Rick & Roger moved their Iris photos to Facebook after their old service decided to charge a fee to access them. You do not need to be a "Facebook" member to see their pictures. They are not "High Tech" computer wise and don't really see a need to go that root. They use Facebook as a portal to show some pictures of what they carry and to blog about their Iris experience. The old site did not show a complete set of pictures either if memory holds. They are so low tech, that when I emailed them and suggested they just send me a PDF file of their catalog rather than send me a hard copy (I thought this would save them the expense of postage) they said they were not sure they knew how to do that. Further more, they use a local printer to make their catalogs and they needed to print a minimum number to keep the process worth it to both parties. So it comes in the mail!
One of the reasons they only look at ATP and not join up is that being on more than one platform/media site is too much work. Since they are currently "based" on Facebook, they thought it better to just stay there. This does not mean they will not join us at ATP, that's not clear to me. I do know it just won't be now. I get the impression that they would like to commit fully to any project and aren't sure they can do that with two sites.
Remember, they run a small two man operation on one acre (ok; two acre's but one has a cover crop). Unlike Schreiner's that has hundreds (ok, I don't know how much they have, but is substantially more than two). I found out that their previous customers made orders via email starting January first without the benefit of a catalog. If they have what you want, they let you know and then send a follow up email with the costs. So I joined the ranks of the early orderers (even though this is my first ever order with them). I wanted specific cultivars that they introduced and I did not want to have them fall to the "out of stock" category before I had a chance to order.
I am sure they do not like to lose potential clients/customers, but they have been doing this for a long time this way. It is only recently that the iris world has moved to the Jan 1 order time frame. When I "joined up" in 2009/2010, March was the time ALL of the big houses took orders; after their catalogs had been delivered.
These guys are great to deal with. Just email them with your request and see if they have what you want. They add a lot of new stock every year from all of the "BIG" names.
Here is their email address!
[email protected]]
