The Wilfrid Laurier University Rotaract club will be hosting its annual Succulent Sale inside the concourse on Oct. 26 at 9:30 am.
The President of the WLU Rotaract chapter, Robin Scheffer, explained that the Rotaract club mission statement is to support the Kitchener-Waterloo Community in various community building opportunities.
“Rotaract is a club that is focused on service above self, we also have community outreach and professional development events coming up,” Scheffer said.
“This week we are volunteering at St. John’s Soup Kitchen, and we are working on a Holiday Gift Wrapping event in support of KW Epilepsy. If students are interested in volunteering with us, they can sign up for opportunities through our Facebook page,” Scheffer said.
Additional details about the sale are available on the WLU Rotaract Club’s Facebook page, but the various price points and logistical details were explained by Scheffer.
“Small succulents are six dollars, which are 3.5 inches in diameter … and large succulents going for 10 dollars,” Scheffer said.
“The sale is happening on Oct. 26 around 9:30 a.m.,”Scheffer continued. “We are finalizing with our supplier but if you come nice and early you get the largest selection of the cacti and succulents. We’ll be running throughout the day until supplies run out.”
The line up in the concourse is still anticipated largely in part due to the ‘aesthetic’ significance that succulent plants have acquired more recently.
The succulent sale is the most well-known fundraising endeavor that the Rotaract club does. Ultimately the sale has grown from its origins as a small-scale fundraiser into this larger event that now makes use of wholesale suppliers.
“The idea started out as a really small-scale sale, they probably only bought 30 plants from grocery stores [and] we sold out very quickly,” Scheffer said.
“Our last sale we had over 400 plants, this was the sale right before the final exam period in the fall semester.”
“Last year when I started out in the club and they had that great success, I thought that we should do this again but on a larger scale. We found a wholesaler for the succulent sale this [time] so we could sell them at lower prices for students and still make a margin to donate,” Scheffer said.
The Rotaract Club has had to change the date due to concourse scheduling conflicts and also in order to accommodate the large space which the club requires.
The line up in the concourse is still anticipated largely in part due to the ‘aesthetic’ significance that succulent plants have acquired more recently.
“The succulent trend has kind of blown up, people really like having a plant in their rooms to burst of colour,” Scheffer said.
“It’s the Tumblr aesthetic that people like. People like that they are easy to take care of they are appealing to the eye and it’s nice that you can pick them up on Campus.”
However, the Rotaract club is aware that they may have a slight lesser turn out due to other campus clubs selling succulents and cacti as a fundraising opportunity.
“The main difference this year is that the trend of doing succulent sales [has] caught on, other clubs are running this, which is great,” Scheffer said.
“This is a great fundraising opportunity; no one is doing this for their personal gain. I understand that the sale might not have a huge volume this year because people may have already been able to purchase them.”