Educating the Proflower consumer....

[Joe Mioux]

I just got my haircut and while I was up at that shop, another young woman was talking with my cutter. The stylist is also getting married and I am doing the wedding so we were talking about that, when the other woman asked who I was.

She ordered flowers online with 800flowers for her MIL on Mday weekend. I made it according to description but it was wrong, so she called me and I fixed the problem and she was very happy and appreciative.

In the conversation, she also said she used proflowers for her mother because she received 200 blooms of flowers.....and since her mother lives in rural Arkansas she prefers using Pro because she trusts them.

I said, let me guess.... 200 Peruvian Lilies blooms? she says yes.

I explain the PRO thing and why its better to use a local florist.....

she was/is still skeptical, but I told her to let me know the next time she needs flowers sent to her mother. I told her I can find her a better value and pretty bouquet......

hopefully she will take me up on my offer.

Anyway, I found it interesting that she trusts Pro flowers more than local shops... Now that is going to be a hard image to break if the customer gets satisfactory results from drop shippers.

Also, money was not the object with her all she is after is convenience and proper order fulfillment.

SIDE NOTE: We also were talking about facebook and Twitter. She works at a PR firm and pr firm made every employee learn Twitter. I told her I just signed up and think it will be great for marketing purposes.

Her response was "wow that is so cool that an old guy like you knows Twitter!"

i just laughed......

joe

 

[BOSS]

Anyway, I found it interesting that she trusts Pro flowers more than local shops... Now that is going to be a hard image to break if the customer gets satisfactory results from drop shippers.

Maybe it's time for Pro-Florists.com... LOL

Her response was "wow that is so cool that an old guy like you knows Twitter!"

i just laughed......

joe

Let me know how that goes for ya... "Ole Chap"....:rofl:

 

[Carol Bice]

Joe, I just love your posts. Very entertaining and thought provoking.

I have a very rich and good customer that told me she uses Proflowers or 1800Flowers for most of the orders she send out of town. I asked her why since she loves the upscale designs I do for her and she knows I have lots of connections throughtout the country.

She has a very lucrative PR firm and explained how she saves so much money because she get tremendous discounts from these companies on her credit card through the business. She mentioned that for business reasons, the flowers seem to be much more in line moneywise.

Now, this is a brilliant woman and it blew my mind that she didn't see through what they were doing. Of course, I gave her all the right information and let her know what was actually happening. I did ask her if she had actually seen what her customers received and she admitted that she had not, but, said, they always call and tell me how lovely the flowers were. I challenged her to check them out with her own eyes. She probably sends at least 100 bouquets to out of town clients a year. So sad.


Carol Bice

 

[Joe Mioux]

Carol, I found myself probably feeling the same way you did when explaining flowers to your customer.

A bit frustrated that flower buyers actually need to be educated.....

I think we florists get so wrapped up in the orders that gone bad with Pro, 800 etc, that we lose sight that these online drop shippers and OG's satisfy the overwhelming majority of the clients.

Maybe we need to study what they do right and focus less on what they do wrong.

joe

 

[master J]

I still think it may take a while, maybe not in Bloomz's lifetime but I hope that these guys will eventually go under, I have only heard the nightmares that flower buyers have had with them , and i get a new story every week about bad experiences with 1-800 and BLOflowers, however you are correct Joe...we do tend to focus a lot on the negative experiences, as we do not usually hear the positive experiences since those shoppers are not coming to us anyway- they must be doing something right to be that successful,

with that being said, I still think they suck balls! LOL!:ssmoke

 

[Carol Bice]

Maybe we do need to focus on what they do right....like I have always said, learn from those that are successful.

Since the majority of people that send flowers this way never see what they are actually getting, and nice people always call and thank them for the flowers (even if they are crap), they assume that they are making a huge impression on those people. Actually, they may be losing some credibility by sending crap, but, it is an unknown.

I have received some pretty sad flowers over the years, but, I have never told the sender that they were anything but beautiful. That is why they get away with so much....a lot of people are just like me.

So, how do we deal with this problem? What are some of the answers? It sure doesn't make my customers feel brilliant when I try to explain what they did was dumb.

Carol Bice

 

[master J]

one customer at a time, we can educate them, one at a time

 

[Joe Mioux]

I have received some pretty sad flowers over the years, but, I have never told the sender that they were anything but beautiful. That is why they get away with so much....a lot of people are just like me.


Carol Bice

Ironically, the reason I had this conversation today and hopefully won over a real flower shop buyer from the drop shippers is that the customer's mother in law complained about the size of the arrangement.

The description of the vase read square cube vase, when in reality it should have been a square vase - 9 inches tall.

I have said this many times in the past, I would rather not have problems but if I do I want to hear about it so I can make it right.

My intentions with problems is that I can convey to my customer and recipient that if and when problems arise I will fix the issue. Hopefully that translates in to loyalty.

joe

 

[HeatherTuckey]

Her response was "wow that is so cool that an old guy like you knows Twitter!"

I laughed out loud - really loud. That made my day.

 

[Joe Mioux]

I laughed out loud - really loud. That made my day.

good thing you weren't drinking a beer. eh?

 

[sandytf]

Carol, I found myself probably feeling the same way you did when explaining flowers to your customer.

A bit frustrated that flower buyers actually need to be educated.....

I think we florists get so wrapped up in the orders that gone bad with Pro, 800 etc, that we lose sight that these online drop shippers and OG's satisfy the overwhelming majority of the clients.

Maybe we need to study what they do right and focus less on what they do wrong.

joe

THANK YOU, JOE!

As I read all the threads (well, maybe not all because I don't have time for that-but as many as I can) and posts bashing ProFlowers, 1800, FTD, etc I find myself getting frustrated that we all like to sit here and be so "righteous" and "superior" about how much better "we" local, real florists are. Of course we like to THINK we are much better, but there have been plenty of posts about how we have sent flowers through local florists and been very disappointed. As you pointed out, these other companies are probably satisfying the "overwhelming majority of their clients." Are real, local florists doing a better job than that?"

FTR, I believe most of the florists on Flowerchat are BETTER than the average florist out there.

We all need to look at this industry clearly and objectively if we want to continue to take part in it. We need to examine what our customers REALLY value, not what we THINK they should. (I qualify that remark by pointing out that there will always be different markets and different needs for products and services out there and that I'm making generalizations).

Is it convenience? Is it price? Is is consistency? Is it service? Is it quality?

In the case of Carol's customer who has the PR firm-my guess is that it may involve convenience and consistency as well as price. With ProFlowers the customer pays for the product and the shipping which can be quite consistent. If we, as local florists, send orders out to 20 different locations for the same item with same day delivery, we would more than likely be charging wildly different prices. I can get a dozen roses vased for a lot less in a smaller midwestern town than if I send to New York City or Scottsdale, AZ. Then there is the inconsistency in delivery charge. If the recipient is "in town" in a small city, the delivery charge is going to be a lot less than a rural delivery 30 miles away from the closest florist (and that's if you can even find a local florist within your directory depending on the service you belong to!) Fed-EX goes almost everywhere!

Think of this customer calling (or even going online to a local florist's website) and placing an order for out of town. Do we really think they will be able to do that as conveniently and for the same consistent price 4x a month as with ProFlowers? Chances are they will place the order and end up getting a phone call back asking for "more money" or some other question. Or one time they will spend $50 and the next time we're askign for $100 because of where it's going to. It's a hassle and no busy person wants to deal with that.

I know we try to "educate" our customers and "explain" to them why a dozen roses is more expensive in New York City than in Minocqua, WI but I really don't think they want to hear it or even care.

As far as all the horror stories about poor quality boxed flowers goes-I have also seen a lot of beautiful flowers come out of a box and last for a long time. How many of us get flowers shipped to us from wholesales or grower direct in a box? How often do we have problems with them? Do most of us continue to use this method even though we have an occasional problem?

Ok, I'm just rambling now....but I just wish we could all be more OBJECTIVE instead of looking at these issues through our rose colored glasses (pun intended!).

 

[goldfish]

I think ProFlowers does a few things extremely well.

1) Inventory control.

When a consumer clicks on one of their products, PF always has it in stock. TF, FTD, 1-800, and also B&M florists too often advertise the arrangements that can't be procured right a way.

If a florist can't make a certain arrangement everyday, why is it on his site? - That's how I would feel if I was a consumer. PF, too, might have this "out of stock" problem, but the frequency must be much lower.

2) Delivery tracking

Because they use Fedex, a customer can track the delivery. It's a big plus.

3) Price and freshness

As have been discussed many times.

Have any of you ever ordered flowers from PF? I did, 2 dz roses. They were good. I'd say their quality was better than some of the roses sold by local wholesalers.

And get this... Price wasn't that different from the wholesale price (excluding S&H).

 

[CHR]

Might find this article about Bill Strauss (PF CEO) informative:

Bill Strauss wasn’t a great student, and certainly didn’t have an innate knowledge of flowers, but he’s still been able to turn Pro-Flowers, a company he helped found, into a $400 million business.

This, he told students at California State University, San Marcos, is the result of sticking to his core values of hiring smart people, being honest and fair, and making sure all actions are done for the good of the company.

“How we run our company really hasn’t changed through all (the) iterations of who we are,” Strauss, the company's chief executive officer, said.

Those iterations are from a small startup in 1998, to a public company in 2003, to being sold as a subsidiary of Liberty Media in early 2006.

Strauss helped found the company with Jared Polis, who is now a congressman in Colorado. Polis’ family owned the online greeting card company Blue Mountain Arts, and he figured flowers went together with cards.

Strauss admitted he didn’t know anything about flowers, but he was interested in the then-new Internet business model, and teamed up with Polis after a mutual friend introduced them.

Pro-Flowers, now located in Sorrento Valley, survived the initial Internet bubble burst at the start of the decade, and has gone on to thrive ever since.

“We basically generate more profit in this space than both 800-FLOWERS and FTD combined,” he said, referring to his company’s chief competitors.

Strauss said he noticed that while bigger companies like 1-800-FLOWERS had the most name recognition, their customer satisfaction numbers weren’t always high. He decided that would be the No. 1 goal of Pro-Flowers, making sure each order is given every consideration.

This is especially important on the two days that account for 50 percent of Pro-Flowers’ business: Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day.

“If you’re sending a gift to a lover or to a spouse, you don’t want to hear, ‘Hey, that’s our busiest day, sorry we didn’t do it right,’” he said. “Every single purchase counts.”

Customer service goes back to Strauss’ core values of honesty, fairness and hard work, but those values also apply to hiring. He called hiring the most important thing a company does, and Pro-Flowers has a rigorous screening process to make sure people fit the culture of the company.

Strauss said the culture at Pro-Flowers is one where people are hired for their overall intelligence, not necessarily a skill set. People are overachievers, but management still takes an interest in each person to learn what makes them achieve best, be it a work-life balance, or a focus on a specific area.

Holding onto star employees is also imperitive for Pro-Flowers, Strauss said. He told the story of a great young engineer who didn’t get along with the new chief information officer. The CIO wasn’t fitting in all that well in general, but as soon as the engineer told Strauss he was leaving because of the CIO, the CIO was fired.

Strauss also talked about his experience when Pro-Flowers purchased the online gift company Red Envelope. The Bay Area business never managed to turn a profit, and while Pro-Flowers wanted to keep the original office open, ultimately it just didn’t make business sense.

“There was no bait and switch, there was no not being honest with people. Once we made our mind up, we communicated that decision,” he said. “It was tough and it was hard. But I think every Red Envelope employee who’s no longer with us, I think they would say it couldn’t have been done any more fairly.”

Strauss said the reason he’s stayed on with his company through all its iterations is because he loves the people he works with, and he credits that to creating an environment where everyone values the same culture at the office.

“I’ve been fortunate enough to work with people in my life -- not everybody, but enough -- that when they see that I don’t put myself first, I put the business first, or whatever job I’m given I’ll do the best I can and I never ask what’s in it for me. I think those traits about myself (have made certain other people with those traits) gravitate toward me,” he said.

“Whether its people I’ve worked for, or people who work for me, that’s created just a great network.”

Emphasis mine. I always wondered why reporters would say things like "half (or some other big number) of all flowers are sold at Mother's Day." Seems they may be picking up the numbers from comments like Strauss'.

IIRC, the typical flower shop does about 7.5% of annual sales during the holiday.

PF has definitley filled a niche (drop-ship) and done it better than late-comers like 1-800 and FTD.

Goldie - I have also purchased from PF and did not have a favorable impression of the product. Sunflowers very, very closed sent with a vase far too small to hold them.

It's true there are rural areas with no flower shops and flowers in a box are the only way to get delivery. I've also sent tropicals and leis in boxes when local shops would not get the items and/or were requesting fees that made direct shipment a substantially more affordable choice.

 

[HeatherTuckey]

good thing you weren't drinking a beer. eh?

I was drinking a beer - how'd ya know? Thankfully, I did not spew all over my laptop.