New Teleflora design book.

[FANCIES]

As the pages of the brochure are waterproof and easy to clean prehapes you could cut out the designs and make them into coaster's pack them up into 6's and sell them - you never know it might catch on. :rofl:

You are soooooooo funny!!!!!!!!!!!! Just as a side point, sorry, you know those packing peanuts that come in with some of our vases? I save them & use them in the bottom of my gift baskets or use them to lift plants up in some plant baskets. BUT some people gather them up and sell them!!! Maybe we should all start doing that, alittle more $'s coming in...just sayin!

 

[trillygirl]

I'd like to know how well you do with your stand alone website. I forget about all those additional charges that they add on, especially the $3.45 per web, plus the credit card charges in addition to the monthly website fee of $80.00.

 

[FANCIES]

I'd like to know how well you do with your stand alone website. I forget about all those additional charges that they add on, especially the $3.45 per web, plus the credit card charges in addition to the monthly website fee of $80.00.

I can tell you alittle about it with some background first. I went on godaddy.com and bought up a bunch of urls with my name in them. Once those urls are gone they will cost alot more money to buy them in the future, if they are even avaliable & I didn't want anyone using my name in their url to maybe try to capture some of my business in my area. Guess I am alittle paranoid. Just trying to protect my business. Anyway so I had these urls bought like, fanciesflowers.com (which TF had on their site but I had purchased it so it was mine) fanciesflowers.net (which is on flower shop networks website for us) fanciesflowers.us, fanciesflowers.biz, fanciesflowershop.com, rapidcityflorist.com & on & on. Like I said before I knew I was going to get out from underneath TF so I started making some changes & working on this site. While the site was being developed we used the url rapidcityflorist.com. Last week my granddaughter, Carrie, encouraged me to change over the url fanciesflowers.com to our new site running under rapidcityflorist.com. VERY SCAREY!!! Since I owned both urls all I did was call TF tell them I was changing the url on their website to fanciesflowers.biz. Went into godaddy.com & made the changes. Since fanciesflowers.com has been around for awhile I get good placement on google, now #1, or atleast the last I looked, it varies. So now my new site is under fanciesflowers.com and not doing too bad. There are things that need to be worked out on it but since we made the change 1 week ago people have no problem finding us, calling & saying they are on our website & they are placing orders over the web. Not tons but enough for me to be ok with it. If I get a couple orders a day off the site thru the web, not phone calls, I am happy with that right now. I have gotten positive feed back & I am running a free delivery, $7.95 value right now on the site, I have it scrolling on the bottom of each page. It's a great feeling to have a site on your own, whoever you might decide to go with. My website is not the best, like I said before, but it is working and I will make it better & better. This company I am paying $85 a month to host it and $1.50 an order, which I do not mind. $3.45 that TF took was way too much for me. I can control so much on this site myself & it is very easy to make my changes. It does not look as professional as alot of the sites that others have because of the different size pictures I am using right now. That does not seem to bother people who have ordered off of it and I have talked to a couple of customers who said they like the site & it is easy to use. That's what I wanted a site easy to use because I knew my customers were used to that with TF's websites. I probably am being too wordy here, just get me started! lol! No one can even find my TF website now, fanciesflowers.biz because that url just started to be used by TF. I will have that site until sometime in Jan till I am completely done with TF. I don't care that the TF site doesn't show up yet, I really don't want it to. I want my customers to come to me & not TF. I don't trust TF & I know they have e-mailed my customers. I love being TOTALLY

 

[FANCIES]

OOPS! I meant to say I love being TOTALLY in control of my site. I think I will be ok with this new site, but if not, I can always change to something different as long as I take my url with me. Do you own your url? Can you get it back from TF? I totally believe having a website that shows people what you do is the way to go. It is your 2nd store.

 

[bootcampguy]

I think I did the same thing (internet not my game) bought all the dot.com keyword phrases for my area. Pro Flowers beat me to most of them using there name, so I bought ormondbeachflowers, flowersormondbeach, floristormond, etc. Any combination that that a person would type in looking for flowers in my area. I think it gives you more fish swiming in the pond. I switched form
WS control and saw no decline in business at all. I like the control factor also. I use to go into the "portal" and raise my prices and they would updatre and change all of them back (so people would buy at the lower price). No fees now.......

 

[Grandma Nancy]

11/17/10
Did you know you can call Teleflora and opt out of accepting headquarter orders? I had to take that step because of the pricing and low delivery allowance.
Two years ago we had an unfortunate incident that forced us to become computer literate (with Teleflora's help). We went through the total web site and eliminated designs we could not duplicate and correctly priced (raised the prices) on the ones we could duplicate. We have never had a customer question our prices or compare them to
another florist. Don't hesitate to set your own pricing.
Grandma Nancy

 

[trillygirl]

I have two websites and own both urls for many years. My teleflora site, trilliumfloralshop.com and the site I maintain that links to the teleflora site, trilliumfloral.com. Good suggestion buying the urls. I especially like the idea of going with the newer url on the teleflora site when changing over to my standalone site. I still have many things I want to change about my site before I launch it as a shopping cart site. I agree, we use both as marketing tools all the time. Thanks for all the feedback.

 

[lori042499]

I am going to be setting my on pricing with this book...I have to, I can't compete with those national people, I don't fill for them and just won't play that game, it is the detriment to my company...I am all done apologizing for wanting to make a decent living at what I do, the worst that can happen is no one buys from me and I close, the best that can happen is I make money doing what I love and still feel respected instead of cheated because it is all on my terms....

 

[Eric S]

Still waiting for an answer on this email I sent to our Teleflora rep

I’m really concerned about something.
The new catalog seems to feature many Teleflora Containers.
This will be very difficult for us to even show this book to our customers unless we began to offer these containers to our customers.
As you know we take pride in offering products on our website that will look exactly how they appear with no substitutions.

So I have two choices I can either began to stock up on these special containers so I can use the book or not use the book and only offer it to my customers when they are sending orders.

But then I have another problem. Will other shops carry these containers?@ I recently took a poll from one of the florist forums online and had 29 Teleflora members tell me what percentage of the containers that are in the new book do they currently stock in their store. This is the results.

None 10 34.48%
Less Then 10% 11 37.93%
25 % 6 20.69%
50% 1 3.45%
75% 1 3.45%
100% 0 0%

So I’m really torn as to what to do.

Am I going to be able to use Teleflora to send orders anymore?
What do I offer my customers If I can’t send what they see in this book?

The container does have an impact on the arrangement and it can change the whole look of the arrangement.

To me this book just made it very difficult to send orders through Teleflora. I have had some great success sending my own arrangements to other shops but there is still those out there that will refuse orders for my arrangements because their pricing or they don’t trust us.

Do have any ideas?

Let me know.

 

[trillygirl]

I couldn't agree more.

 

[bootcampguy]

I've been reading for week or so now about this book. Eric after your post I decided to open and take a quick look, I agree, even if you did stock up, all stores operate different. Some carry and some don't. The reason for the book I understand, people got tired of being told, "I'll fix you up something nice, just give me $50". Imagine walking into a restuarant, sitting down and your server walks over and say's "we don't have menus, but we have a great chef in the back, fresh salmon and potatoes in stock, give us $20 and we'll whip you up something". I wouldn't want to take that chance.........I could write for days on this issue, so I'll stop...................

I'm not so sure what the solution is. We try to sell our house specials/menu items (15 - 20) to choose from and all flowers can be done in three ways, hand tied, vase or container/basket.................................................I think someone already added it up, if you bought the min of all these it would probably be over $2000 dollars.

I ask my CPA budy who does only florists, "what is the number one reason florists go out of business, he said, "they have to much stuff on the shelves". It wasn't labor, rent, advertising or any of the other things that I thought. So three years ago we tighten up, went to a 30 day rotation on everything (or our goal is to), so when the bill is due, its' sold. The containers in this book won't help with that issue.................

 

[Eric S]

I'm not so sure what the solution is

The solution is simple.

More arrangements with afforable glass vases.

 

[Eric S]

I have had the opportunity to see what happens when another shop sends a codified product with Teleflora.

Not only did the shop not use the codified container but they didn't even tell the sending florist that they were sold out and still sent a poor subsitution.

This is a huge problem in my opinion and unless Teleflora starts enforcing all it's members to be codified for their containers there will be no point in showing the new design book to anyone.

 

[lori042499]

Eric...I agree..I got so many orders for the send a hug container this Christmas...so many shops told me to send something similar, I didn't have anything similar, not similar enough in my book to pass as what the consumer would want...and to come right down to brass tacks, I don't trust the sending shops words at to what they were sold for a second choice...now I feel that it is on me to pick something that is similar and I didn'r get any info into what it was about the arrangement the people on the sending side liked...I usually try to give the filling shop some insight as to what the consumer liked about the chosen arrangement so that if the need to make a sub they can do it with confidence...so many florists just take the order verbatim and never ask the customer the whys or whats to give any insight..maybe I am a rare sales person or florist, but it makes the job of decision maker harder when sales people suck at their jobs...

 

[Spookyflowers]

If your lucky its a high school girl who could careless what she is sending. Or and OG who has no idea what they are selling. The B&M shops care no one else does anymore its a sale and money in the draw is all they care about. That is why I like the designer choice on a wire order. Let the people who know flowers do what they do best. Just my 2 cents today but its maybe only worth a peeny today.

 

[BOSS]

From reading these comments... I wonder how long it will be before codified holiday containers are a thing of the past... at some point, the cost to produce them will become too hig if not enough shops are purchasing them...

 

[Spookyflowers]

To bad when years ago Teleflora bought AFS they didn't keep the no keepsake container policy they had. We had to use the flowers in the arrangement but could use our own container which was usually a basic design dish or plain vase. I still ahve one of there old books and the arrangements would still work today.