question for designers

lori042499

lori042499

Well-Known Member
May 3, 2006
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Melrose, Massachusetts, United States
www.affairstorememberflorist.com
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MA
Your cooler has in it 18 buckets of flowers

mixed poms 2 days old
pink carns 1 day old
red roses 1 day old
mixed fill 1 day old
gazers 4 days old
asiatic lilies 4 days old
fugi mums 5 days old
minis 4 days old
snaps 1 day old
Bells of Ireland 1 day old
liatris 1 day old
lav phlox 1 day old
purple lizzy 1 day old
hydrangea 1 day old
stock 1 day old
gerberas 2 days old
campanula 1 day old
delphinium 1 day old

you have a 40 dollar designers choice alter arrangement, what do you choose to make it with?...


I have a reason for this question and some of you may learn a bit about yourselves and how you work that may help your business if you play along....so humor me..
 
of course lots of "what colors available? is it going home after or left in the church?" but I would use asiatics, phlox, fugis, poms, and one of the line flowers. Probably not liatrus as purple/lav usually "go away" in a church setting (darker church) but probably the campanula if it was white or pink. The asiatics because they are older, the phlox because it doesn't last a real long time and the fugis.
With us, we had an agreement with one of our churches for weekly standing order but the agreement included our use of "less than fresh" product, meaning no longevity after the services. (usually would last through the week though).
 
Lori, I'll play along, oh and I didn't like the way you were spoken about with your cooler cleaning post. While I'm here, I can still make that known!

Ok, first of all, in my shop, and I know we're all different, but an alter arrangement indicates a piece of some size, sorta like a slmber basket size.

There is no way we would do that size arrangement for $40.00. If slumbers approx 28x30 are 65.00 to 75.00 why would I do a $40.00.
My shop minimum (yes I have one) is 39.95 it gets carns, daisys, liatris, limonium, alstro maybe soli. Those kinda things.

Is the alter piece for a church or a wedding? Wedding gotta cost way more.

Churches I know some people use their older flowers and discount because the church order them weekly. (Churches don't order alter flowers here anymore).

Threre ya go, I muddied the waters for you. Sorry about that.

Maybe someone will post now.
 
I'll bite. There are a few variables missing - purpose of the piece (will it stay or will it go?), size of space etc.

Snaps, and bells of ireland for height - $40 isn't going to get you alot, so at least we can make it look like alot.

No dark colors as Rhonda mentioned - too recessive.

Maybe one of the lillies - though if this is a funeral arrangement quiz - no we don't use old flowers...

Gerbs, filler and some daisies.
 
JCT said:
I'll bite. There are a few variables missing - purpose of the piece (will it stay or will it go?), size of space etc.

Snaps, and bells of ireland for height - $40 isn't going to get you alot, so at least we can make it look like alot.

No dark colors as Rhonda mentioned - too recessive.

Maybe one of the lillies - though if this is a funeral arrangement quiz - no we don't use old flowers...

Gerbs, filler and some daisies.
Click to expand...


not really a quiz....just a cross section of how the thought process works for different people, kind of like the experiments they give you in a college sociology class...so far all good answers...
 
OK I will answer what I chose...this was the contents of my cooler this morning....I have a standing order for a church alter arrangement fo 40 dollars usually designers choice needs to last one day, not that that matters too much as none of my flowers I would consider old....this experiment would have been better witha larger more sizable arrangement. I see that now.


anyway the designer in me of course was eyeballing the phlox and campanula and gazers and trying to figure out if I could justify to the owner in me the small amount of the order and the very young age of the flowers....I think that this is one of the most important things every designer must learn in terms of being a good worker and productive and profit producing employee/owner...

so I consulted with the owner and she said, although the church is a good customer, don't you think that the fugis and asiatic lilies would make a great basket and then add in some carns, minis and poms to round it out and leave the nicer flowers for larger orders and walk ins....so the designer said ok...Then I got a call for a sunday funeral for 250.00 and needed lots of the nicer flowers for that.....and still have plenty to open on monday with minus the oldest flowers that I did have even thought they weren't that old compared to their vase life...now I can ensure that the asiatics will not need to go in the bucket monday nor the fugis...I used up the rest of the gazers and most of the phlox and the minis, now everything in my cooler is less than 2 days old....

now this is real easy to do in our micro shops, but when I managed larger shops, I used to put all designers on notice that no flowers being processed could be used for at least 24 hours and if there were an older batch, none of the new could be used before the old and I didn't care the reason....many designers would use newer minis instead of 3 day older ones just for color, instead of adjusting the products they chose to fit the age of the flowers needing to go....

I was very glad to hear that many of you questioned how long they needed to last....the application of the piece, how to get the greatest impact for the money, the ultimate age of the flowers, the colors of the flowers, these are all great points that we all must be asking as we set out to design any order, before just making it out of anything in the cooler. This may be a great thread for some of the newer non-designer owners need in order to make their businesses better and some seasoned designers never learned, I know it wasn't until I was a designer for 12 or so years before anyone even taught me this....and it was because this owner really had a handle on product rotation and how much it mattered to his bottom line, he was a real business man first and a designer second.....
 
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OK, I'm going to make some assumptions here - this is for the Church not a bride and the piece will be going home with the parishioner who donated the money for the piece. I'd use the freshest flowers, discount the piece because it's for the Church (either a current customer with a standing order or a potential customer). I see this as a chance to expose my creative design to a potential customer base of some 100+ people
who may not be aware of my shop; or they see my work on a weekly basis (standing order) and are constantly wowed with the quality of the flowers and design. Either way, where else can you reach a captive audience for roughly $20.00?
I provide flowers at cost for a couple of churches in my area at cost with a slight mark-up and get a substantial amount of business from them;
funerals, weddings, christenings, etc.
Emily
 
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Emily you bring up a great point....about discounting church work...I got the chance to sign on 2 churches a year ago, their florists were charging them the 40 bucks but they weren't getting anything outstanding and along the lines of 40.00 probably rightly so....I provide the flowers and I mark up smaller than normal and take very little labor, I also make them different every week....I do mix in some of my more mature flowers usually for impact of a very open flower at a far away alter and to use them up, but never ever use old, I don't ever have anything old...because of the choices I make...the point of this discussion..The result over 25 new customers this past year, that order regularly...all saying they cannot believe the flowers every week they are excited(yes, excited) to see what they look like, they haven't felt this way about the church flowers in many, many years....This single reason has changed my mentality on the consumer wanting design, I was convinced that the consumer didn't care about design and all they cared about was price, I was wrong....They want flowers put together nicely(many just don't know it as design) and at a good value....if you give them something that is designed properly and different they will give that arrangement extra value over the same flowers just thrown together elsewhere...it is just like food being prepared with love tasting better, it really doesn't but it appeals to the senses differently and to the mind gives it more value...
 
Lori, thanks for this thread! I have five churches that still get flowers every week, and you do exactly what I do. The flowers are not old, but older, why should they go to waste when they can be used creatively and put before a crowd of your community. Would you believe that I charge $12 -$14 each? With no delivery charge. We do use their containers, they just get swapped out each week when we deliver. One church in particular was so grateful when they came to me, after three years, the pastor still points out the flowers to the congregation! I can't even count how many new customers I got from this one church. Where else can you get a captive audience like that, and unless they are sleeping in the pews, they are getting a sales pitch from me week in and week out. VERY inexpensive advertising!
 
The church we used to do every week (they don't have the $10/week anymore - imagine) would get:
1/3 cake oasis (their own container brought back each week)
moss or 5 stems leather
12 carnations (not always done triangular and they loved scalene design) or 3 carnations and 4 stems pom/daisy
They got these with the notice there was no guarantee for longevity but they purchased a case of round design bowls and would transfer the arrangement from the church bowl to the design bowl and give it to a church member that was shut in or infirm and return the church bowl to me.
It always was fun to have someone actually spend $30 - 40 on that church bowl because it would never fail that the next few weeks, someone would step up and order to get something different.
Now they just keep a plant there (under the cross in the choir behind the pulpet) or cut flowers from gardens in the summer.
 
first of all - unless it is discounted or a special price worked out with the church, in today's economic environments, I don't believe you can create a profitable, showy, customer pleasing church altar arrangement for 40.00 without the arrangement being so small that it is not noticed or seen at the rear of the church.

However, In your example, I would pick the flowers that were either the tallest or the largest size blooms in order to maximize the visual value of the design.
 
We had the account of many churches. They were to pay half of the retail cost. The condition of them getting the flower half price was that we would fill their lily and pointsettia orders at holidays. Brought in hundreds of customers. Always used what we were long on, not what was oldest.

Sometimes, I think we tend to overthink issues. When I would go to the cooler to fill an order like this, it didn't take me a long time to decide which flowers or why use certain ones. If I couldn't make a quick judgement call, based on my inate knowledge, I probably would have been out of business shortly.
 
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Carol Bice said:
We had the account of many churches. They were to pay half of the retail cost. The condition of them getting the flower half price was that we would fill their lily and pointsettia orders at holidays. Brought in hundreds of customers. Always used what we were long on, not what was oldest.

Sometimes, I think we tend to overthink issues. When I would go to the cooler to fill an order like this, it didn't take me a long time to decide which flowers or why use certain ones. If I couldn't make a quick judgement call, based on my inate knowledge, I probably would have been out of business shortly.
Click to expand...

I agree. When I said "older", I meant what I am long on. I have a standing order for red roses. In the past, I've tried to do a rose sale in January, because I can't move all of them for a couple weeks in January and July. So, for those weeks, I use them up in altar arrangements. Today, all of them had all red roses. It's a treat for the congregation, and I don't have to toss them. I don't like to stick my wholesaler by not taking them for those few weeks, because they have a standing order to supply MY standing order. Last week, I got to use the extras for my Valentine's samples.
 
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