ALEXANDRIA, VA — Ninety-seven floral business owners, employees and suppliers listened attentively as retail strategist Jim Dion, of Dionco Inc., painted a harrowing picture of the retail landscape: a price-obsessed consumer who uses their mobile phone to price-shop for different options. A market loaded with similar goods where price is the “ultimate arbiter, the lower the better.” A climate where discounts are so steep that “before you know it, you’re paying someone $10 to come into your store.”
Not exactly a high note on which to launch the Society of American Florists' (SAF’s) fifth Retail Growth Solutions, held June 10-11 in Chicago, but the keynote speaker said progressive retail florists are well positioned to compete on more than price in this environment.
“It’s all about differentiation,” Dion said. “What is the experience in your shop? It begins from the moment I dial your shop, to how promptly it’s answered to how that conversation goes, and afterwards. Do you follow up with me?” he asked, referencing the latest trend among progressive florists to send a photo of the arrangement delivered to the sender.
Top-notch speakers who don’t mince words as they impart progressive ideas is part of what drove attendees to travel from distances as far as Sugar Land, Texas, and Edmonton, Canada to SAF’s event.
During his program, “Online Branding: Beyond Facebook,” SAF’s Chief Information Officer Renato Sogueco emphasized the need for florists to be more proactive and strategic about what they put on their websites. “If content was king a few years ago, then now it is emperor.”
Sogueco said search engines identify local florists through their content, “but you can’t just have a bucket of keywords that you dump into a website. It has to be in a hierarchal order, from general to specific.”
Financial management expert Derrick Myers, CPA, CFP, PFCI, painted a picture that more than a few attendees could relate to: The day or two before a new order for flowers is placed, designers are more apt to pull a few extra flowers from the cooler to place in designs, rationalizing that it will otherwise be thrown out. Bad move, according to Myers. “It’s worth 10 times as much to have unused flowers in the cooler than taking that same flower and putting it in a design — because if it’s not there, the buyer will think it sold and will include it in the order for the next week.”
Prior to making calls to flower shops — on speakerphone — while posing as a customer, floral sales consultant Tim Huckabee asked Retail Growth Solutions attendees, “Why is it that so many flower shops I call offer me that same $39 tired basket they’ve been offering for 20 years? It’s not that you can’t sell in those price points, but if you don’t at least offer a higher price point, customers will segment you as the shop they go to when they want something regular. When they want something special, they’ll go somewhere else, maybe an online vendor.”
As he demonstrated how to create more profitable designs, speaker Tim Farrell, AAF, AIFD, PFCI, challenged attendees to “sell what you bought, don’t buy what you sold.” A customer asks for a specific flower you don’t have in the cooler? Rather than running out to your wholesaler to get it, acknowledge that you can “absolutely” create that design and have it delivered the next morning, but try to steer them toward something in stock. “We have some stunning bicolor orange roses that just came in from one of our favorite growers, they’re gorgeous — and we can get that arrangement to your wife this afternoon.”
That’s one bit of advice that resonated with Jean Pope, of Pope’s Florist in Waukegan, Ill. “I am about three minutes away from (my wholesaler), so it’s not unnatural for me to go there three times a day if our designer says we’re out of something,” she said. “I see now that we’re losing money, only because I’m not buying in bulk.”
Tina Rojahn, of Rojahn & Malaney Company in Milwaukee, appreciated the variety of advice at Retail Growth Solutions. “It was a great combination of programming, including the hard numbers (from Derrick Myers), to better leadership, inspiration and design.”
“I can’t stress how important it is to attend these events,” said Tiffany Wesseler, of Eagledale Florist in Indianapolis, Ind., who attended Retail Growth Solutions for the second year in a row and has decided to also attend SAF Marco Island 2014 in August (Retail Growth Solutions attendees who registered for the convention while in Chicago received a $100 discount). “As business owners, we get stuck, we say that we just can’t take the time to get away from the shop. You need to just put the systems in place so that you can get away from the shop and educate yourself” and keep improving your business.
Heidi De Silva, of Petersen & Tietz Florist and Greenhouses in Waterloo, Iowa, agrees, and appreciates that she’s going home with not only a notebook of new ideas but also a list of names of like-minded business owners. “We’ll mark everyone (at Retail Growth Solutions) as a preferred florist to use, because we’re all passionate (about our business) and have the same goals,” she said, adding as a final piece of frank advice to fellow attendees: “Go home and be the change in your shop.”
Source: Society of American Florists
