I have read and heard that Radler made millions with his KO creations. My question is how? Did he patent the rose and then sell the patent? I guess the better question is how does one make any $ creating roses?
Form what i know other peple actually make money by creating new breeds/cross breeds of roses by merely selling them. I think that if you are able to produce such unique breeds than it would be worth buying especially fr ethusiast. You can atually shocase them in shows or fairs that people may see them.
Joining such shows and fairs, you will be able to start slow but with perseverance, patience and eager mind for curiousity you"ll surely be a good entrepreneur in no time!
Hi Steve,
From what I understand, there are several different reasons for Bill Radler’s success.
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He’s a man who loves plants, especially roses. He is interested in all aspects of horticulture and growing and gardening. This gives his work with roses proper perspective.
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He has experience with the general public through his career at a botanical garden. This allowed him to see a lot of plants and understand how they work in a garden scheme, and their appeal (or not) to the average homeowner.
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He had a goal–healthy, low-maintenance roses–and stuck to it year in and year out, just because he was interested in it.
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When he had bred some roses that he knew were good, he submitted them for testing to a good, honest company. Conard-Pyle accepts roses for testing from amateur hybridizers.
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This good, honest company knew a good thing when they saw it.
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Once C-P has approved a rose through numerous tests throughout the country, they have the organization in place to propagate, advertise and distrubute on a nationwide scale.
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The time had come in rose history for the kind of roses Radler likes to create. After years of high maintenance roses, the gardening public was looking for something different and found it in Knock Out and other Radler roses.
All these aspects came together for Bill Radler to make his hybridizing hobby into a financial success. It’s my understanding that he did not foresee such an outcome, but that a variety of circumstances came together. However, his own vision and goal, working with a good company to propagate and promote the rose, and the timing (the public being ready for a carefree shrub rose) all played a role.
Some other hybridizers who make/made a living from their rose creations started out as nurserymen who raised roses as a hobby. I am thinking of Ralph Moore and David Austin, among others. They also have experience with a wide range of plants, contact with the general public, and means of propagation and sale.
Hope this helps.
[quote=Rembrandt]
I have read and heard that Radler made millions with his KO creations. My question is how? Did he patent the rose and then sell the patent? I guess the better question is how does one make any $ creating roses?[/quote]
Steve, that is a pretty good question, one that rose producers are asking themselves more and more since the market for roses has become so poor. I guess people are spending their money on electronic gadgets (smart phones, iPads and such) instead of roses. Just think how many roses you could buy for the price of a new iPad. Apple is making money hand over fist, but the rose companies are barely hanging on (well, those that haven’t gone bankrupt, anyway).
Here is the basic plan (you can see this at work on any patent granted to a rose in the past 70+ years). The rose you create is patented, the patent is assigned to a rose producer (let’s say Weeks or Conard-Pyle), and the rose producer produces and tries to sell plants of that rose. A patented rose is offered for sale at a higher price than a non-patented rose. Let’s say that Queen Elizabeth (no longer in patent) is sold for $15 per bush. The newly patented rose might have an asking price of $16 or more. The extra amount (the patent surcharge) is divided in some way between the originator of the rose (you) and the producer/seller of the rose plants, according to the agreement you and the producer of the rose plants have entered into, and you will receive what is called a royalty. If you are to be paid a royalty of 50 cents per plant and 1,000 plants are sold in the first year, your royalty payment for the first year ($500) will arrive in the following year if the company does not go bankrupt by then.
OK. That is the basic business plan unless you plan to have your own nursery and market your own creations. Then you can name the rose whatever you wish and sell as many plants of it as you can find customers for, and keep all the patent surcharge instead of receiving part of it as a royalty.
Are you ready for the first step of your business plan? Get out there and develop a rose that people will want to buy!
Peter
Mind you, to anyone who is in this for the money-making aspect of it, might I just point out that Lotto tickets can be had for a lot less effort, cheaper upfront costs, and have comparable (if not better) odds of paying out huge dividends.
…Just sayin’…
But yes, the success of KO roses is a shocker. Just think about it: here in Austin, they can be found in almost every commercial parking lot planting. Yards in suburbia frequently have them in front yards and in many places, they are even used as highway plantings. They are not really seen as a rose cultivar in the usual sense, but as a reliable, colorful foundation plant. It’s an unprecedented thing based, firstly on a good plant, the hybridizer and plant being in the right place in the right time, connections, very heavy marketing from a dedicated assignee, the phases of the moon and alignment of the planets…
I don’t know that Carefree Beauty, a parent of KO, should be viewed as any less impressive a landscape rose, yet in this area folks didn’t even recognize it to properly ID it. For years it was sold as a “found” rose, Katy Road Pink: a real trooper, though still under patent as Carefree Beauty. The hybridizer got no royalties off those sales. Consider one of KO’s descendants, HomeRun. An equally good rose, better in some regards I’m told, but the marketing plug it often gets is “descended from KnockOut”…
What made KO work? There were so many factors that came together, and I don’t expect anything quite like it to happen again for a long time. The other roses in the KO series are good plants, but there are better ones out there that cannot ride on the coattails of KO-mania.
I tend to refer to KO as the reblooming Azalea. At least, in my mind, that is the market it replaced.
I think that is a very good reference… (Ironic that in the south, the indica azaleas with their two weeks of bloom are so beloved, but a rose without rebloom is considered an absolute waste of a 300+ day growing season…)
Of course, in central TX, our dry heat and calcerous soils aren’t as conducive to azaleas, but it does seem that azaleas were a little less often planted in the post-KO and post-K (Katrina) world…
Hi Philip,
I am certainly not qualified to comment on Radler much less the KO’s – However, from what I have seen in my area (20 miles south of Dallas) I can concur that the commercial KO invasion leaves me wanting a thicker – greener foliage. Most of the KO’s I have seen are being treated like hedges – meaning they are being “sculptured†like Box Hedges so maybe that’s why they are skimpy.
Although some of my inquiries are business related I am not in this for the money – after spending 10 years as a New York exhibited artists, I am fully aware how mass-marketing and a “who you know†mentality is what sells. However, I will say IF I come up with something I would rather be prepared as much as possible. LYDINS response is more in line with what I have planned.
Yes, showing roses is the best first step to getting them noticed, from what I understand. I don’t know if that works well for landscape roses, however since they are grown to a set of standards that a vase won’t show. (I don’t think I would have gone ga-ga for a wicked thorny spray of cleanly shattering KO blooms in a vase, for instance.) Someone else would have to answer that. Of course, it helps to be a hybridizer who is, as Betsy points out, well-known and well-regarded enough to be taken at face value when he declares that he has created a great rose. (Consider that the major breeding houses reject tens of thousands of seedlings for every one they choose to introduce, and you might imagine the difficulties.)
I don’t mean to come across as being too negative, but I don’t know that the most prolific of hybridizers who regularly post on this forum and who sell their cultivars even approach the break-even point. I could be wrong. (Jim Sproul comes to mind as one such hybridizer who has several plants now commercially available. I believe he once said that he plants several tens of thousands of seedlings a year.)
All of us probably ask the “if and when I create that great plant…” question early on. The reality is that for most of us, it will likely never really be a question, and for those of us who do create that plant, we probably won’t know it to recognize it until after many years of hybridizing.
But this is a question for those who are selling their own roses.
I don’t know if Jim Sproul is following this thread, but if so, If I may ask an indiscreet question of you, Jim, do you foresee a point at which your hobby pays for itself? (If so, this spring is probably a good time to start writing off your expenses! LOL.) And how did you get your roses to market?
I think Nathalie has inquired along similar lines for the TAMU program…
Very interesting comments from all.
Bvanderhoek summarized it the best, I could not have said it better. Same with Philip LA about having better odds getting rich with playing Lotto than hybridizing roses. Bill Radler’s story is fairly unique, however in our history at Conard-Pyle this has happened before, back in the 1940’s and 50’s when Francis Meilland got the royalties we sent him for the Peace rose.
Carefree Beauty (another CP introduction) has been off patent for at least 20 years but to this day it is still the most popular and widely planted of all Dr Griffith Buck roses in commerce. And at the time we did send significant checks every year to The University of Iowa where he did all his work.
We should be able to send a significant check to Jim for the Eyeconics and Thrive this summer, and hopefully it will cover the expenses of running his greenhouse.
I can only say this again to all of you, this is first and foremost a labor of love, and it’s great to see the enthousiasm on this Forum. Break through in roses, like in any plant breeding, are not coming very often, and the next one has a good statistical chance come from one of you.
Betsy-You have probably nailed it and given a blueprint for all who looks for success in hybridizing to follow, and item line #7 is something that is a bit beyond one’s control.
[quote=Philip](Ironic that in the south, the indica azaleas with their two weeks of bloom are so beloved, but a rose without rebloom is considered an absolute waste of a 300+ day growing season…)[/quote]This is so true!!
Hi Philip,
Like most of us in the RHA, and on the Forum, I really love rose breeding. I don’t know whether I could stop rose breeding if it was outlawed - I suppose that sounds like I am an addict. And I suppose, that is what I am!
It would be very nice to cover expenses, but more than that, I think that it’s a real blast knowing that other people are growing my own roses. I think that is something we can all aspire to. I think that whatever niche area that the rose breeder is working in (Exhibition HT’s, minis, floribundas, climbers, cold tolerant, drought tolerant, fragrant, landscape, English style, etc), to have commercial value they must have very good disease resistance. That is what worked for Bill Radler, and that is what is still working for him.
It will be exciting to see what strides will be made in the next 10 years toward a greater range of rose types that are highly disease resistant. This is something that many of the RHA members are working on, and I know that there will be many with successes along these lines.
Thanks, Jim.
I think, like most creative endeavors, the craving to see the results of your own labors is what motivates the successful, and not the hope of financial return. Learning and exercising your craft comes first, and if you are lucky, you might succeed at it beyond mere self-satisfaction.
But of course, like a typical creative, we all want some validation in the eyes of others for our successes. (And even artists like a little financial renumeration from time to time.)
I can only imagine the rush you must have felt, Jim, seeing a field full of your Eyeconics and Thrives being grown for market! I think we all vicariously enjoyed that photo you shared.
But Jacques, if I may ask, with the demand for landscape plants overtaking that for exhibition roses, how does one get the notice of a distributor? The standards are so different that a rose show holds little promise of showing, to good effect, a plant’s disease-resistance, cleanly shattering blooms, stature… May I ask how a cultivar typically ends up on your radar? (No, I don’t have anything to show… Yet… 
)
…And as a matter of curiosity, when evaluating a cultivar, do you generally have to limit yourself geographically to trials at your own home fields, or are you able to test for different climates/regions? Do you partner with any trial gardens?
Steve, I may owe you an apology. I know how frustrated I get when I post an open question about something I’m curious about and get a lot of naysayers and no concrete answers. I didn’t mean to do that, and hope I didn’t come across as deflating your very valid question.
No harm no foul Philip. We are all here to learn and share. Our goals may be different but the end result we seek are the same - healthy roses.
Philip
My mentor Dick Hutton, who was the chairman of CP for many years told me when I started : A good rose is a rose that sells.
The way we select roses has changed significantly over the years but we are still directed by that statement.
There is no question that exhibition type roses have lost a lot of market share, and the trend for them is not good. The consumer demands “easy care” for all plants these days and as a commercial enterprise that’s what we try to provide. But what will make a rose sell on the market place can be a lot of different factors, not just disease resistance.
We are woring primarily with 2 “rose hells” with climates that are very condusive to diesases as our primary screening sites, and then work with trials that are strategically located all over the United States with the selections that we think have the best potential.
Hope this helps.
Jacques