Flower Shop Business Guide

By Bev D.

About The Author:

I started delivering flowers when I was 16. On the holidays the florist I worked for would always need help at night preparing orders for the next day. Because the holidays are so demanding everyone has something they have to do in order to get all of the orders completed for the next day. Once I realized this I started watching people make arrangements so I could help out and make extra money. They treat the preparation like an assembly line. If you don't know anything you start by putting the oasis in the container wrap the container up and send it to the next person. This person puts the greenery in that was my job. Putting the greenery in teaches you how to get your dimension. The next person puts the big flowers in and arranges it. The last person puts in the final flowers and critiques it, puts the card in and sends it to the delivery room. So on the holidays you eventually learn step by step how to make an arrangement.

So after a couple of years I quit the flower store and got married. When I met his family his sister also worked at a flower store which was actually one of my competitors. My sister in law had quit her job at that florist and took another job at the florist we now own. She found out that the store was for sale and over a couple of cocktails we decided to see if we could get her to lower her price and owner finance the store for us. We offered her 5 thousand down and one thousand dollars a month for seven years. It worked out to be about $88,000 dollars which was about half of what she was asking for. The thousand dollars a month worked with her social security plan because she was not allowed to make over $12,000 per year. Because she knew my sister in law for about 15 years and felt comfortable that she was capable of running the business she accepted our offer.

Qualifications:

I would not recommend the schooling they offer to learn how to make arrangements and start a flower shop. We have hired people from the schools and they never have worked out for us. Not that they were not capable of learning but since they had the schooling they expected to be paid as a competent florist and they are just not prepared enough. I highly recommend working for someone from the ground up and learning from an experienced store owner before venturing out on your own. You can always find a job with flower shops around the holidays and hands on is the easiest and best way to learn.

The schools charge between $1700.00 and $2000.00 dollars for a 3 month course and I believe it is a waste of time and money. If you work 3 months for a florist you will learn more and will get paid while learning.

You need to be friendly outgoing and compassionate. You have to handle chaos calmly and be extremely efficient. You need to understand that even though it is fun and rewarding it is a lot of hard work. Keeping a positive attitude and understanding how to treat your help will go a long way towards your success.

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Entity Licensing & Insurance:

We registered as a sole proprietorship and the partnership was kept just between ourselves. I know many people think that you should have a partnership agreement but we were family and had a great relationship and it has worked now for 13 years. I take care of paying the bills and she takes care of all billing. I never butt into her part and she leaves me to do mine.

Licensing is your standard occupational license, states sales tax certificate, fictitious name registration and an agricultural permit ($25.00) because we sell plants. Once in awhile someone from the agricultural department will come out and make sure you do not have bugs in your plants. You are also required to purchase flowers only from someone with an agriculture permit. Plants must be green house grown.

Liability insurance for the store is $1400.00 per year. If you have delivery drivers they should have business insurance on their cars just like the pizza delivery people. But many times you tend to let this slide but you shouldn't. I would give NetQuote a try they usually come up with the best rates for business liability insurance. You will see a link at the end of this article for NetQuote.

About My Store:

Our flower store is in a strip center on a main road. We have 2 units that we rent each unit is 953 square feet giving us just under 2000 square feet to work with. When we purchased the store the previous owner had it setup with mostly plastic shelving and wood counter tops. So we had to install new counter tops, add another cooler for the flowers, install wood shelving to give it a warmer feel which helps display our items we sell more professionally than the plastic shelving the previous owner used.

We are open 6 days a week Monday through Friday 9 to 5 and Saturday 9 till 12 and we are on call with the funeral homes so sometimes we have to work Sundays also. We give the funeral homes our personal cell numbers so when an emergency or something comes up that they need us we can take care of them. This is just one of the ways to keep your commercial businesses happy and why they call us instead of another florist in town.

I would recommend you not open a flower shop in a small town that has more than three florists that is including you. Having a 1 in 3 chance of being called is what you need today to survive. Now in a bigger city that of course is different.

If you can purchase a flower shop that is in business then that is what I would do if they are asking a fair price and they have a good reputation. However if they do not have a good reputation stay away no matter what the price, people don't give florists a second chance so if people in town are saying bad things about them stay away.

At first you may think you do not need a 2000 square feet store but when the holidays come you will be glad you have the space. We will fill the whole floor with flowers to be pre pared and both coolers will be full. I also have an air conditioned shed outside that we put the finished orders to be delivered and it too will be full.

We have offered some consignment products in the showroom from local people that make some cute gifts but it has never been a big money maker. We really don’t have that much foot traffic in our store. If someone comes in it is usually to look at the FTD, Teleflora or 1-800 flowers books to pick out something they want sent to someone not local. Most all your business comes from phone calls or over the wire/computer. As the years go by more people from other states will call you and place an order rather than go through FTD, Teleflora or 1-800 flowers because they know it is cheaper. Because of the fees these companies charge the florist for this service the customer will get a better product for less money if they order direct this way all of their money would go to the arrangement instead of fees and commissions.

What to Charge:

Our standard markup on all items is cost tripled. You have to charge for deliveries we used to charge $6.00 but for the last few years we have charged $10.00. You have to cover the cost of paying the delivery people because this is not built into your arrangement pricing. We pay our flower delivery people by the delivery and people hardly ever tip them. I don't know why, I guess they feel they make good enough money or since they pay for the delivery when making their purchase they don't feel the need to tip.

When we started out, we sat down knowing are prices we paid and made a arrangement using daisy’s with a basket, oases and baby’s breath using 5 stems of daisies and we had at the time about $10.00 in costs so we tripled it and would basically charge $30.00 for that arrangement. Now roses cost more per stem so the price would go up for the same arrangement or the amount of stems we used would go down to keep the cost the same.

You have to know the cost of the flowers you have in order to price them out. For instance we tell people when they call you can get an arrangement for $15.00 and up. Well if we used all daisies it would be a nice size bouquet. If they only wanted to spend $20.00 and wanted roses it would be 3 roses in a bud vase. So the price they want to spend will dictate what you use or the amount of stems used if they request a more expensive flower. We give our funeral homes a 20%

We give our funeral homes a 20% discount on their orders because they are the ones actually selling the flowers for us and they call us instead of another flower shop. We do not make any profit from the churches. We just recoup the cost of our flowers. Just like the funeral work, we use up the flowers left over at the end of the week that you will be throwing away anyway so we use them to make these church and funeral arrangements full and beautiful because it is great advertisement.

Roses are the worst profit. You regular mixed arrangements are the best profit items as far as flowers. Funerals are very profitable and so are weddings, but weddings are very tedious and time consuming so you have to have a lot of patience.

We charge $75.00 to $100.00 dollars to decorate Christmas trees. It takes us about 3 hours to do. This is something we did a lot of starting out but now just we have just a couple each year that we still do.

Getting Paid:

We will bill anyone, we ask if they want to pay by credit card but if they asked to be billed we will no matter if we know them or not. In 13 years we have not been burned more than 5 or 6 times. But many people thank us especially businesses who normally get billed for everything. This also makes a difference on who they call next time and it is usually us because the other florists want a credit card right now to place the order.

FTD, Teleflora and 1-800 Flowers will send you a check once a month. Churches and funeral homes we bill once a month along with anyone else who asked to be billed.

Any complaints are handled immediately and we do whatever it takes to make that customer happy. Even if you know it was the customer's fault we will re-due or give them what they thought they purchased to make them happy even if they killed the plant themselves.

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TelaFlora, FTD & 1-800 Flowers:

FTD, Teleflora and 1-800 Flowers are all nationally advertised companies that act as a brokerage company for florists all over the country. As a flower shop you pay to join these services and in return they will send you business from people who order flowers from other states that need to be delivered in your area. Since they advertise on a national scale and have standardized books and prices someone can pick out an arrangement from using one of their books at a local florist in their state and have that same item delivered using a local florist that belongs to their network in another state. Now this does not come without costs and fees and they have a lot of them. All of the brokerage companies take a percentage of the sale right off the top and they have monthly service fees for using them and certain equipment needed to process the orders.

You don't make anything when a customer comes into your business to order flowers using one of these services it is just a convenience you offer your customers. So the more local business you can build the better. These services can take 28% right off the top of your orders and you also have to pay your own delivery fees on top of that. Many florists won't accept orders from these services under $30.00 because of the costs involved.

List of Florist Associations:

The Wholesale Florist and Florist Supplier Association www.wffsa.org is a good source for information regarding the Floral Industry.
Independent Florist's Association www.myifa.org/
Alabama State Florist Association, Inc. (205)989-8001
Alaska State Florists Association (907)5563-6908
All-America Rose Selections www.rose.org
American Orchid Society www.orchidweb.org
Arizona State Florists' Association (520)742-1409
Arkansas State Florists Association (501)354-1160
Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers www.ascfg.org
California Association of Flower Growers and Shippers (831)722-2424
California Interior Plantscape Association www.cipaweb.org
California State Florists' Association (916)448-5266
Colorado Floriculture Foundation (303)427-8132
Connecticut Florists Association www.FlowersPlantsInCT.com
Florida State Florists Association (561)585-9491
Flowers and Plants Association--Great Britain www.flowers.org.uk
Flowers Canada www.flowerscanada.ca
Georgia State Florists' Association (70)834-0932
Hawaii Tropical Flower Council www.htfc.com
Illinois State Florists' Associationwww.illinoisflorists.org
Kansas State Florists Association (800)742-4206
Kentucky State Florists Association (502)778-1666
Louisiana State Florists Association (318)255-2671
Maine State Florist & Growers Association www.msfga.com
Massachusetts Flower Growers' Association www.massflowergrowers.com
Master Florists Association www.masterfloristsassn.org
Michigan Floral Association www.michiganfloral.org
Mississippi Florist Association (601)961-4440
National Florist Association (585)265-3370
National Florist Association (585)235-3370
New Hampshire Florists' Association (603)627-8828
New Mexico State Florists' Association (505)257-2812
North Nevada Florists' Association (775)323-8951
Northwest Florists' Association www.nwflorists.org
OFA-An Association of Floriculture Professionals (Ohio) www.ofa.org
Oklahoma State Florists Association www.osfa.org
Oregon Flower Growers Association (5035)285-9833
Pennsylvania Floral Industry Association www.pafloral.org
Puget Sound Professional Floral Association www.pspf.org
Rhode Island Retail Florists Association (401)294-9015
Society of Iowa Florists & Growers (319)399-1023
South Carolina Florist Association (803)256-8351
South Dakota Florists Association (800)300-0371
South Plains Professional Florists' Association (806)748-8929
Southern Retail Florists' Association (864)244-7093
State Florists' Association of Indiana www.sfainow.com
Tennessee State Florist Association (615)868-8844
Texas State Florist Association (512)834-2150
West Texas New Mexico Florist Association Inc. (800)753-1142
Wisconsin and Upper Michigan Florists Association (262)246-4944
Wholesale Florists of Colorado (303)427-8132

Florist Tools & Supplies:

You don't need many tools to open your flower shop. But they're supplies you need to always have on hand. You need to make sure you have all your printing and office supplies in stock some of the main items beside your every day office supplies are.

3 part invoices
Business cards by the thousands
Funeral 2 part cards
Variety of cards to go in your arrangements.
A rose a month cards to give to organizations wanting donations for door prizes and such.

Carnations and daisies will last weeks in the freezer roses and lily's maybe 4 or 5 days. Everything always looks great in the freezer. Once they hit the hot air they will go fast if they are old. So you need to know when you purchased them. This is what determines which ones you use up in your churches and at funerals.

Flowers to always keep in stock are.

Pomes
Daisies
Carnations
Mini Carnations
Baby's breath
Roses

Tools, Equipment and other Supplies

Walk in freezers
Pruning sheer
Knives
Wire cutters
Needle nose pliers
Hot glue gun
Assorted vases
Assorted baskets
Wet oasis blocks
Dry oasis blocks
Assorted ribbons
Funeral stands and baskets
Fireside baskets
Tissue paper
Product picks (hold your cards in the arrangements)
Wire
Wire sticks (make your bows and stick them in the arrangement)
Balloons
Helium

We get our vases and different items from wholesalers that come by almost every day. One of the one's we use out of Tampa is Kings. We try to purchase items on sale or closeouts to keep our cost down. They call us the day before or fax us a flyer with specials you let them know what you need and the next day they have it on their truck. You will also receive books in the mail from a variety of companies that will ship items directly to you.

The flowers also come by refrigerated truck, almost all the flowers are imported from South America to our grower's. We use two different growers one in Tampa and the other in New Port Richie, FL they come by certain days of the week with a big box truck. You go in the truck out and pick out what you want. If you have a wedding or a special occasion you can call them ahead of time and they will make sure they have what you need set aside for you or if they need to, they will special order them so you are sure to have them when needed.

Sometimes when you get an order say from FTD or one of the other services you may not have the exact vase in stock or a certain flower may be out of season you just let them know and they will tell you to just make sure it is the same shape and size. Most everything is standard as far as the shape etc... so it is never a problem. Now during the holidays they have special vases and containers that you order right from FTD or Teleflora etc... you should have them. They come in 1, 2 or 3 dozen quantities. You will use them up because of all the national advertising they do.

Flower Shop Advertising:

Like everyone else when we started we thought you had to have an ad in the yellow pages and local newspaper to make it. Well we learned the hard way it was a huge waste of our hard earned money. Word of mouth is the best advertising you can have and to get that word going here is how we did it.

First try to get all the churches you can in your area. All churches use flowers on their day of service. Some will use you because someone in their congregation recommended you. Sometimes you will have to solicit them. Some put their needs out for bid.

Doing arrangements in our local churches has been great advertisement, if they are having a wedding or a funeral service they recommend us. Every week we make arrangements for the churches some of them give us the key and we set up the flowers others just pick them up. We design them ourselves depending on what time of year and what flowers are available. Unless it is a special service like Passover where they will ask for certain colors or if they are having a wedding they will ask for certain flowers etc... But for the most part it is whatever we want to do. You will probably have to forgo your profits when it comes to church work. Just charge them what it cost you for the flowers. Always use up your older flowers that you would end up throwing away in a few days anyway to make the arrangements full and beautiful. You will get more business from the church referring people of their congregation to use you than you will ever get out of the phone book ad and it will only cost you your labor.

Next big commercial accounts to go after are the funeral homes. Make sure you give them a 20% break and be there when they need you. So you will have to be on call in case something comes up. Always make sure you do quality work if you embarrass them they will never use you again. Funeral arrangements are another place to use up your flowers that will be going bad shortly. Usually they only need to last a day or 2 the same as churches so make sure you make the arrangements full.

For the funeral homes you need to make up a book of pictures that they can show their customers each picture will have a price and an order number. Once their customer picks out what they want they call you with the order number. You would have a duplicate of the book so you look up the number and make up the arrangements.

Another way to get your name out is to participate in your local community fund raisers. Most of these organizations will come to you and ask for a door prize that they can donate or maybe a small arrangement for a fashion show etc... We had cards made up that are called a rose a month club. We would give these to every organization that came in. When someone won this at the charity event they would come in and we would give them a rose and punch the month on the card. Every month they could come in and get a free rose. We started the rose a month program with the welcome wagon packages you used to get when you moved into a new area. These are the type of things to do to get your name out.

Rose a month- sample front / back
Funeral Card- sample front / back
Business card- sample front

Floral Holidays:

On the holidays you have to hire help. We get up to and over 100 orders a day through the holidays so it is impossible not to have more delivery people and prep workers helping out. Between taking orders from people walking in answering the phones and orders that come over the internet as a store owner you will be slammed. Now you have to keep the orders straight supervise your new help and double check every order leaving for delivery to make sure it is up to the quality work your customers expect and the right card is on the right arrangement.

So in order to keep up with everything that is scheduled for delivery on Thursday all arrangements have to be prepared Wednesday night. It will take the delivery people all day to deliver the orders and then back to the store to help prepare for the next day deliveries.

Getting help is not easy. Most people think the job is easy just fluffing the flowers and such so many people will start to work and never come back the next day. So it helps if you know a few people that like to come in every year to make extra money on the holidays. I always get my dad to help and every year he tells me to sell the business so you can see it is hard work but it is worth the reward. It helps to have a few people that you can count on to show up during the holidays that can do the designing or finish work. The other jobs are easily taught and can be done by anyone willing to work. That is why if you work the holidays for a florist each time you learn a little more and soon you are capable of doing the whole job.

On Valentines' Day you will have say 1000 roses to clean so you need to have someone do this while you do the production work. It will take all day for someone to clean the roses and usually into the next day.

Same with Christmas you will have a couple of hundred Poinsettias that have to be un-sleeved from the brown paper bag and foiled.

During the holidays you want to make sure and take care of your delivery driver that delivers for you year round by giving them the best area to deliver in. The part timers get the other areas.

We supervise and inspect every product that leaves the shop because we know for one bad product 10 people will know. So when we hire rookies we always put the final flowers and adjustments to the arrangement before it leaves. On say Mother's day we might have 500 orders here going out so we make sure every order is going to the correct place and has the right card and flowers in it.

Flower Shop Bookkeeping:

Keep the books simple and we do not use a computer. We have a three part ticket the top white copy is the customers and shows how the item was paid ( cc, cash, check, to be billed etc...) If the customer is a walk-in then we give them that copy. If it is a phone order and paid with CC then we staple the cc receipt to the white copy and put it in the drawer. Once a week we pull the drawer and sort the tickets. The ones to be billed go to my partner and she bills them using the white copy and marks them in an accounts receivable book. When the people pay she marks them paid in the book.

Sample 3 part invoice

The 2nd part or yellow slip is for delivery driver so they know where to deliver to. The pink slip or 3rd copy we save for our records to pay sales tax and to show how much we had in sales. So at the end of the month we take all of the pink slips add all of the totals up total sale, sales tax, and this gives us the figure to send to the state for sales tax and also shows our total sales for the month.

Then we just keep our checkbook in balance. Every week we take the total cc receipts and add them to our checkbook plus any accounts receivable we receive and our monthly checks from FTD, Teleflora, 1-800 Flowers that were deposited. All purchases and bills are deducted from the checkbook as we right checks.

FTD, Teleflora and 1-800 Flowers give us a detailed printout with all fees and charges broken down each month and send us a check for our sales through them minus the fees. So at the end of the year we give our accountant those printouts along with the totals from sales and sales tax plus our check stubs that have all our purchases and bills paid. That's it the accountant takes it from there.

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