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.
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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
Florists can get creative not just with their arrangements, but with the presentation of those bouquets. Here are a few suggestions you may want to try!
Vintage cans go well with flowers that have muted hues, making for a great complimentary tabletop arrangement and evoking that vintage feel.
They might not stand out as much as most other arrangements, but they are supposed to fit in and mesh well with an environment that’s peaceful and calming, with the calm hues of both the flowers and the vintage canisters capturing the atmosphere of the days of yore. Spending an afternoon around these arrangements, with matching tea and small talk, is a perfect way to enjoy these flowers.
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Tableware looks gorgeous by itself—its purpose is to beautify the food you serve with it, after all. However, it might come as a surprise that tableware can also work as flower vases. Teacups especially are commonly used for miniature arrangements, taking advantage of their small sizes to put an overflow of blooms to its brim.
These arrangements are best put on a small, circular coffee table or an extra ornament to a larger set-up in the dining table, for example.
Of course, we’ve been looking at designs largely inspired by and meant for the indoor space, but there is also lots of room to design for the outdoors. One reliable go-to for flower designs are wooden boxes or crates, grabbing that countryside vibe and getting a little bit dirty with the arrangement.
Wooden boxes, or even simply adding rough planks around your arrangement, encapsulate the perfect countryside feel that looks great for designs you can put in your backyard, or just by your windowsill for a flavor of the country.
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Instead of a basket filled with cookies, this basket is flourishing with a bouquet of flowers. Hat boxes also have the same charm as the baskets. Baskets, particularly, have a very unique aesthetic, with its woven design and their seeming appearance to be a portable arrangement. They would also look good with muted hues, as baskets with their usual quotidian colors can be a great complementary addition to any space.
Of course, we can’t just skip the original flower vases when speaking about flower designs. The variety of glassware is astounding, and the creative designs most of them have are enough to fit in almost any space of the house. Even basic glass vases can look stunning by adding colored water to the vases. They might be simple, but just like mason jars, this opens up to more possibilities that you can do.
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They are many more creative ways to present flowers, like old suitcases, floral shelves, and even hanging arrangements. With enough creativity and effort, almost anything can be used to complement the beauty of the flowers. Most will feel like a do-it-yourself project, and honestly, flowers look best when you know they had a touch of your creativity as they sit around your space, beautifying it as it should.
Florists, what are some creative ways you present flowers? 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.
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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.
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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.
Social media has changed how people obtain information, and vastly increased the volume of content that we consume. Facebook remains the most-used social media platform, but recently its title is being threatened by another social media platform focusing on images and videos, Instagram.
Inspired by unviersity face books which contain students’ photos and basic information, Facebook began at Harvard University in 2003 as FaceMash. It creator, Mark Zuckerburg went on to open “TheFacebook” to other Harvard students in 2004.
As time passed, membership expanded to other universities, high schools, then to private companies, until it finally opened to everyone in 2006. Since then, it has slowly accumulated users, reaching a staggering 2.3 billion active user count by December 2018. As a company, Facebook, Inc. has also acquired other services, including the photo and video-sharing social networking service, Instagram, which also boasts a user count of 1 billion as of May 2019.
As two different social networking services, Facebook and Instagram compete against each other for the same audience, despite being owned by the same company. With similar features but a radically different overall focus, both services are popular all over the globe and Facebook takes the lead for most number of active users.
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Over the past two years in the United States, Facebook has lost 15 million users, per a study from Edison Research and Triton Digital.
The decrease is most obvious among users aged 12-34, or teenagers and young adults. In the same age bracket and time period, Instagram showed growth, increasing from 64% to 66%. Snapchat, although outclassed by Instagram, sees the same trend across the United States and the United Kingdom.
From this data we can infer that tweens and young adults are turning to Instagram and Snapchat for their visual content, and eMarketer says the same. This does not pose a huge threat to Facebook, because they still rule the realm of social networking services. However, it will be a concern that they are losing out among younger age groups. As Facebook owns Instagram, that should soften the blow. But what does that mean for your business?
In the grand scale of things, it only slightly affects the floral industry. Facebook will remain relevant as a platform for promoting businesses for the foreseeable future, given its expansive set of tools for promotions and its largest user base compared to other services.
However, the motivation to focus on visual content becomes higher, especially for businesses whose main audience are young people, because this age group communicates most using visual content. The floral industry can greatly benefit from this traffic, as flowers speak in the same visual language. By focusing more on visuals, your floral businesses can reach your audience more easily.
Visual content is not limited to pictures, it also includes videos. Sped-up or “time lapse” videos are trending across social networks, which is a trend you can join in on with just your smartphone. You may also consider a montage of arranging the flowers for events, like weddings or parties.
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Facebook may still be the king of social media, but in light of current trends, it’s high time for industries reliant on or benefitting from visual content to expand to other platforms.
Florists, have you seen a decline in engagement on Facebook? Are you using Instagram to market your floral business? Share your comments, thoughts, and ideas 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.
2019 – AIFD Conference – Awaken – Las Vegas
More information TBA
For more information on this event, please visit the AFID website.
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