Flower Shop Network?

[Allie444]

Can someone explain to me how much It costs/what are the profits from sending through Flower Shop Network?

So with FTD on a 50.00 order I make a 20% comission and a 4.00 rebate which means I make 14.00 an order plus my wire fee.

What does the breakdown with FSN look like?

 

[lori042499]

You pay a flat yearly membership of like 250-300 bucks...incoming orders you get 20% taken off the total and fill to value, you get a check in 2 weeks...outgoing is and 80/20 split and your credit card gets charged 80% of the total plus a 3.99 fee I believe, you keep the 20% and wire fee you charged...the filling florist gets 80% and FSN gets the 3.99 fee..there is no reconciliation because you are charged on your cc immediately...

What is nice about FSN is their dashboard...you can look up florists and it will tell you if the provide del conf, pictures etc...You can send confirmetions and pictures of orders you fill, you could probably ask a florist to upload a picture if they don't automatically do it..I am finding that alot of my goto fave florists that have left the big guys are now fsn so the network is getting better and has less holes...especially in smaller or more rural areas, that just cannot afford the membership of the big guys any longer...for me this is NH and ME, I have many orders out that way and so many holes in membership with the big WS...just not realistic for most to belong...

 

[Allie444]

So if I send a 50.00 order through Flower shop Network I make 6.00 instead of 14.00. This is an 8.00 difference per order and 8.00 times 300 orders a year is 2400.00. Trust me when I say I want out of FTD. I WANT OUT OF FTD!!!!! But these numbers are hard to ignore. I am thinking there is another way to look at this but just can't find it.

 

[anytimeflowers]

So if I send a 50.00 order through Flower shop Network I make 6.00 instead of 14.00. This is an 8.00 difference per order and 8.00 times 300 orders a year is 2400.00. Trust me when I say I want out of FTD. I WANT OUT OF FTD!!!!! But these numbers are hard to ignore. I am thinking there is another way to look at this but just can't find it.

Well Allie, it all comes down to what other fees you are paying. If you take any FTD technology that you would otherwise have to pay for in another way like CC processing AND any incoming wires out of the equation, do your membership fees exceed $2700.00 per year with FTD? That is the way I would look at it.

When I was with Bloomnet, the rebate was even higher, but my membership fees and other crap that had nothing to do with cc processing or anything else, just their goofy add-on fees, amounted to roughly $300-$400 per month. Not worth it at all, especially when I was forced on a daily basis to deal with ridiculous og orders. Just rejecting them cost me unless I could find the time to fight it.

 

[bootcampguy]

Allie,
The average flower shop is paying $4531.00 for FTD or Tele fees (that's all the little to big fees). So if you divide that by 300 you have to ad that number back onto your price, that's $15 per. order. Compare to FSN the same is $1 - $1.25 per. order.

 

[Flowerchatter03]

With FSN you only pay the one time yearly fee. If you don't ever send anything out, you are not charged for anything until the next year. With regular wire services you are charged a monthly fee. You need to look at EVERYTHING you are paying and not just the % of what WS gives to you. For that matter, you can choose not not belong to any of them and call florists directly. It will take a little more time but you will have no fee.

 

[lori042499]

Allie, if you figure in membership and all the other small fees and mercury fees and all that it has got to be bigger than 300 dollars a year plus the 3.99 fee per order...not to mention the extra bullcrap that comes with said company, like rejecting on time and dealing with ogs and their foolishness, filling for them or not it is a demand on your time and staff...you are stuck looking at the small picture and the profitability of each order instead of the big picture and the profitability on the whole...not to mention the even bigger picture of the damage to our industry that these companies are causing...

They are simply still in business because they are counting on the bulk of florists to keep their brains buried in the small picture and scratching their heads trying to figure out why they are never coming out ahead....run a whole years worth of numbers and guess on wages and costs for deliveries it may be a huge eyeopener...I did 15,000 dollars worth of incoming and it cost me 1000 dollars above and beyond that to do business with TF...so I got nothing in the end and paid them a portion of my money that I could have taken and paid bills with or myself... instead of receiving 7000.00 for my shop expenses...

 

[steve]

Also remember you are receiving orders via Mercury and paying 7% you are not paying anything to receive via FSN

 

[Mikey the Flower Guy]

Also remember you are receiving orders via Mercury and paying 7% you are not paying anything to receive via FSN

I gave this a "shot" and found no more value in the way that FSN does business...neither good, nor bad!

 

[Allie444]

Thanks Mikey,
That's the conclusion I am coming to at this point too. My new question is with all these pretty horrible sending options why aren't a few florists banding together to start a new network. If FTD could form in an era where mail took days and a florist in California had no way of ever meeting a florist in New York why can't we start our own service in such a technologically advanced era? I think I will post this question in a new thread in the morning.

 

[Flowermomma]

There was a new one in Canada but it didn't take off well.(clear root)
there is also one called IRIS> no monthly fee. a yearly sign up and then pay as you go.
It doesn't seem to be catching on either.

People want seem to want the tried and true names they know or they go with out a wire service.
I put some on my store credit card and some I use IRIS for IF there is a store that is Iris in that town.(but my sending numbers are low.)
and I do have an FSN site and can send thru them but for me in Canada to send to another shop IN Canada FSN first turns it into American money then sends it which makes no sense to me. I don't want to pay exchange to send to a Canadian florist.
I don't seem to be missing filling orders for wire services. Yes i have less deliveries and less arrangements to make up but my profit is hire on the ones I do make up.

 

[Mikey the Flower Guy]

There was a new one in Canada but it didn't take off well.(clear root)
there is also one called IRIS> no monthly fee. a yearly sign up and then pay as you go.
It doesn't seem to be catching on either.

People want seem to want the tried and true names they know or they go with out a wire service.
I put some on my store credit card and some I use IRIS for IF there is a store that is Iris in that town.(but my sending numbers are low.)
and I do have an FSN site and can send thru them but for me in Canada to send to another shop IN Canada FSN first turns it into American money then sends it which makes no sense to me. I don't want to pay exchange to send to a Canadian florist.
I don't seem to be missing filling orders for wire services. Yes i have less deliveries and less arrangements to make up but my profit is hire on the ones I do make up.

it IS the ever elusive question......florists are generally NOT risk takers, BUT, use "risk behaviour" as an excuse, or explanation for their decision making, and it's STILL not clear, why we actually NEED to make a choice based on some ever evolving equation.
The declining number of shops is NOT only because of the economy, and not only in spite of, but, many cannot fathom adventure, as in trying out new ways to transfer orders, which are NOT new at all!!
You want to send overseas, open an account with Fleurop or D2F, want to rely on US based transfer, sign with FSN, FTD, TF, 1800, and a myriad of others, or IF you wish to send primarily in Canada....CALL THE ORDER...it's NOT rocket science!
The trick is realizing that the technology that YOUR SHOP requires, has been there, a very long time, and even a FAX machine can/will/should suffice many shops needs to transfer orders, so, what is the "aha moment"??
It's when you realize that either you NEED the higher techno expenses, or not!
Orders STILL come in many forms, to OUR shop, by mail, by phone, online, by fax, merc, etc, etc., and we use them all, but, we SEND a lot of orders out.....so far, FSN, D2F, etc. have failed to give us the bang we need, and the "big 2" still offer the widest coverage, but, at a much higher cost!
ClearRoot, was an attempted integration into FlowerChat...we HAD that platform available, and we turned our backs on it.....BBJ, had/HAS a tremendous system available with A1Florists, yet, we failed THAT one as well!
We ARE at fault....FloristWare is there, MAS is there, yet, we continue to bark AT the tree!!

 

[Flowermomma]

YES I do use the credit card.
what is D2F? and fleurop?
I only send about 5 over seas a year if that.

What is MAS?
so far it has not cost effective to consider FloristWare.

 

[BOSS]

What is MAS?

MAS = McShan Abner Systems

 

[steve]

To answer your question Allie why don't we start our own wire business the fact is with wire outs repaidly declining it would be akind to starting a buggy whip business at this point. At one time the yellow pages/phone and the wire services made up 80% of my business with the other 20% being walk in I suspect that is pretty much the model that older shops here had also. Today 20% of my business is still walk in 25% of my business is internet and growing and the remaining 55% being yellow pages and wire business. The wire business is around 7% of my business. In my opinion if the florist were to develope anything it has to be driven by the internet. I have always felt that a website that a consumer could find product on and once ready to place an order they entered the distination zip code and that would bring up a member florist and take them to that florist web site would be the best solution. No body in the middle the filling florist receives all the money for product and services. I am not a tech person but I been told that it would take a fair amount of money to set up and you would have to have enough florist willing to pay membership dues to keep it as an ongoing business not sure that is possible giving that so many would not even pay $100.00 to remain on this board.

 

[theRKF]

For the record, MAS has the florist-to-florist network up and running. The MAS Direct network allows florists to send shop-to-shop billed on account or credit card. We don't need to build another, we have one - and we have had it for years.

 

[Hal Conklin]

MAS Direct Network - Is a Communication Customer Service Center within The MAS Programs. Many things flow thru this One being the ability for MAS Users to share orders between each other at a percentage agreed upon. hellsbells we only charge .35 between florists for this service. If you also wish to use wire service and get rebate it automatically reports the order to appropriate WS. In addition you have LIVE ACCOUNTABILITY so you can preform 100% Customer Service. The negative side being you must be on MAS (being on MAS is no means negative.......) Sorry for sales pitch !! Anyway during the past year we have been reasearching the process of integrating with other Independant Technology Providers and Mark at Floristware has been all ears in this process. We will continue to evaluate and hopefully have a solution that integrates our 2 companies for the benefit of real florists. We do understand this is more vital now than ever before. Visit http://www.masdirect.com for more info or give us a buzz be more than happy to discuss.....
All the best,
Hal

 

[marie g bushnell]

I had FTD years ago, but all the extra fees were so ridiculous, it just wasn't profitable.
As mentioned by others on this post, you have to look at the "big picture". What is the cost for membership, extra fees, purchasing their containers ? You profited more by sending an order out through FTD, but the cost of being an FTD member???
A new shop owner worked her tail off on two holidays, only to find out she owed the wire service money!! How does that happen? I looked over her statements, worked in her costs & labor, showed her the bottom line. Instead of giving FTD the money, she could use that for her own "direct" advertising. She belongs to 3 or 4 wire services and is dropping 3 of them.

I had a call at 4:15 pm from an order gatherer, wanting a white flowering plant in a basket to
be deliverd that day for $24 including delivery! She also asked me if I belonged to FTD or Bloomnet. I just told her our minimum and delivery cost and she said she might call back.
What was that all about? She didn't call back.

 

[theRKF]

A new shop owner worked her tail off on two holidays, only to find out she owed the wire service money!! How does that happen?

That's a common misconception. Quite often, if you owe the WS it means you MADE money. It just depends what do you owe them for?

If I send 100 orders at $60 ea that's $6,000 outgoing, of which I have collected $6,000 + $5 service charge / order = $6,500 in my pocket right now. At the end of the next month I have to pay the WS 80% of that $6,000 = $4,800. On those 100 orders I also earned a $4 rebate, reducing my debt to the WS to $4,400.

At first glance ... Oh, my! I owe them $4,400!! The @#$%@ must be ripping me off!

Actually, I just profited $1,100 (that's $11 per order profit, less marketing, sales & admin costs), even though I'm paying the WS.

Now, if the debt is for ASB listings, failure to REJ, or other useless nickel & dime fees, that's a bigger problem.


Flip side is if the WS is sending me a cheque that means I filled a lot of orders ...

 

[prestonway]

That's a common misconception. Quite often, if you owe the WS it means you MADE money. It just depends what do you owe them for?

If I send 100 orders at $60 ea that's $6,000 outgoing, of which I have collected $6,000 + $5 service charge / order = $6,500 in my pocket right now. At the end of the next month I have to pay the WS 80% of that $6,000 = $4,800. On those 100 orders I also earned a $4 rebate, reducing my debt to the WS to $4,400.

At first glance ... Oh, my! I owe them $4,400!! The @#$%@ must be ripping me off!

Actually, I just profited $1,100 (that's $11 per order profit, less marketing, sales & admin costs), even though I'm paying the WS.

Now, if the debt is for ASB listings, failure to REJ, or other useless nickel & dime fees, that's a bigger problem.


Flip side is if the WS is sending me a cheque that means I filled a lot of orders ...

Unless my math skills have left me, the gross profit per order is $21.

(20% commission x $60) + $5 service charge + $4 rebate = $21/order

But WDIK