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[Sher]

What I find interesting

Is that in all of this time ...and it has been awhile, that we as florists have not formed another type of Association...Seems like we could have done this by now...and then maybe we could have taken back our industry.Is it to late to do that???? $ 250 bucks apiece from everyone every year would have put us in a very advantageous position for marketing if nothing else....

 

[WBN]

Associating.

Toto:

Thank you for that great response. I heard about this also when I was at school with Phil Rulloda. We had a wonderful lecture class from Cathy on the floral industry and its history. I was such a newbie then!!! It was all hard to digest, but I'm starting to get the picture.

This all was before my time in the floral industry. Your explanation and Cathy's explanation helps me to get a picture on how the flower industry has come to be what it is today.

I like Sher's post about florists getting together to form an association and perhaps brainstorming our own way of doing business in the industry with integrity. I can see some dues being paid, hiring a PR firm, getting some advice on how to turn the ship around. I'm sure it's been thought about by a lot of you and others within the industry that want to work with integrity. I'm all for it.

I'd like to hear thoughts on that.

 

[BOSS]

Is that in all of this time ...and it has been awhile, that we as florists have not formed another type of Association...Seems like we could have done this by now...and then maybe we could have taken back our industry.Is it to late to do that???? $ 250 bucks apiece from everyone every year would have put us in a very advantageous position for marketing if nothing else....

I'm up for it...

 

[TOTO]

Re: The NEED for a FLORIST ASSOCIATION

There is NO QUESTION that WEE INDEPENDENT FLORISTS need an ASSOCIATION to represent OUR INTERESTS.

Sadly, and after INC bought out A, the florists never flocked to the Extra Touch Florists' Association like they needed to.

Then again, most florists never even knew that there was any difference between INC and A anyway.

Being part of the IGNORANT myself, I actually believed the promises made by INC which were NEVER KEPT and really thought that, OUR 99 MUTUAL SUPPORT AGREEMENT would last the 99 years which it was supposed to.

However, INC had A in court too many times (by design) over ridiculous assertions to claim that A was trying to compete with INC, when in fact, A was trying to do something for their own members that INC was NOT DOOING fore them.

Anyway, wee already have TWO organizations available now fore any of us who feel the need for an association.

http://www.etfassociation.org

http://myifa.org

What I can say from my own first hand experience and when I was on the old board of FTDA District 2A/2B was in our own observation of a DECLINE in ATTENDANCE.

Florists were not coming out to our meetings like they used to. In fact, we even cut back from the old 6 meetings per year to only 3 per year.

I attributed that gradual decline to the fact that, florists were simply WORKING HARDER and LONGER than ever before.

And so, the choice of going out to a meeting versus going home and putting their feet up to rest, became obvious.

In my opinion, trying to build another florist association from scratch would be much more difficult than trying to build upon what we already have.

In fact, I was hopeful that, both ETFA and IFA would consolidate and form one larger trade association. However, that never came to pass.

My friend in Michigan tells me of a NEW TRADE ALLIANCE which has just formed and has both florists and wholesalers contributing and participating. Its purpose is to POOL money for LOCAL ADVERTISING to benefit all of them as they try to drive more consumers to their LOCAL REAL FLORISTS.

While keeping FLORISTS segmented was the obvious goal of the FORE PROFIT, they have shot themselves in their feet again since, any SAME-DAY-DELIVERY NETWORK can only be as good as their WEAKEST LINKS.

And didn't they go all out of their way to SIGN UP the WEAKEST LINKS while alienating THE PROFESSIONALS?

 

[BOSS]

My friend in Michigan tells me of a NEW TRADE ALLIANCE which has just formed and has both florists and wholesalers contributing and participating. Its purpose is to POOL money for LOCAL ADVERTISING to benefit all of them as they try to drive more consumers to their LOCAL REAL FLORISTS.

So I hear.... supposed to have info from a local wholesaler this week on this "idea"...meeting August 17th (?)...

Modeled after the Promoflor (sp) of years past.....