Jean-Denis Lampron started his rose business in the basement of his home, grew it to become a take off success, lost the business, then bought it back. Now, with 35,000 square meters of green house space and millions of dollars in revenues, his patience and careful nurturing of the business has paid off.

Today, Mr. Lapron employs 15 people, offers 60 different varieties of roses in 12 colours, cultivates close to 3.5 million roses each year, and has annual revenues of around 3 million dollars.

Québec, Ontario and British Columbia account for 87% of Canadian floriculture production.

St. Valentine's day is the busiest time of the year. Mr. Lampron sells approximately 250,000 roses during that week and makes close to 4,000 transactions on the day itself. Other than Valentines Day, sales aren't concentrated at any one point of the year.

The influx of flowers from South America is a concern for Canadian growers facing higher wages, heating and lighting expenses.

However the Lampron's do scale back production during the winter months. During this period, they have greenhouses in dormancy, which are heated at a constant temperature of 5 degrees Celsius. This inconvenience is played down by the fact that their electricity bill is reduced by about $200,000.00 a month.

One of the company's biggest challenges is integrating biological pest control (using insects to eat other insects), allowing them to phase out the use of pesticides.