Are you a brand new florist or an event florist who has decided to jump into your first major flower holiday this Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day? Today we will share some essential pieces of wisdom to help ensure that your holiday floral design rush is both well executed and profitable.

CHOOSE A SIMPLE FLOWER SALES STRUCTURE AND COMMIT

There are many different ways to approach Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day. Don’t go into this willy nilly, unsure of what you are selling and open to any and every request you may get from customers. Keep your offerings simple, clear, and organized.

Having a hard time coming up with a sales structure idea? Here’s some help… 

• Select a single color palette to offer and pre-order just enough flowers to cover your best estimate of expected business (perhaps enough for 20 arrangements). Once you are sold out, that’s that. Don’t overbuy. This is a great way to go about it if you are brand new to the industry.

• Offer a limited amount of varying designs that must be pre-ordered no later than a week out from the floral holiday. For orders placed after that cutoff date, offer a simple bouquet, one size, one price, one style and in a limited quantity- aim to sell out.

• Do a pop-up at a popular bakery or coffee shop and offer pre-made bouquets. Choose whether you’d like to allow preorders or not. If you choose to take preorders, advertise that daily on your social media platforms. If you are new to the game with little experience, try starting out by offering them at $25 a pop for a little bundle, so they are a low-commitment price, since they will most likely get bought spur of the moment.

The point of these ideas is that you won’t get stretched too thin and you WILL turn a profit. With more control exercised over your sales structure and product, fewer operational mistakes will be made throughout the day, the more profit you will make and the happier your clients will be.

This is how you gain momentum in getting a new business off the ground.

Simple High Quality Products. Happy Customers. Turn a Profit. Repeat.

PREPARE YOUR FLOWER DELIVERY SUPPLIES RIGHT NOW

Make sure that orders for all necessary supplies have been placed no later than 3-4 weeks out before Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day (or any other holiday).

What floral supplies might you need?

• Branded Care Tags that have your business contact, remind clients to add fresh water or change the water daily, to keep the flowers in a cool space, etc + any upcoming events or announcement you can share.

• Recyclable or Compostable paper used to wrap bouquets. Butcher paper is great for this.

• Twine, raffia or ribbon used to tie the bouquets. If you are using ribbon, I like to pre-cut it ahead of time for quickly tying bouquets.

• All vases and mechanics, pre-prepped. When you aren’t using floral foam, the prep time can be a little longer. Don’t wait to do this until Valentine’s/Mother’s Day week. Do it now! Subscribe to our online classes to learn more about affordable foam-free mechanics!

• Business Cards! Your care tags should have your business contact number and website in case there’s an issue with the order. It’s also nice to have business cards on hand in case someone is picking up in-person and requests a few to give to friends/family after being impressed by your work.

• Message Cards are incredibly important because everyone wants a little love note attached to their arrangement. You could choose to supply greeting cards for sale, but if you are just getting started I would recommend keeping your costs down and keeping it simple. Look for a simple, quality blank card that you can be complimentary.

HANDLE YOUR OWN FLOWER DELIVERY

I’m sure many will cringe or completely disagree with this, but on a super busy flower day, we prefer to rent a van or two and take care of the deliveries ourselves. Delivery services are so overwhelmed on these days and are already delivering flowers from dozens of different shops. We want our delivery drivers to understand the delicate nature of our product and if any spillage or breakage occurs, we want the designs to receive the utmost care prior to delivery. Turn to local flower-lovers, trusted friends or followers of your work in your community - and offer the opportunity to earn some cash while supporting a favorite local business. For many people, driving, listening to podcasts and delivering the joy of flowers is a very desirable and rewarding way to pass the day. You can evaluate the distances driven and offer to either pay hourly or per delivery. If you are letting someone else use their own vehicle you will definitely need to add in an additional payment for mileage.

To overcome parking situations, slap a few magnetic logos onto the car so they won’t get towed or ticketed in loading zones.

AGAIN, IF YOU COMMIT…THEN TRULY COMMIT.

If you have chosen to offer Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day flowers, don’t let this be a waste of your time and money. Make the commitment and do it right.

1. Write down the exact structure you are going to try out.

2. Use Canva to create social media advertisements that you can post daily on your stories and in your grid.

3. Make the information and the offerings clear and concise and repeat them daily.

4. Show examples of what can be expected.

5. Make the online ordering process EASY. Make sure you try out your own system before you make it live on your site. Add a button on your site that clearly says, “Order Flowers” or “Flower Delivery” because the standard human doesn’t want to search for the online shop.

6. Talk it up every single day! Think of fun ways to get your community to share your services, create a giveaway competition that asks your social media followers to tag local friends to get entered into a raffle, team up with a local business, create little flower quizzes that get your community interested, etc. Be creative and go all in on making sure your community knows about your holiday offerings.

First, commit. Then follow it with consistency and clarity for your customers.

We hope these starter points are helpful! If you need more guidance on creating designs for delivery, take a peek at our delivery design video, via Flowering Minds! Best of luck to all you hardworking florists out there!!!