — and has grown into a major enterprise with production facilities in Colombia and China and an office in Holland that serves customers throughout Europe.

There also are warehouses in Miami and in several countries outside the U.S.

Although Decowraps has a full line of existing products, much of its business comes from working with supermarket floral buyers to design custom sleeves, sheets or other packaging options for the chains’ flower vendors that are then delivered to the stores’ distribution centers.

“We work with the growers and bouquet makers who sell to supermarkets, and we work with the supermarkets to create their look,” Flicki says.

That ensures a chain’s floral departments always are uniform, their packing containers are the same, and that their messaging is consistent, she says.

Manufacturing packaging items in large quantities also helps keep costs down for retailers and their vendors. 

“It really works out for everyone in the end,” she says.

Decowraps doesn’t have to go very far to come up with its innovative designs.

“We have a really great in-house design team,” Flicki says.

The company thrives on innovation and invests heavily in trend research, a project that the marketing and design team is responsible for.

“We want to make sure that what we’re putting out in the market for our customers is on target with what the consumers in the market want,” she says.

Each year, Decowraps puts together a presentation that forecasts trends and designs and makes it available to customers on request.

Flicki and her team study social trends, fashion, interior design, accessory design and even industrial design in Europe, Asia and the U.S. and look at how those trends overlap and might affect the floral industry.

“For the upcoming year, there’s a general trend of happiness,” she says.

That trend already is being depicted through unicorns and flamingos.

“The whole focus of it is cuteness and happiness,” she says.