Florists Enjoy Strong Mother’s Day Sales

Mother’s Day Sales Hit New Levels

The floral industry seems to be in a constant state of change. Many small to medium flower shop owners find themselves struggling to make a profit. At the same time, a number of large order gatherers appear to be flourishing. Even with all the turbulence, florists we serve are all experiencing strong, steady growth. The week of Mother’s Day was no exception. Each shop in our floral group achieved solid growth in sales and revenues. Several reported the strongest Mother’s Day sales in their firms histories!

Roses Harvest, plantation in Tumbaco, Cayambe, Ecuador, South AmThe two largest flower occasions of the year are Valentine’s Day and Mothers’ Day. Both are extremely challenging for flower shop owners. For example, our florists all buy farm-direct. Buying direct has some huge benefits in terms of the quality and variety of flowers they can offer. It also comes with risk during a week like Mother’s Day. Most of the flower farms require a partial payment for each flower order at the time the order is placed. With final payment being due at the time the flowers are actually cut, wrapped and shipped. Meaning, florists who buy direct from the growers spend huge sums of money before the first Mother’s Day order has ever been taken.

8Once the flowers arrive, the next big issue becomes inventory management. How do you store thousands and thousands of fresh cut flowers, and not loose them to spoilage before the Mother’s Day orders begin to flow. Our shop owners are incredibly bright folks. All have installed massive cooler systems, capable of maintaining the precise temperatures needed to effectively store fresh cut flowers. The secret is to ensure the blooms stay closed while in storage. The goal is the design the arrangement and have the blooms open precisely when the arrangement is delivered to the recipient. During Mother’s Day, flower storage capacity is always an issue. The sheer volume of product needed to fulfill all the orders that come through during the holiday is staggering. Solving that problem requires creativity on the part of each shop owner. For most, the answer lies in positioning huge refrigerated trailers on-site. These refrigerated units provide the additional temporary storage space required to handle the massive influx of product.

Call Tracking & RecordingThe challenges don’t end there. In fact, the difficulty factor just seems to keep ramping up for the flower shop owners during Mother’s Day. The next major issue the face is manpower. Most flower shops maintain staffing levels designed to get them through the everyday business of designing and delivering fresh cut flowers. Mother’s Day requires a far different strategy. Our shop owners are extremely busy year round. When Mother’s Day rolls around, they are always under pressure to find a way to effectively increase staffing levels, while maximizing the available floor space in their shops. That isn’t an easy task.

For our shop owners, holiday hiring begins well in advance of Mother’s Day week. The call center has to be beefed up. These sales people have to be trained and field tested before the holiday arrives. Floral design staff schedules have to be tweaked. Holiday production runs have to be completed, while still fulfilling other commitments, such as; weddings and events that may also be on the May calendar. Most of the shop owners we support maintain a staff of part time designers. During Mother’s Day, full time and part time designers all come together in concert to handle the spike in work loads. Staffing challenges are also something shop owners have to deal with in other parts of the operation. Delivery is a mission critical component of every flower shop. This is a task that often keeps many a flower shop owner up late at night. During holidays like Mother’s Day, it not unusual to see one of our florists personally work 80 or more hour during the week. We would know that because our staff is also at it day and night working to ensure our marketing program is delivering optimal results. We routinely trade emails with our shop owners in the middle of the night during Mother’s Day week. Really!!

van-bigThe flower shop owners we support all enjoy a steady stream of business each day. We focus much of our energy teaching them how to successfully make money year round. Keeping the shops busy during normal months is mission critical to having them ready for peak periods. The busy daily schedules have lead to the development of some pretty sophisticated delivery operations in most of the shops. All of our shop owners provide nationwide same day delivery. Most offer local rush delivery, and several offer express local delivery. The express delivery option enables customers to select the actual time of day they want the arrangement to be delivered.

iStock_000006102941XSmallFlower delivery is to say the least a very challenging piece of the business. You are dealing with a perishable product. That perishable product has been expertly designed into a magnificent floral arrangement. Then that gorgeous flower arrangement must be carefully loaded into a delivery vehicle, with no damage to the flowers. It must be kept stable during transport to the recipient. The flowers must not get too hot, nor too cold during this transportation process. Delivery routes must be constructed to ensure the drivers can get the arrangements to the intended recipient within the agreed to time frames. During Mother’s Day, drivers are expected to handle multiple delivery runs each day. That requires the delivery management team to build delivery routes that maximize the value and effectiveness of each drivers available hours.

9Holidays like Mother’s Day challenge every single department within a flower shop. If all departments aren’t properly managed, the end result can be disastrous for the shop owner. If you are a flower shop owner, the last thing you want is to have hundreds of unhappy customers who either didn’t receive their Mother’s Day flowers on time, or received an arrangement that wasn’t in top condition. The thing I love most about the shop owners we support is this. For them, Mother’s Day isn’t just about trying to make money. There vision of Mother’s Day is much more than that. It’s about keeping a commitment to customers they value. That commitment is to ensure that each Mom they serve receives a masterfully crafted fresh cut flower arrangement. Each arrangement is crafted with love and designed to exceed the expectations of the sender and recipient. Our shop owners focus on quality, luxury and customer satisfaction. They steer clear of the tactics and strategies used by the large order gatherers and drop ship florists. Mother’s Day is special. It’s about celebrating relationships with the special people in our lives that make this world a better place. It’s awesome to be working with florists who have such lofty ideals.

In truth, we are extremely blessed to serve such a distinguished group of flower shop owners. Our firm is fortunate to work with companies like Carithers Flowers, Veldkamp’s Flowers, Allen’s Flowers, Flowerama and a number of others. Every single florist in our group is currently experiencing strong growth. They all enjoyed nice increases in sales and revenues during Mother’s Day. These increases weren’t just from online sales efforts. Our marketing program also delivered significant growth in their call-in’s, walk-in’s, wire outs and credit card sales as well. How do we know that our shop owners are out performing their peer group? Each shop owner we support participates in various floral industry user groups. These user groups all share high level financial and operational results data. Our shop owners indicate to us that their Mother’s Day sales performance far outpaced other shop owners in their user groups.

It is our mission to be the very best marketing firm in the floral industry. We won’t stop until we achieve that mission. When you work with our team, it won’t take you long to see just how relentless we are in pursuing success for your firm. Don’t take our word for it. Just ask the shop owners we support. Every flower shop owner we currently support is extremely happy with our performance. Most of them are now opting for multi-year service agreements with us. They have seen the value we deliver and know first hand how dedicated our team is to generating results for them. We aspire to be a true strategic partner to all those we serve. Nothing is more gratifying than when one of our flower shop owners decides to tell others about the great work we are doing for them.

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Mother’s Day Marketing For Florists

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Carithers Flowers Luxury Collection

Secret To Marketing Flower Shops

What does Mom spell when turned upside down? It spells WOW that’s what!

The Flyline Search Marketing team is hard at work, deploying well thought out tactics and strategies, specifically designed to support Mother’s Day flower sales for the flower shops we support. We offer a comprehensive marketing program for florists that is highly effective. This program is delivering stunning results for our clients. Our customers routinely tell us that their monthly and quarterly sales and revenue growth numbers far exceed those of other flower shop owners who participate in floral industry groups they data share with.

What is our secret you ask? It’s starts with first strategically partnering with GREAT clients, such as; Carithers Flowers, Allen’s Flowers, Veldkamp’s and Flowerama. Next we deploy an incredibly well designed strategy that is unique and comprehensive in nature. Add to that, our talented and dedicated staff. Who might I add are absolutely relentless in their efforts to drive success for every florist we serve. If you do decide to work with us, that will be the best decision you ever make. Like one of our flower shop owners told a prospective client not too long ago, if they do offer to serve your firm, sign the contract as fast as you can! That is absolutely true by the way. Our goal in strategically partnering with shop owners is simple. If we invest our lives and energy in you, we just want to know that you equally value us and the contribution we make to your business and to your family. Those who have hired us will tell you that we educate our shop owners along the way and approach the relationship with a spirit of teamwork and open sharing of ideas and information. We find that approach leads to florists who are informed and empowered!

2009%20FTD%20Top%20100%20Award[1]The marketing program we deliver was created with the help of one of the brightest minds in the flower business, Mr. Charles Carithers, owner of Carithers Flowers in Atlanta, Georgia. We first met Charles in January of 2009. He brought us in to revamp his Google Adwords program and our eye popping first year results provided us with an opportunity to grow the relationship. From that point forward, Charles taught us the flower business and we shared our digital and traditional marketing expertise with him. As you can imagine, Carithers Flowers has really grown during the past 6 years. They are now arguably one of the top and largest independent flower shops in the United States. As Charles will tell you, growing your flower shop requires an unrelenting commitment to innovation and marketing. From our perspective, Charles is the best in the business at both.

 

Comprehensive Marketing For Florists!

Comprehensive Marketing For Florists!

The advertising program that we began creating for Charles back in 2009, has morphed from an extremely productive tool, into a tactical marketing weapon. This program has been field tested over the past 6 years. We have expertly refined it over the past few years, using data gathered from real life experience, from all over the country. The program has delivered results in market after market. Shop owners from the East Coast to the West Coast have seen first hand how the program drives growth in all areas of their business. Our program is designed to grow walk-in, call-in, credit card, online, wedding and event sales and more. The program has delivered results in market after market, increasing overall sales and revenues for every single client who has hired us.

Want an inside tip? Work with us to strategically grow your business 365 days a year. Our approach is focused on growing our clients sales and revenue every single day of the year! While our efforts do produce incredible results during the two biggest floral holidays of the year, Valentine’s and Mother’s Day. We prefer to maintain a keen focus on driving day to day sales results.

 

The Floral Wire Networks

The Floral Wire Networks

Holidays like Mother’s Day require a very specific game plan in order to win. Historically, most small to medium sized flower shops relied on wire-in order volume for the majority of the daily and holiday flower orders. That reliance on wire-in orders is at least a major factor in why so many small and medium sized flower shops have closed over the past 5 years. The national order gatherers spend a ton of money on advertising to secure those orders. They keep an ever increasing percentage of each order they take in order to cover their cost of order acquisition and to provide the profit margin their owners demand. That leaves the poor local florist creating and delivering many arrangements at, or sometimes below cost. Not a formula for success.

all months of the year

Working For Florists 365 Days A Year!

Our team has developed both a year around approach for our florists, as well as a holiday strategy as well. Then we customize the holiday program, based on the specific needs and operating issues that each of our shop owners is facing. The goal at holidays like Mother’s Day is not just to survive, but, to help our shop owners thrive! If you are a flower shop owner, you know what we are saying here. Many of you work ridiculous hours during Mother’s Day week and walk away at the end of the day with little to no actual profit. The flower growers and wholesalers want more money for the flowers you need to buy. Your floral design staff expects to be paid overtime for the crazy hours you are going to need them to work. You don’t have enough delivery drivers so you either temporarily bring in a bunch of untrained drivers, or you give in and pay the exorbitant fees required by third party delivery firms. Everything is working against you making a profit!

I mentioned the term “Strategic Partnering’ with our shop owners, earlier in this post. A big part of what we bring to the table is the expert consulting advice and guidance that we share with our florists. We spend hours working with each individual client. Making sure that they have defined the end result they wish to achieve and have everything in place to achieve the desired financial results. We help them set up their websites for each holiday. That means ensuring the products being offered for sale are in alignment with the flower orders being submitted to the growers by the shop owner. Graphics on the website need to be updated, social media platforms need to themed for the occasion, blog posts must be written, press releases submitted, tweets must go out, radio spots must be created and recorded. The list of details sometimes seems endless. What makes this work is our relentless approach. We focus on the details and are just relentless in our pursuit of success for each client. Everything we do, must work in concert with the flower shop, if we are going to drive financial success during a holiday such as Mother’s Day.

Check out these Mother’s Day themed radio spots that we helped put together for Carithers Flowers. These are just one example of the customized approach that I mentioned earlier in the article. We run radio spots on multiple stations in the Atlanta market to drive increased brand awareness for Carithers Flowers. These spots are primarily targeted for year round sales opportunities, versus holiday flower sales. These particular spots will stop running the week leading up to Mother’s Day. We choose to end the spots early because we don’t anticipate needing marketing support from radio to achieve the tactical holiday objectives set by Carithers Flowers.

At the end of this coming week, we will reach Mother’s Day. The vast majority of the flower shops in the country will sell more flowers this week than during any other week this year. Most will struggle to actually make a profit from all of the work.

Flower shops that Flyline Search Marketing supports will thrive this week, next week and each week after that!

 

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