The War of The Roses

New players alter the balance of flower power

If you went online to order that Valentine's Day bouquet, you probably found plenty of Web vendors wanting to send one to your sweetie. The $15 billion floral industry is blossoming with new competition, but what's happening on the Web is only part of it.

When FTD.com and 1-800-Flowers.com started selling flowers online six years ago, they introduced a new way to place orders but stuck with the old way of filling them: by farming them out to the nearest florist. Now a new patch of online merchants, including Proflowers.com and Martha Stewart, are pushing...

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