Mother's Day wire-ins

[Bigted]

I was just reviewing Mother's Day statements. The biggest decline for us were wire-ins from other flower shops. It was really bad.

Does this mean that lots of real flower shops are getting their lunch eaten at the holidays? Or, does it mean that most shops don't want to or don't know how to pursue the wire-outs (or as I call them "easy money")

I'm not exactly sure what it means. It might be a good thing if people are looking on the internet and ordering direct, but the other stats from the holiday suggest that something else is happening. Any ideas?

Oh, and by the way, what does this say about advertising in the directories?

 

[stormy]

Yes It's True

I was just reviewing Mother's Day statements. The biggest decline for us were wire-ins from other flower shops. It was really bad.

Does this mean that lots of real flower shops are getting their lunch eaten at the holidays? Or, does it mean that most shops don't want to or don't know how to pursue the wire-outs (or as I call them "easy money")

I'm not exactly sure what it means. It might be a good thing if people are looking on the internet and ordering direct, but the other stats from the holiday suggest that something else is happening. Any ideas?

Oh, and by the way, what does this say about advertising in the directories?

we are getting eaten alive by the OG's. we area fairly large shop. but our wire outs have been down 20-30% every holiday the past two years.
when the wire service ask why our sending is down, i say "you should know". if you take em, i can't send em to you.. wire outs are a good profit item but they are getting slimmer by the day. i have quit advertising for the out of town order, they are not there for us anymore.
any ideas or do you know of anything that works?

 

[CHR]

Our incomings from other florists (and we only fill for other shops) has decreased by 50% in the last 2 years. Oddly enough, outgoings are slightly up but still less than 10% of our overall business.

My theory about declining F2F orders on holidays:

1) The ProFlowers effect. Consumers are sending lots of boxed flowers (via PF, 1-800, FTD, etc...) whether we like it or not, esp on the holidays when they are bombarding the airways and the web with offers. Many of those orders used to go through florists (either direct or F2F).

We recently received a shipment on a Saturday and I asked the FedEx driver how busy he was delivering flower boxes on Mother's Day Saturday. He said 'Insane.' He normally has about 15 deliveries (flowers and other items) on a Satuday and had 40 on Mother's Day. He is 1 of 15 drivers delivering from his station.

Note: PF's Saturday delivery fee is $30... something to think about.

2) The convenience shoppers. As has been said elsewhere here, all the national companies are marketing machines. Think of all their affinity marketing tie-ups - airlines, hotels, credit card companies, AAA, alumni clubs, etc... plus their own customer bases. This year, all were offering big discounts across the boards.

3) The 'cut out the middle man/buy direct' buyers. These are the shoppers who used to call our stores to send out of town, but now order from local delivering florists direct (either by phone or online). They're generally younger and more savvy shoppers.

Outgoings here are primarily generated from our 'regulars', older customers and our corporate customers.

For the holiday, web orders here represented more than 20 times the volume of incomings. (Of course, some of those were from locals, but many were from out-of-town shoppers). Dollar for dollar - we believe there's more opportunities competiting for local customers/deliveries than going after outgoings (unless it's with our already-established customer base).

Hope this makes sense.

 

[Rhonda]

(small town here)...
Our MD was over 90% orders coming in from out of town due to our outflux of "younger people"
Of that 90%, all was credit card and we filled less than 15 orders coming in from wire services, including florists. We had 800F try to send us order after order which we turned down - no specifics, designer's choice vase or basket to which they would not place the order just hand to another operator who would call us in the next 10 minutes wasting my phone time again. And FST tried a couple of times, told them to not call again.
We had a surprisingly satisfactory MD...and we only called out a few orders too, having given people the option of calling direct and finding out exactly what they would receive for their money - they appreciate that!
Quite a few of the calls we took started out with them saying "I'm looking at your website........"

 

[lizzie ann]

I don't have wire service,so that said.....I just wonder if florists would just refuse to accept any of the order gatherers orders, what would happen to them. It would be interesting to see proflowers,1-800,etc forced to ship direct for everything. What a nightmare for them and the customer. Just a thought.

 

[LOTAKIDS]

That would be great, however, there are florist so true to these og's that it would be hard to get them to jump on the wagon.
I know my competitor in town boast to be the #1 FTD and Teleflora florist in town.

 

[goldfish]

I was just reviewing Mother's Day statements. The biggest decline for us were wire-ins from other flower shops. It was really bad.

FTD wire-ins 60% down, TF wire-ins 20% down. We don't/can't fill most of OG orders, except designer choice & roses.

Does this mean that lots of real flower shops are getting their lunch eaten at the holidays? Or, does it mean that most shops don't want to or don't know how to pursue the wire-outs (or as I call them "easy money")

I'm not exactly sure what it means.

We generally see 20-30% yr-to-yr decline in all the wire-in orders. That's actually what we saw in TF orders in May.

The sharp decline in FTD orders in May was anomaly. My explanation is that a couple of FTD florists around here, who used to be forwarding a lot of MD orders to us, decided to not do that this year. They probably filled the orders by themselves.

 

[MANORVILLE]

GOLDFISH :

Respectfully !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, and with sincerity !


You need to really take a long hard look at the way that WS treats your membership, or should I say partnership ?

You've got some serious competition in your area !

 

[Eric S]

Ted what about the use of the FTD images? Perhaps the effect is from the FTD product? Less appeal to FTD perahps?

The only reason why I say this is we have seen an increase in Wire ins from florist and wire outs from us through TF. And no way did we accept the stuff from FU flowers.

Hey also according to the FTD list on our system your shop was listed 4th down on the list with you Sarah's and Collins listing every single FTD product. Plus your Min where the same as Sarah except for Roses & Funerals that Sarah has listed just a little less. My guess is that if the orders did exist they went to Sarah's.

I was very happy with our TF sending this year and every shop did an incrediable job by duplicating the web images.

 

[BOSS]

BOSS<<<< removed any and all logos (except mine) from all vans, doors, cooler windows (SAF, Chamber, and MFA still there) and website distancing myself from *them* 2 years ago. Why would you advertise for your competition? Thats what displaying the wire service logo is doing!!

You folks are confirming exactly what I said would happen 3-4 years ago. Wire-Ins will continue to decline, as will wire-outs as consumers more and more go direct and as the OG's gather more. Mine are down too, but at the same time direct consumer sales (around 300 new customers in April-May 08) are increasing, making the bottom line healthier.

The trend of ins-outs will continue to decline, OG/DS will continue to grow, and unless we as a group say no to filling any order not generated by a RealFlorist we are knowingly helping them to not only take away our margins but at the same time remain profitable themselves.

 

[lori042499]

My WI were down by 20% from last year....TF had called to try to sell me their premier listing and cited my decline as a reason I should get this 60 buck a month listing....I tried to get the proper information to make this decision(which I already knew was a big fat hairy no) They knew all the numbers for how much I was down, but did not seem to know how much the area was down...She just kept hammering at me that my numbers were down and that was not good.

I said to her, "I cannot possibly make this kind of decision with the information you are providing." When she asked why, I simply said, "How do I know that all of the orders for my entire area are not down by 20%, if that is the case that the 60.00 ad will make no difference because the orders are not there to get."

All I got was a whole bunch of stuttering and a blah blah blah about free 2 months, two months of which there is no coinciding book to be free in, just in the FST and .com comptersystems.....I may not be the brightest bulb, but I definately have some filiment left...

 

[steve]

They got marketing and they have Brand!!

We have what?

 

[steve]

Question to think about? How many independant hardware stores do you see around these days that do not belong to True Value or Ace Hardware groups???

 

[BOSS]

They got marketing and they have Brand!!

We have what?

We are the Kings and Queens of SAME DAY DELIVERY! NO body else can do that...NO ONE!

Oh and I have marketing and "brand" in my market...works for me!

 

[JCT]

Our incoming was down 7% which I can live with, outgoing was down 75% which I can't live with. Really need to work at getting that business back.

 

[Bigted]

Our incomings from other florists (and we only fill for other shops) has decreased by 50% in the last 2 years. Oddly enough, outgoings are slightly up but still less than 10% of our overall business.

My theory about declining F2F orders on holidays:

1) The ProFlowers effect. Consumers are sending lots of boxed flowers (via PF, 1-800, FTD, etc...) whether we like it or not, esp on the holidays when they are bombarding the airways and the web with offers. Many of those orders used to go through florists (either direct or F2F).

We recently received a shipment on a Saturday and I asked the FedEx driver how busy he was delivering flower boxes on Mother's Day Saturday. He said 'Insane.' He normally has about 15 deliveries (flowers and other items) on a Satuday and had 40 on Mother's Day. He is 1 of 15 drivers delivering from his station.

Note: PF's Saturday delivery fee is $30... something to think about.

2) The convenience shoppers. As has been said elsewhere here, all the national companies are marketing machines. Think of all their affinity marketing tie-ups - airlines, hotels, credit card companies, AAA, alumni clubs, etc... plus their own customer bases. This year, all were offering big discounts across the boards.

3) The 'cut out the middle man/buy direct' buyers. These are the shoppers who used to call our stores to send out of town, but now order from local delivering florists direct (either by phone or online). They're generally younger and more savvy shoppers.

Outgoings here are primarily generated from our 'regulars', older customers and our corporate customers.

For the holiday, web orders here represented more than 20 times the volume of incomings. (Of course, some of those were from locals, but many were from out-of-town shoppers). Dollar for dollar - we believe there's more opportunities competiting for local customers/deliveries than going after outgoings (unless it's with our already-established customer base).

Hope this makes sense.

That's a really nice summary of what's going on. No easy answers, but a good picture of the various factors involved here. Frankly, I don't see any of these trends changing. That's why we will hold onto the wire-outs as long as possible, let the wire-ins do whatever while we try to keep/build the local trade. It makes good financial sense.

 

[Bigted]

Hey also according to the FTD list on our system your shop was listed 4th down on the list with you Sarah's and Collins listing every single FTD product. Plus your Min where the same as Sarah except for Roses & Funerals that Sarah has listed just a little less. My guess is that if the orders did exist they went to Sarah's.

Interesting example. Both of those shops do a big percentage of their business in wire-ins. According to my secondhand, and probably unreliable info, both shops are having pretty serious financial issues.

 

[steve]

We are the Kings and Queens of SAME DAY DELIVERY! NO body else can do that...NO ONE!

Oh and I have marketing and "brand" in my market...works for me!

Boss it seems to me that every florist here as well as the hundreds that are no longer in business have or had same day delivery!!! yet our pie has grown smaller at an alarming rate.

Boss do you really have a brand or do you have name recognition there is a defference?

 

[BOSS]

Boss it seems to me that every florist here as well as the hundreds that are no longer in business have or had same day delivery!!! yet our pie has grown smaller at an alarming rate.

Sad but true...but I do believe that this is partially a result of allowing ones operations to become to dependent on the wire side of the biz, and not focusing on local 100% sales. For decades we have given away our same day services for 70% on the dollar, and even free to local customers. It's a service and a profit center that too many florists do not utilize. I'd bet many of the non-FC florists out there, maybe 50% or more are under valuing their delivery service.

Boss do you really have a brand or do you have name recognition there is a defference?

I agree, there is a difference, and I'll stick with my original comment, I have **the brand** in my market. Of course I have name recognition too, and the rep of being the *most expensive*....but people come here on purpose and often make statements that "This is a special gift, it *has* to come from Smith's" and "be sure to put your gold sticker on it' I want them to *know* it came from Smith's"...and on...

 

[lori042499]

Sad but true...but I do believe that this is partially a result of allowing ones operations to become to dependent on the wire side of the biz, and not focusing on local 100% sales. For decades we have given away our same day services for 70% on the dollar, and even free to local customers. It's a service and a profit center that too many florists do not utilize. I'd bet many of the non-FC florists out there, maybe 50% or more are under valuing their delivery service.


I agree, there is a difference, and I'll stick with my original comment, I have **the brand** in my market. Of course I have name recognition too, and the rep of being the *most expensive*....but people come here on purpose and often make statements that "This is a special gift, it *has* to come from Smith's" and "be sure to put your gold sticker on it' I want them to *know* it came from Smith's"...and on...

I believe that many florists undervalue everything they do and the may be the reason they go out of biz. There are so many ways a florist can go out of business that is is very hard to pinpoint it on the WS(not advicating at all)

I believe that most small florists are overstaffed...I say this because for 2 1/2 years I have been working with me and a part time driver 6 days a week....I do not yet have enough business to hire someone to help me, but desperately need time off to take care of myself and get myself back a life...so many florists hire someone even though they do not have the money to just for some time off...then bigger florists staff for the holidays and don't know how to let go after the business surge or feel bad because the people need the job...so you keep them and try to keep them busy...

I believe that many shops overbuy to a fault....I understand better than most that I want to have everything when someone walks in my door, but I can't it would be financial suicide...Makes for difficult growth but I usually can assure them that I can get it tomorrow or offer them something else today that they will like..People have grown accustomed to every retailer having every item that they need and that is hard for small business.

I also believe that we undersell our products because we are insecure about its worth in the marketplace today...I know I get insecure about what flowers are worth to people and as a result undersell myself...I ften wonder why I don't get more weddings this way because it is a great deal for them, but at least this way I'm not losing that they choose another florist...

If you have a WS all of these items need to be considered and watched closer than ever because adding the deep discounts can lead to major trouble very quickly....