Tool Kit for Valentine's Day
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? 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 Flower Sales Structure and Commit
There are many different ways to approach Valentine’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 clear, concise and organized.
Some ideas:
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.
Offer a limited amount of varying designs that must be pre-ordered no later than a week out from Valentine’s Day. For orders placed after that cutoff date, offer a simple bouquet, one size, one price, one style and in a limited quantity.
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.
A TIP ON PREORDERS
If you are offering pre-order sales, you must not limit what customers are able to buy. Why offer $75 or $150 as your highest price point? If you are allowing people to preorder flowers long before you buy the actual product, you must have a $300-$400 price point available. Otherwise, you are limiting your potential sales for absolutely no reason other than self-doubt. There are clients who want to buy that extra extra special arrangement, but will look elsewhere when they don’t see it as an option on your site.
Preorder Price Point Suggestions:
$25 bouquet - first come first serve at pop-up only OR preorder with no delivery option - this price point is too low for a delivery option
Preordered Bouquets/Arrangements
$65 | $95 | $150 | $200 | $300+
Prepare Your Flower Delivery Supplies Right NOW
Make sure that orders for all necessary supplies have been placed no later than 3 weeks out before Valentine’s Day.
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.
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 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.
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 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 fans of your work in your community - and offer the opportunity to earn some money 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.
Again, if you commit…then truly commit.
If you have chosen to offer Valentine’s Day flowers, don’t let this be a waste of your time and money. Make the commitment and do it right. Write down the exact structure you are going to try out. Use Canva to create social media advertisements that you can post daily on your stories and in your grid. Make the information and the offerings clear and concise and repeat them daily. Show examples of what can be expected. Lastly, 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.
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! Best of luck to all you hardworking florists out there!!!