Photo by John-Mark Smith on Unsplash
By Kai Schwenk
Skagit Valley’s Tulip Town has seen great success with this year’s Tulip Festival, despite going through more news and events last year than it likely ever has, the event returned this year with a very strong showing. Despite a recent ownership change reported by Skagit Valley Herald in June of 2019, and the event being cancelled altogether last year, the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival has successfully taken off this year.
The “Tulip Town” farm was first put up for sale back in December of 2017, but it was never successfully sold until June 2019, when it was purchased by “Spinach Bus Ventures”, a venture capital group in Skagit County, who advertise themselves as “high school classmates” and “Skagit Valley Natives” on the Tulip Town website. The members of this group are Managing Partner Rachael Ward Sparwasser, President & COO Angela Speer, CEO Andrew Miller, CFO Randy Howard, and Chief Development Officer Donnie Keltz. On the group’s website, they describe their purpose as being to “preserve and promote” the area. They purchased the Tulip Town for a reported $1.5 million, and the following year had to cancel their Tulip Festival event, leaving their investment without its largest source of income for a year, shortly after purchasing it. Likely as a direct result of this, the Tulip Town is having many adjustments made to its business model. The group reportedly claims to seek to make Tulip Town a more active location year-round, rather than generally only attracting visitors for a few weeks annually. The most obvious result of this strategy being advertised is their “Tulip Town Memberships”, which include 79 and 99 dollar annual subscription options. These memberships have benefits made accessible throughout the year, outside of privileges during the Tulip Festival period. The memberships began to be sold shortly after the festival was cancelled for the year, likely a response to lost ticket and admission sales.
The Tulip Town is also currently selling a wide variety of individual Tulip Bulbs, which are to be shipped out in the fall. While the bulb sales were initially introduced to make up for sales lost due to the shutdown, online bulb sales appear to be a permanent fixture, for the time being. There are some more streamlined and high tech additions to the festival to facilitate bulb sales as well. Towards the end of rows, QR codes are available to scan to easily purchase the bulbs which those codes accompany. In a similarly forward thinking approach, the fields have been laid out in a fashion to allow for easy photography for social media, giving the organizers no shortage of free advertising. I reached out to a man at the event who was making full use of the QR codes provided, for comment on the changes and additions made this year, his response was as follows; “The Tulip Festival has been around for as long as I’ve lived in Anacortes, I really was surprised to see all these changes being made so suddenly, after running the same operation for as long as I’ve been here.The Seattle Times reported that Tulip Town also worked in coordination with local businesses to expand sales even further, such as working with local restaurants to include bouquets with takeout orders. In addition to the expansions of the Tulip Town’s business model, the Festival itself appears to be altogether a great success this year, with multiple news outlets reporting as such, and a very positive reaction across social media. CEO Andrew Miller in particular has been active with social media interaction, and ostensibly has maintained a close eye personally on the development of the project. The event is currently at its height, as flowers are in “Peak Bloom” at the time of writing.
Organizers recommend visiting before April 24 and April 25 if possible, as it is projected to be the busiest weekend of the season, which ends on April 30. Despite Tulip Town being made up of a 50 acre field and a 5 acre garden, with a 3,000 person capacity, it is expected to get quite busy and congested by the weekend, please be patient and understanding if you visit during this period. Tickets for April 24 are already beginning to sell out during several peak hours on that day in particular, so you may want to check soon, if there is any particular time you had in mind. There is a 3 hour time limit for visits, and tickets must be purchased in advance online, with multiple price points and options available, so planning your visit to an extent would be wise. Please keep in mind that pets are not allowed. Despite coming out of a tumultuous year to undertake such a project, and of course being brand new owners on their first year putting together this iconic local event, Spinach Bus Ventures appears to have absolutely nailed it, setting the group in the right direction on a great start.
