French Floral Retail Authority Jean-Philippe Lajambe Issues Flower Manifesto

French retail and distribution expert recently published a Flower Manifesto in French on his LinkedIn.

We, artisans of the living,

last hippies of the retail trade,

Let us say what we really do.

PREAMBLE

In 1967, young people slipped flowers into the gun barrels. They had nothing to oppose the violence of the world but the beauty of life. They were called the hippies. We laughed at them.

Fifty years later, we do the same — every morning, opening our shops.

We have no political manifesto. We have no demands. We have roses, peonies, gypsophile and hands that know how to marry colors. And we think it’s enough to change someone’s day, a little bit.

This manifesto is for us. To remind us who we are, what we do, and why it matters.

Article I — We sell what words can’t say

There are situations in life where language collapses. Love too big. The mourning too heavy. The joy that overflows. The gratitude that knots the throat. Guilt that seeks one path to the other.

In those moments, people come to our house.

They don’t come into our shop to buy flowers. They come in to find the words they don’t have. And we help them find them — in dahlias, lisianthus, eucalyptus branches, ribbons and tissue paper.

A flower passes where language fails.

We are translators of human emotion. Our raw material is not the stem or the petal — it’s the feeling that someone wants to pass on to someone else.

Nobody else does that. Not the jeweler, not the chocolatier, not the bookseller. Only we work with the living to say life.

Article II — We practice the art of the ephemeral

In a long-term-obsessed world — lifetime warranties, endless subscriptions, content that stays online forever — we sell something that fades.

And that’s exactly why it’s precious.

A rose that lasts a week says something that a plastic rose will never say: look at me now. Be there. This moment will not return.Here and now

Every bouquet we compose is a philosophy lesson that no one has asked for — and that everyone receives. Life is precious.

Attention is a gift

The present is all we have.

The hippies knew it: what grows, what blooms, what fades is real life. All the rest is simulation.

Article III — the power to make happy

A scientific study — not a feeling, a rigorous study — showed that 100% of people who receive flowers immediately smile at a real, involuntary smile, that researchers call Duchenne’s smile.

One hundred percent. Not a single gift to the world reaches this score.

We are the most effective good mood industry out there — and one of the least recognized.

Offering flowers will change someone’s emotional state.

The customer who enters stressed leaves calmed again — because he will please. Whoever receives the flowers stops, smiles, slows down. Those who see them in a room benefit without even realizing it.

We are dealers in a good mood. It’s legal, it’s beautiful, and the world is sorely lacking.

Article IV — We keep people connected with the living

Life in front of screens, ultra-processed food, disconnection with nature.

Then they pass the threshold of our shop

And they smell. And they see. And they touch something that grew in the earth, under a sun, with water. Something real.

We are one of the last places where we meet nature.

The peonies of May, the July sunflowers, the holly of December — our shop is a natural calendar in a world that has forgotten the seasons. We make our clients live a form of awareness of time that no one teaches anymore.

The hippies wanted to return to the earth. We bring the earth to the people who cannot return. This is our way of resisting the disconnection of the world.

Article V — We are present in the moments that matter

Think about your life. At times when all these intense moments. The birth of a child. A marriage. A funeral. A reconciliation. A statement. A departure.

We were there.

Not us personally — but our work. A bouquet that we composed throne in family photos of strangers. A wreath that we assembled may have been the last gift a family gave to one of their own. Flowers that we chose accompanied two people to their new beginning.

No other business can say that.

We do not carry this responsibility as a burden. We wear it as a pride.

Article VI — We resist the dematerialization of feeling

We can now send emojis for all feelings. A red heart. A pixelated rose. An animated bouquet that appears for two seconds on a screen before disappearing.

We, we do the opposite.

We insist that the feeling takes up space — in the hands, in a room, in the space between two people. We insist that he has weight, a smell, a color that we can not set.

In a world that dematerializes everything, we still embody emotions.

When someone chooses to offer flowers rather than a message, they make an act of resistance. He says, “You’re better than a screen. I want you to hold something in your hands. I want your play to be different because I’ve been through your life.

We help people to do this act of resistance. We provide them with the means. This is a role we are proud of.

Article VII: We are not a trade like any other

We are talking about margins, purchase costs, inventory turnover rates and profitability. It’s legitimate — we have a company to keep alive, wages to pay, rents to honor.

But we are not just selling products.

We do a craftsmanship in a century that has forgotten craftsmanship. We work with our hands, with our aesthetic sense, with our knowledge of the living. Each composition is unique. Each bouquet is signed, even without signature.

We are artists, creators of links.

And our gallery is our showcase. Our opening is every morning when we have the first stems. Our audience is the person who passes on the sidewalk and slows down because something has stopped him — an assembly of colors, a perfume that escapes, a composition that says something that she could not formulate.

Article VIII — What we bear as a responsibility

We work with the living. We know this better than anyone else – because we see every day what nature produces most beautiful, and what it demands in return.

This closeness to the living gives us a consciousness that we cannot pretend to ignore.

We know where the flowers come from. We know what represents a rose imported by plane from Ecuador, a peony grown in greenhouses, a bouquet packaged in plastic. We also know the beauty of a seasonal flower, picked near here, which did not cross the world to end up in a vase.

We choose to face this reality.

Taking care of the flowers is taking care of yourself. Taking care of your customers is taking care of others. Taking care of the origin, the cycle, the waste, the packaging – it is taking care of the planet.

These three gestures are not separate. They are the same gesture, repeated every day, with every composition, with every choice of supplier, with every bouquet we refuse to pack in what does not break down.

We do not pretend to be perfect. But we pretend to be aware. And consciousness, when it is honest, always ends up changing actions.

We want to contribute to a livable and kind world,

Because we spend our lives making it a little more beautiful.

OUR COMMITMENT

In return, we promise to never forget why we do this job.

Never compose a bouquet without putting something of ourselves into it. Never forget that the person who walks into our shop is not there to buy stems — they are there because they have something to say to someone.

To continue to work with the seasons, with the living, with the hands. To continue to bring a little nature to the cities. To continue to be present in the moments that matter.

To remain creators of links, in this world where everything is loose and everything is to be connected. Never forget our Flower Power!

— Jean-Philippe Lajambe is a French retail and distribution expert, entrepreneur and the president of the association Courant pour une Écologie Humaine, a French Movement for Human Ecology civic association.