Does any shop NOT offer prom corsages/bouts?

[lauragreenflowers]

Prom blew this year- moms drove us nuts, complained and yelled at their sons in front of us because he didn't pick the right color, it's not what mom wore to her prom 25 years ago, etc, etc, etc.

We have a mom who called this morning (prom was this past saturday night) and claimed her son's date's corsage fell apart 2 hours after prom started. THis year, instead of wire/tape, we started to glue.

We had 0 complaints from Easter & Mothers Day customers (both weekends we had 1 big wedding during the holiday and didn't receive any complaints from either). Prom is just annoying and we feel like it may not be worth it.

Are we wrong? Does your shop not offer prom flowers?

 

[anytimeflowers]

Prom is one of those unfortunate things that has grown into hundreds of mini weddings. I would absolutely LOVE to stop doing them, they are a PITA. Unlike weddings though, I don't think it is possible to just say you don't do proms. I think your community reputation would suffer greatly, especially these days with smart phones and facebook. Those kids can trash you in seconds.

What IS possible is to limit the amount you take. For example, for Mother's Day weekend, there were three or four proms, but I had my entire limit of orders a week in advance. Anybody who came the week of Mother's Day for that Saturday was turned down, no exceptions. I had people offer to pay extra and I explained that it would not be fair and besides, I had limited cooler space.

That said, if this is your very first prom gluing, you may need to work on your technique. The best way to do it is to apply glue to the flower and to the base and let them "set up" for a minute, then attach to each other. You should not have any problems unless, in my case, they decide to change the ribbon color on their own!

What I do every time I use a new technique or a different type of bracelet is to make it and wear it myself. That way I know what I'm talking about and people can see what I do.

I would avoid just outright turning down prom work. Like I said, kids DO communicate with each other and you could get a bad rep fast.

 

[lori042499]

Everyone and I do mean everyone should be looking at these kids as the future clients of their business..How well you treat them in their first purchases could win you a customer for life...date flowers, girlfriend flowers, engagement flowers, wedding flowers, new baby flowers, funeral flowers, holiday, anniversary and hostess gifts...your current clientele will get old to the point of ordering on the occasional funeral and die, we need a constant stream of potential new customers unless you only plan on your business having a 15-20 year life...this past year I have had 10 of my regular older customers die or enter nursing home life...that is 500.00 worth of marketing to replace them...if I start now woth these high schoolers, I will already be grooming them to cost me less to have a steady stream of potentials instead of trying to find a target market to market too....

Do the @@@@ corsages, get over it and reap the rewards later with a strong base of potential clients to draw from...they say that 90% of your orders come from 10% of your client base....if you have a client base of 300 that means 30 people who order once a month at 65.00 or 1950.00 plus other incidental sales...if you have a base of 3000 that means 300 people who order once a month at 65.00 or 19500 plus other incidental sales keeps you going, my guess is that the second scenario is a whole lot easier to pay the bills...point is we should all be striving to grow our base, avoiding some of this work ensures that you will alienate a sector of your potential business...look how that panned out when we all decided that we wouldn't offer anything below 40.00 because we couldn't compete with the grocery stores...

 

[Flowerchatter03]

They are a PIA however, it only happens once a year. Raise your prices! I'd rather do 50 corsages at $50 each than 100 corsages at $25. We raised our prices this year and we will review them next year to see if they need to be raised more. A financial adviser once told me to keep raising your prices until people stopped ordering. That way you'd know what the real ceiling is. I thought he was nuts until I have spent 4 weekends in a row making corsages and now have a back spasm for it.

They are potential new customers and you do want to train them to have a wonderful experience buying flowers so they will continue throughout the year. Have a glass of wine or a shot of whiskey whichever helps! LOL

As for the complainer, since she called the very next business day, I'd offer a refund or a credit for the winter formal. This is a case that you cannot "do over" or replace.

 

[LOTAKIDS]

I am like Lori... I see future customer.. not only the kids but the parents too.

I have worked very hard to be the "go to" florist for prom. My kids come in with their dresses or pictures... now I have them text to my phone.
I have opened them to awsome wrist corsages... I feature them on my website and on facebook. They come in.. some are particular, but most are "just do your thing". It has taken awhile but here are my results..

https://www.facebook.com/FlowersbyK...t/?set=a.10150175332432820.296042.72420287819

I use oasis cold glue. We do a shake test when we spray and package them. I will again next year raise my price. I am at $27.95. I will go to $29.95. I think that is fair. This is my base price on an elastic band and I upsell the nice bands. Some take them and other just go for the basic.

SO FAR... We have had great response to what we do and everyone loves them. I am exhausted from this last weekend. But we rocked it!!!

 

[emilymoonflower]

Really beautiful work Karen!
Emily

 

[CarverFlowers]

Lori is absolutely right. I had one high schooler, going to the prom with her girlfriends, who ordered flowers for her hair. I designed some mini-cymbids and accent on a hair clip for her. When she came to pick it up, I opened the box so she could see it. "OHHHH! It's BEAUTIFUL," she said. Then she said, "I guess I'll see you ... for my wedding!" (I know both her parents, and when I relayed the story, they both said, "She doesn't even have a boyfriend.") But it was a very nice compliment from a high school student looking ahead.

 

[Flowermomma]

Lori is absolutely right. I had one high schooler, going to the prom with her girlfriends, who ordered flowers for her hair. I designed some mini-cymbids and accent on a hair clip for her. When she came to pick it up, I opened the box so she could see it. "OHHHH! It's BEAUTIFUL," she said. Then she said, "I guess I'll see you ... for my wedding!" (I know both her parents, and when I relayed the story, they both said, "She doesn't even have a boyfriend.") But it was a very nice compliment from a high school student looking ahead.

thats so nice!
The prom here is not until june 24th and i was planning to make up sor hair pieces to show the girls.
I really need to get on that this week!

 

[Tuberose]

Prom is one of those unfortunate things that has grown into hundreds of mini weddings. I would absolutely LOVE to stop doing them, they are a PITA. Unlike weddings though, I don't think it is possible to just say you don't do proms.

Ours were getting so unbelievably complicated and every Mom took at least an hour or more to decide, some girls came back 3 and 4 times to change their corsages, we invested so much time into a $30 or $40 corsage that the boss was having to pay lots of overtime, that did not go over well. We ended up limiting the flower selection and scaling back the types of corsages we were offering. We had to put away the JH prom book and go simple, I love doing mixed corsages but the Moms and gals became too unreasonable. We made some moms mad because we scaled back and I'm sure we lost some orders over it, but we didn't have a choice. We also spent too much time running to the phone to call a wholesaler to find out if they had such and such flower and buy a whole bunch to put one flower on one corsage, resulting in excess product in the store that we had to shrink out in the end. If you are a lower volume shop that can hurt and make the whole thing extremely unprofitable especially if you combine the overtime.

 

[anytimeflowers]

I did the exact same thing with the JH prom book. It has a hidden spot in my office now, so nobody can show it except me. That way I can guide it. On mother's day, somebody took an order for one and I didn't look at the picture until I was prepping on Thursday for Saturday prom. It had 2 gloriosa lilies in it. I could not even get them in time, and ended up cobbling together some silk petals and paint to look like them. I spent WAY too much time first trying to source them, and then fiddling to get the look. PITA!

I used to offer one corsage and they could choose the sweetheart color, the netting color, and the ribbon color. Even that took too much time. I love the look of the corsages I make now, and I very seldom end up with any two that are alike but the time involved during an extremely busy season stretches my patience. I have to do them though, because if I don't, my competitors will. Word gets around fast when you tick kids off, and my standing in my community would suffer.

I did find out that I am grossly lower in price than my competitors so next year my basic corsage will go up. I've incrementally increased them in the past four years from $20 to $25. Next year they will be $30.

 

[lori042499]

I guide them through the process....first i get dress color, then we talk about the wristlet they want, this is key it sets up for me what I am selling them...if they only want lady fair, I am selling a basic corsage and getting them done and out of my store quick for 25.00 I am not getting all kinds of stuff for it and voila, I make money, if the pick a low end beaded, they get a few more choices, I keep in mind what I already have in stock for doodads and what I have coming in for other flowers and offer those before others if they fit the dress color...I keep interest in different greens, cheap to acquire and keep a long time so I can use them up....in reality I spent 110 dollars wholesale for 720.00 worth of prom flowers, plus had plenty of left over flowers to use everyday....that were paid for....and have enough wire and gems left for second prom...

just like brides if you leave the questions open ended with infinite possibilities you will lose control of the sale very quickley...I am not big enough to do what some shops do and have a chart that guides them, pick your wirstlet, pick your ribbon, pick your bling, pick your flowers....some make up a whole gauntlet to go through the store and pick this and that with number system and all that, and when they get to the designer part, the designer already has the components and can just suggest some details to add in based on dress color and what they have already chosen, funky, conservative or downright plain....

I do every prom corsage different and individual, I know that for some this just doesn't work out with 200 corsages...this year for junior prom I did 15 corsages, 21 bouts and two rings, I took oin 720 or so dollars and spent 110 or so, I worked alone and it took me a total of 6 hours to do this over a couple of days. I'll take 600 bucks for 6 hours worth of work.....my average corsage is 40 bucks and the longer the person takes to order the more stuff they add, the more money it goes up and I don't feel so bad making them....

So my point of this post is if what you are doing is taking too much time, change it, streamline it until it works for you not against you, there in no reason in the world that these things have to take on a life of their own and make you miserable..if you don't like how it is going, change the method cause if you keep it like it is you will dread may for the rest of your lives...

 

[Flowermomma]

This thread has been interesting reading for me!
The prom here goes like this.
day of the phone starts ringing and i get a dress colour suggest a flower combo and ask if they want bling or simple and give them the price points. and i start making them up as many as i can fit in that day! and because they have left it to day off I find they don't spend hours deciding what to get. AND here the boys order for the girls so I don't have the fussy mom's involved!

its much different here!

 

[sandytf]

So my point of this post is if what you are doing is taking too much time, change it, streamline it until it works for you not against you, there in no reason in the world that these things have to take on a life of their own and make you miserable..if you don't like how it is going, change the method cause if you keep it like it is you will dread may for the rest of your lives...

I agree wholeheartedly with Lori. If it's out of control you need to rein it back in. Decide what makes sense and is profitable for your shop. That's what you offer. If they want more, then you need to charge accordingly. If you charge enough, it's either going to be worth your while, or they will decide they don't need it.

We're in the driver's seat. Take control.