Sympathy Easel question

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Donna

Donna

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Jul 9, 2005
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Kilgore
www.greeneryflowersandgifts.com
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TX
Our local funeral home has a rule that you cannot use water foam in any pieces except baskets (and they will usually pour out any "excess" water from them). We try to discourage customers from easels because everything has to be waterpicked. If the flower drinks all its water before the funeral then you have dead flowers although they started out fresh.

Does anyone else design easels with water picks and dry foam?

I am working on profitability improvement for the shop and realized that we are not charging for water picks or the labor time. Ex. -a customer selects a photo from one of the ws books or even the JH book but those are priced with water foam if I am not mistaken.

It also appears that we have to use more greenery to cover the foam than in any photos.

It seems we are not charging enough to be profitable on this end of the business and I am trying to fix that FAST!!!

Does anyone have suggestions or comments?

Thanks
Donna
 
Have you tried requesting a meeting with the funeral home to demonstrate how designing easels in foam is good for the family, the flower-senders, the mortuary and you? The quality of flowers and overall satisfaction would be significantly higher.

I can understand that they don't want a mess, but there are ways to make easels so they don't drip.

Maybe you can ask if they will 'certify' individual flower shops that demonstrate responsible, dripless design practices?

Can't think of any way to quickly make sprays with water picks. Before Oasis cages, we also used pine packs or needle packs but they're only good for sprays delivered less than 24 hrs before the service. Thankfully, we haven't had to use them or water tubes for more than 20 years.
 
Thankfully I don;t have that problem, but what we do is to take the Oasis cage apart, drop the Oasis into a heavy plastic bag and put it back together with the bag opening at the top.

Then we are careful not to insert stems into the very bottom, straight up...once the spray sets for a half hour after design they stop dripping, and the bag keeps the Oasis from drying out completely for 2-3 days.....
 
We have tried!

The local florists have approached the FH as a group and offered to bag, to use the "dripless" and anything else we can do to let our customers choose what they have seen in other places or what they have seen in a book. FH thinks we are just trying to ruin their carpet and won't go for it.

I have even had customers call the fh directly to request and it still is not done.

This is the biggest fh in town, very established, very nice decor, but the other fh's are too small to be a threat so they get to make all the rules and we just have to play by them.

Thanks for your help
Donna
 
You might tell the customer that this funeral home refuses to allow easel spray arrangements. That baskets are the requested form for flowers and the director is adament about not accepting the easel spray style. In truth you can not make the new style sprays the old fashion way. you need the new style oasis techniques to do this .. or as you have seen the product will not hold up.
Put the onus on the director where it belongs..but do it politely. We had severaL schools tell us no more flowers because it is not fair for some students to get flowers and others not to.. so we started to tell the parents that the school would not allow it.. and the parents started calling the schools to tell them they had no right to do this. It really isn;t our battle we are just in the middle. Funeral Directors can make all the rules they wish but in the end it is THEIR CUSTOMERS who pay their bills and if enough of them complain or go elsewhere then the director may get the hint.
I know one florist who was told that everything delivered to the funeral home had to have a handle for easy moving. That is what he tells his custoemrs.. put the blame, or whatever, where it belongs.. just do it politely and neutrally. "this funeral home requires XYZ" and then provide them with options that fulfill these requirements
Good Luck
 
funera easels

Bingo!!! Carol, that is right on. Put the blame where it belongs and let the funeral director deal with it. It will come back to haunt him when enough people complain.
Carol Bice
 
I also agree with Carol... explain the situation to your customers. It isn't that you do not want to make them a standing spray but the FH director :fdevil: at XYZ Fhome will not allow them to be made properly and the flower will not last. Make him explain that carpet is more important than their family.

Iggy
 
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