The analyst explained the growth of the flower market against the background of store closures

The Russian flower market continues to grow in monetary terms, despite the reduction in the number of retail outlets. At first glance, the situation may seem contradictory: there are fewer stores, but the market turnover is increasing. However, this is due to a redistribution of demand in favor of online sales. Igor Rastorguev, a leading analyst at AMarkets, told Izvestia about this on March 11.

"An increase in money with a reduction in points is not a paradox, but a classic pattern of redistribution: the buyer simply moved to the phone," the expert noted.

He specified that the average receipt for a bouquet in 2025 exceeded 3.8 thousand rubles. At the same time, online flower sales increased by about 25% in monetary terms. In cities with millions of residents, the share of online orders already reaches about 60% of the market.

At the same time, traditional purchases in flower shops are gradually decreasing. In January 2026, offline sales decreased by 5% compared to the same period last year, while online sales increased by 15%.

According to Rastorguev, it is the transition of customers to the Internet that has a particularly painful effect on small retail outlets. Their expenses — rent of premises, purchase of flowers that may not sell, acquiring and salaries of employees — remain fixed and do not adapt well to the drop in the flow of customers.

The expert also noted that the profitability of the business is decreasing. At the same time, entering the market is still relatively simple. According to the announcement service, the demand for ready-made flower dots in January 2026 was almost four times higher than in January 2024. This leads to high business rotation: new players appear, but some of them quickly leave the market.

Rastorguev added that for small stores, the key task is to compete with large online platforms and aggregators that have significant marketing budgets.

In his opinion, the market is gradually moving towards consolidation around large digital platforms. In such circumstances, small flower shops have to look for new strategies — to move into a niche premium segment, specialize in individual floral services, or work as order collection points for online aggregators.

The expert called regional markets another area of development, where the online segment is still less developed and competition is much lower than in the largest cities of the country.

On the same day, Vedomosti reported that, as of February, there were 14,400 flower shops in Russia's megacities, the 2GIS service estimated. According to him, their number has hardly changed since February 2025, whereas in the previous 12 months their number has increased by 10%. In the whole country, this figure even decreased by the end of 2025, since there were more closures than openings during this period, says Mikhail Burmistrov, CEO of Infoline Analytics. This is confirmed by Yandex Maps data: it follows that in March there were 39,200 flower shops in all Russian cities, which is 2.7% less than a year earlier.

Before that, on February 27, Ilya Rusyaev, a business consultant and founder of the Rusyaev Club business community, said that the increase in the cost of flowers in 2026 was due to the dependence of the Russian market on imports, currency fluctuations, holiday demand and logistics congestion. Another important factor is the run-up to the holidays and logistics overload. In February 2026, the volume of customs clearance of floral products increased by 75%, and from February 1 to February 25, 8.8 thousand tons of flowers were imported.

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