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.
You might have also found that your business is ripe for sale!
The general technical term of selling and buying a business is “mergers and acquisitions,” commonly shortened to M&A, and this process can take a fairly long time to process, anywhere from 6 months to several years. However, in order to actually sell your business, you should prime your business so that potential buyers will surely buy it and you can sell it to its maximum value.
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One of the most important ways to prepare your business for sale is to keep your books and accounting records clean, transparent, and organized.
When buyers seek to buy your business, financial records are one of the first things they will ask to see. Businesses that follow generally accepted accounting practices are also valued higher than those that don’t. It also gives the image of a well-managed business, so you should try to ask help from your dedicated accountants, or hire an accounting firm to do the job for you. Buyers will look for the past five years of your records, so preparing these is crucial.
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To fully prepare your business for a new owner, it should also have management that’s not heavily dependent on the owner. Your employees should not be reliant on you to function efficiently. You need to put up an effective organizational chart that clearly shows the chain of command.
You also need to establish a clear set of goals and objectives (often in the form of a vision) which guide the processes and operations in the business. By making your manpower self-sufficient, you can assure the buyer that the business will not go down by the time it is sold to them.
Establishing a good image for your business’s brand also helps increase the valuation of your business. A good way to create that image is to boost your online presence, such as in social media and search engines, optimizing it to be more easily found. You should try to make your website and social media ratings to be positive.
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Lastly, think over about when you want to sell your business. Selling a business is often regarded as a smart business move for entrepreneurs, but you also need to be smart about when. You are a veteran in the industry, you know the trends and therefore you know when your business can be most valuable. Take advantage of this time and prep your business for selling.
Florists, have you sold or purchased your flower shop recently? What are some good key advice for those who are wanting to sell or purchase a flower shop? 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.
Luckily, there are many metrics to objectively measure your business’s performance. Aside from helping make sure that your business is doing well, these metrics are also going to be measured when you’re trying to get a bank loan, for example.
Having an idea about how your business is doing, supported by hard numbers on the table, can help you plan ahead and make adjustments to your current shop’s workflow. You can also readily adjust your pricing formula, and even see what needs to be improved in your shop, from your equipment to your workforce, just by taking a look at these metrics. That’s how powerful these metrics can be!
Let’s dive deep into these metrics and how you can use them to be fully aware of your business’s current standing.
Kicking off with operating expenses or overhead, these are those costs that are not products, like electricity and marketing. Expenses that you incur that are related to your working and shop space, be it rent or utilities, count as this metric.
As a good rule of thumb, operating expenses shouldn’t go past 10% of your total sales revenue.
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Payroll and salary expenses are also one important thing to be kept track by florists. Many shops require other floral designers and employees. Because of that, we can spend a great deal on payroll because we rely on manpower to create our main products.
Labor costs can also easily go up high because of custom orders, thus these custom orders should be priced higher than most of your services to compensate for that. Having it take at most 30% of your total sales revenue should be a good margin to maintain.
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Then, there are COGS. The cost of goods sold includes all expenses for the production of your services that are used in the product, e.g. the flowers, vases, etc. Basically the opposite of overhead, many people can underestimate this metric because they forget to include the small or seemingly insignificant costs like the tax on the flowers and the cost of shipping.
To make sure that you are profitable, keep it below 30% of the total sale price.
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Of course, you need to know how much you have earned as profit after all your expenditures. This might be the simplest one so far, as long as you got all the numbers down. The formula is simple, just take all your earnings and subtract your expenditures.
There’s also no specific threshold for this metric; you get to pick how high your net profit, as it is called, is. Your goals for the shop will most likely decide that number for you.
That was a lot of math under a lot of explanations, but it is necessary for your shop to flourish and reach its goals. You probably didn’t sign up for all this when you started up your flower shop, but keeping track of these metrics will matter a lot.
Florists, do you use these metrics at your business? Have any thoughts, comments, or suggestions, please share 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.
Whether you are looking forward to getting started in the floral industry or you’re looking to expand, buying a flower shop carries with it a lot of advantages over starting from scratch.
Buying a flower shop saves you the struggle of a new business: building costs, hiring capable staff, acquiring equipment, and building your reputation. All it takes is ensuring that the shop you’re buying is worth your investment. Here are a few things you need to look into when buying a flower shop!
In the end, a flower shop is a business, so you need to look into the profitability of the shop before delving into the specifics.
There’s a lot of business jargon that might get thrown at you, but basically, you need to look into the assets and liabilities that you get with the quoted price, from the equipment to the accounts receivable.
Sometimes, some shops might be valued higher because of goodwill or intangible assets of the business (eg. reputation and branding). You should absolutely ask to see their work, so you can see if it’s worth the asking price.
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If you are serious about buying that shop, you will also need to go through the managerial, financial and legal documents of the business. Examining these documents can give you a rough idea of how well the business has been doing for the past year or so, and it can help you understand its valuation. Cash flow statements, customer lists, and existing contracts are some of these documents. Asking for help from an attorney or M&A professional can be invaluable.
Now, let’s get into the nitty-gritty of the shop and see if it is indeed the flower shop that you’ve been looking to work on.
A flower shop and its flowers thrive on great and reliable equipment, thus you should check up on its facilities. Check if they are still in good working condition and if they will be for the foreseeable future. Coolers, most especially, play a big part in the flower shop business, so you shouldn’t cut corners and make sure the one provided in the shop is a definite asset and not a liability to be replaced.
Some equipment and supplies might not have aged well, so you should take a look at those which might need to be replaced. It might be a frustrating buy if you can’t have the shop up and running right when you purchase it because of these hindrances. You can negotiate with the owner to even get them fixed it up for the purchase.
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Knowing the shop’s current flower providers, and how economic the relationship has been between them is very important. You can also see if you can find better options and deals around. You also need to check if the shop is in a wire service and if they are still paying for the hardware of the service. You can opt-out of the service if you wish, too, once you acquire it.
Finally, you need to see the workforce of the shop. Management might change, but the employees don’t have to. Some might leave together with the original owner, while the owner themselves might stick around to help you learn the ropes around running a flower shop.
Of course, with new management, you might also change up a few policies around human resources, so taking a look at the current state can help you decide that. Hiring and firing people can also be a part of that process, so long as you can present a reasonable explanation. The important part is to have a team that can survive the shift in ownership and stay efficient and profitable nevertheless.
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Flower shops are usually the fruits of someone’s labor and passion for the most beautiful members of nature. It might have been the hardest decision for them to put up a price tag on it for whatever reason they might have. As a flower shop’s future owner, the best that you can do is make sure that their life’s work continues on, now with the renewed vigor of a fresh proprietor.
Florists, what were some items you think are important when purchasing a new or current business that you can share with our readers, 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.
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.
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.
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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!
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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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