Cultivate’20 will be held July 111-14, 2020 at the Greater Columbus Convention Center.
For more information about this event, please visit OAF’s Website.
The floral ecommerce trend for 2020 is here – flower subscriptions! Flower shops are starting to turn single sales into multiple, ongoing orders.
First there was Birchbox and then Barkbox. Now even Amazon recently launched its own subscription box page – selling hundreds of monthly items like pet toys (“Pawstruck”) and cured meats (“Carnivore Club”).
Here’s what you need to know to sell flower subscriptions on your own florist website.
Flower subscriptions are an easy way for your customers to subscribe to flowers.
Customers can choose the general type of flowers, the price point, and the delivery frequency. Some shops are offering different types of subscriptions like plants or gift baskets.
Want to set up flower subscriptions on your florist website. Here are some tips?
Consumers are now used to “box” offerings. Think Birchbox, Barkbox, DollarShaveClub and (according to Forbes) over 3,500 other box offering companies! Consider branding your flower subscription and consider calling it a monthly “flower box”.
Floranext websites are set up with Roses, Seasonal Flowers, and Plants – but you could easily re-brand these to be “Rose Box”, “Seasonal Box”, and “Plant Box”.
Flower subscriptions may be the single easiest way to increase your florist website revenues. Does your website provider offer flower subscriptions?
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Floranext is the first floral website provider to launch subscription flowers – click here to find out about Floranext websites.
With the converging popularity of reality TV, competition shows, and streaming services, should the art of floral design join the trend? Well in 2020, there will be two flower competition shows hitting streaming platforms HBO Max and Netflix.
As a florist, would you compete in one of these shows?
Image via Shutterstock
Full Bloom is an eight-episode floral competition show that will be streamed on HBO Max starting in 2020. This hour-long floral competition show will feature 10 of America’s top florists vying to be crowned America’s best in floral design.
During the floral competition, it will allow audiences to escape into the floral world as candidates design and execute some of the most wondrous floral creations ever seen.
Each episode features a themed challenge focused on a unique area of the floristry world including fashion, art, events, and weddings. Contestants’ designs and creations will be mentored and judged by legendary floral artists Maurice Harris and Elizabeth Cronin with celebrity florist Simon Lycett serving as host. At the end of each episode, the arrangements made will be given away to remind us to stop and enjoy the beauty of flowers.
No announcement has been made yet in regards to signing up to compete in the second season.
Image via Shutterstock
Meanwhile, Netflix has ordered a series of their own titled The Big Flower Fight based out of the UK, like the popular Great British Bake Off series.
This eight-part series will be a little different—this series will see ten duos made up of florists, sculptors and garden designers put to the test as they compete in a series of themed challenges to create very large-scale flower installations. Each episode will test a different set of creative and practical skills, from floristry to woodworking and landscaping.
The materials each team can use to create their installation will vary week-by-week, and participants will be encouraged to think about plants that give back to the environment. Each week one team will be eliminated, leaving just three teams to battle in the finale for the champion’s crown.
Image via Shutterstock
Floral design has a history as a secretive trade: in the 1700s flowers became a common way to send coded messages. But in recent years, floristry has received a great deal of attention thanks to royal weddings and major films. Will this new mainstream showcase of floristry and floral designs on streaming services boost the demand for flowers? We sure hope so!
Florists, what are your thoughts on these floral competition shows? Would you compete in a floral design show like this? Please share your comments below!
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Floranext makes great florist software. Florist websites, floral POS, florist wedding/event proposal software, and florist technology. Let us know if you want a free demo or try our software for free here.
BloomsBy supports floral designers every step of their floral event planning. You can create professional wedding/event proposals, increase profits, create floral contracts, stem counts, and collect payments all with BloomsBy’s floral wedding management software available on PC/Mac and iPad app.
With BloomsBy Proposals, floral designers can create beautiful and professional proposals in a matter of seconds. No more lost and cluttered information, keep track of your clients requests in one location.
With the new BloomsBy Proposal user interface, BloomsBy proposals are easy to create, organize and manage. Floral designers are able to build a floral arrangement from the bottom up with flowers and supplies.
Add your business’ personal touch by adding a personalized message to each proposal with a customizable email template. Each client is different and adding that personal touch matters.
Add your customer’s inspirational photos to the proposal as a guide for creating the flowers for their special event.
Track, schedule, and take customer credit cards for deposits and payments.
Add markup, labor and then easily check to make sure you are pricing your flowers correctly. Making sure your weddings and events are fairly priced yet profitable.
With the BloomsBy Proposals flower catalog, it gives you the opportunity to record your pricing for your flowers and use these to help build your beautiful and professional proposals.
Build components like bridal bouquets, boutonnieres and more by adding the specified number of flowers for every arrangement.
Flowers and supplies composed to build your proposals can help generate a shopping list to order flowers and supplies.
Use BloomsBy proposals on your own computers, choose the best platform for you. Available on PC/MAC and iPad App.
BloomsBy understands that florist wedding and events are a core part of a floral business and creating beautiful proposals can be challenging.
We’ve all been there before: notes, images, spreadsheets, word documents and countless emails sent back and forth between your clients can be a nightmare. So why not use one program to make professional proposals and keep everything organized?
Get rid of the multiple programs and keep everything organized with BlooomsBy Wedding Floral Management Software.
Start giving your wedding and event proposals more impact with BlooomsBy Wedding Floral Management Software today and focus on what’s really important, your floral business!
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Floranext makes great florist software. Florist websites, floral POS, florist wedding/event proposal software, and florist technology. Let us know if you want a free demo or try our software for free here.
2019 CONVENTION
July 26 – 28, 2019
Holiday Inn Louisville East Hurstbourne
More details TBA
For more information, please visit the Kentucky Florist Association website.
The Texas Floral Expo will offer two courses of study rather than an exclusive focus on design.
The Design Course of Study and the Business Course of Study relate to the needs of the individual offering the best possible education whether your passion is design or whether you feel the need to expand your business skills.
If design is your focus then you will be able to register for presentations that cover a multitude of design topics presented by the best in the industry.
If you are all about business there will be two and half days of specific programming covering a range of topics! Additional information can be found at the Texas State Floral Association website.
Facebook has had the biggest user base among all social media networks, boasting 2 billion users globally. However, the story is dim for Facebook’s younger user base in the United States.
For the past two years, Facebook has lost 15 million users, and the majority of them are teenagers and young adults. Instagram, a social media network also owned by Facebook, is experiencing the reverse of that trend: in the same span of time, its user base composition of teens rose from 64% to 66%.
Snapchat, another social media network with a similar form as Instagram, is also experiencing the same trend.
Still, Facebook remains relevant as a platform for businesses, given its user count and expansive set of tools for advertising. However, Instagram and Snapchat become new pastures to be ventured or focused on, and the motivation to put out visual content is ever so higher.
Prioritizing these platforms is critical for businesses whose audience are the tweens, and we florists hit that criteria. So get your cameras and flowers out and start taking photos!
Since Instagram is slowly entering as one of our main platforms to focus on, we’ll be dealing with its pricing strategies for advertising. However, spoiler alert: there are no clear-cut prices for it. Reasonable estimates round off to be $0.20-$2 per click or $5 per 1,000 visitors, depending on the advertising model that you want to do.
There are many factors that affect the price on Instagram. If you are familiar with Facebook’s advertising tools, then you’ll also know how Instagram advertising works, since Facebook, as the owner of Instagram, uses the same set of tools.
Facebook’s advertising system works like an auction, and thus the pricing varies depending on a lot of factors. Instagram demographics are usually feminine, with a youth bias, and targeting this demographic will increase the price.
The factors that affect the pricing are the amount you are willing to bid for your campaign, your ads’ Relevance Score (determined by the quality of your ad, among other things), and your estimated action rates (how likely your audience will do your desired outcome, i.e. interact with it).
In this auction system, they subsidize relevant ads. To quote Facebook, “an ad that’s relevant to a person could win an auction against ads with higher bids.” The important part here is to note that ad quality and relevance matter in their pricing.
Image via Shutterstock
In the world of the search engine, Yelp has partnered with Bing for better local Bing search results.
For example, Yelp reviews of local businesses will now show up on Bing’s search results page. Much like in the form of Google My Business and their Google reviews, you can also sort these reviews into Recent, Critical, and Favorable.
For businesses with multiple locations, it gives users the option to go through each location’s reviews. Information about businesses is also now available in Bing’s knowledge panel, courtesy of Yelp.
Yelp has always been a people’s favorite for assessing the quality of business places, and thus you should always maintain a good standing there. However, with this partnership with Bing, Yelp data are now more visible and thus you should be more mindful of them now.
Remind yourself to reply to reviews in Yelp; express gratitude and encourage people who left good reviews to come back, dropping possible offers or promos, and inquire and attempt to resolve issues addressed in the reviews, replying back if it has been done.
Image via Shutterstock
The world is not living in two versions of reality as you might think; the digital reality is interacting with our reality in very close-knit ways. Taking advantage of this will not give your business an even edge but rather a requirement in today’s fast-paced world.
Florists must be up to date with these business practices to stay relevant. Keeping yourself updated with changes in social media, search engines, and more can help make your business grow.
Florists, are you using Instagram, Snapchat, or Yelp to promote your Floral business? Any suggestions, comments, or ideas that could help other florists? Please share your comments below!
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Floranext makes great florist software. Florist websites, floral POS, florist wedding/event proposal software, and florist technology. Let us know if you want a free demo or try our software for free here.
OAF Cultivate’19 will be held July 13-16, 2019 at the Greater Columbus Convention Center.
For more information about this year’s event, please visit OFA Website.
2019 – AIFD Conference – Awaken – Las Vegas
More information TBA
For more information on this event, please visit the AFID website.
Sending flowers to anyone you know that is sick or sad might be the go-to gift, but the sending of flowers is actually more helpful than you think. It might surprise you, but there are more to flowers than just the look and smell—they can have some really positive effects on your health as well.
A few years ago the American Society for Horticulture Science performed a study seeing if plants have any influence on patients, and the results were outstanding. A group of patients was split into rooms with plants and flowers and the other half with no plants or flowers. The patients who had plants in their room had better results than those who did not have plants.
According to the study, those exposed to flowers and plants needed less pain medication, had lower blood pressure and heart rates, were less anxious and tired, and generally were in a more positive psychological state than patients in rooms without plants. The results of this research actually show that flowers should be offered to recovering patients.
Another study published in Contemporary Therapies in Medicine records that bouquets of flowers can also reduce our stress levels. The study gave women in college a fresh bouquet of roses for their dorm room. Results showed that each woman felt more relaxed and stress-free.
Image via Shutterstock
They say home is where the heart is, and you should feel good being at home. Like patients in recent studies, a room with plants or flowers help overall well being, so why not add flowers in your home?
Keep flowers in your bedroom, like gerbera daisies. Gerberas emit oxygen and absorb toxins and carbon monoxide at night instead of during the day like most flowers, and some say they sleep better.
Having flowers on a dining room table is a must. Studies have shown that people who have flowers on their tables while eating are in a better mood—as long as you don’t bring up politics!
Image via Shutterstock
Seem like you are in a rut and cannot focus at work? Why not add flowers and plants to your working space! Plants placed in a room help rejuvenate the oxygen in the room helping us think more clearly and keep the focus on the task at hand. Seeing green plants also helps with creativity as evidence has been shown in a case study by Shibata and Suzuki.
Flowers placed in the office not only helps our mood visually but also the smell of the flowers can help. Smelling floral scents seems to put us in a good mood and make us feel less anxious. Floral smells can help take the edge off during exams or before any major presentation you have before a group of people. So as they say, stop and smell the roses!
Floral colors can also attribute to our well being and mental state. Flowers that are less saturated and brighter are generally more relaxing, while bold saturated colors will help energize you. Colors near each other on the color wheel will be more calming than those opposite on the color wheel.
Think of the meaning of colors for certain flowers, like red roses, which means love or romance. don’t be afraid to do some research.
So in conclusion, it’s always best to be surrounded by flowers and plants as its a great way to keep in a great state of mind and why not be surrounded by beauty?
Florists, what are your thoughts? Do you keep yourself surrounded by plants and flowers at home? Please share your comments below!
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Floranext makes great florist software. Florist websites, floral POS, florist wedding/event proposal software, and florist technology. Let us know if you want a free demo or try our software for free here.
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