It's almost Valentines Day, the post-Christmas saviour for so many small businesses around the country. Anyone in the business of selling flowers, chocolates, gift-cards, stuffed animals, and other pink fluffy things looks forward to the lead up to February 14th as one of the busiest times of the year.

It’s a multi billion-dollar industry, one which is hard to avoid – seeing as though around 20% of women say they’d break up with a boyfriend for not celebrating the occasion. Whether you think it’s a special day to celebrate your love, or just another marketing ploy to get us to spend, there’s no denying big bucks will be spent.

So while you’re forking out to prove your love, here are some interesting facts about the Hallmark Holiday:

- More than one billion Valentine’s Day cards are exchanged each year.

- Hallmark manufactures 1300 different cards specifically for Valentine’s Day.

- Teachers will receive the most Valentine’s Day cards, followed by children, mothers, wives and finally sweethearts.

- The first American publisher of Valentine’s Day cards was Esther Howland of Worcester Mass, in the 1870’s.

- Primarily marketed to the wealthy, the cards featured elaborate lace and ranged in price from $5.00 to $35.00.

- Valentine’s day can be traced back to the annual Roman festival where men stripped into their birthday suit, and with goat-skin whips would spank the young maidens with the hope of increasing their fertility.

- More than 110 million roses are sold on Valentine’s Day. A red rose highlighted by Baby’s Breath is known as a signature rose.

- Cupid is the most popular Valentine’s Day caricature. Cupid was the son of Venus and was believed to have shot arrows of love with his bow.

- Men purchase 73% of Valentine’s Day flowers. 15% of women send themselves flowers on February 14th.

- About 64% of men do not make advance plans for Valentine’s Day.

- 3% of pet owners give a Valentine’s Day gift to their pet.

- The Italian City of Verona, home to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet receives approximately 1000 letters addresses simply to Juliet each year.

- The oldest known Valentine’s Day card was written by the imprisoned Charles, the Duke of Orleans, to his wife in 1415.

- The average American will spend $119.67 on Valentine’s Day. Men spend almost twice as much on Valentine’s Day as do women.

- More than one-third of men would prefer not to receive a gift while less than 20% of women feel the same way.

- About eight billion candy hearts were made last year, enough to stretch from Rome to the USA and back again 20 times.

- About 75% of the billion is from sales of chocolate, which has been associated with romance at least since Mexico's 15th- and 16th-century Aztec Empire, where emperor Moctezuma I believed "eating chocolate on a regular basis made him more virile and better able to serve his harem," she said.