Florists now is the time to gear up and prepare – Valentine’s Day is approaching at lightning speed!
It is important to be ahead of the Valentine’s Day flower rush! Valentine’s Day is one of the busiest and possibly the most profitable holiday of the year, compared to Mother’s Day.
In this blog, we will create a step by step checklist to make it easier for you to maintain organization and increase profits in your flowers shop for a smooth, successful Valentine’s Day.
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Flower Shop Appearance
(Best implemented early to mid-January)
Valentine’s Day Decor: Take a look around and make your flower shop ooze love! Customers respond to seasonal and holiday decor, so go ahead and add your special touches. Create a beautiful window display if feasible. The key here is to create an inviting atmosphere, all while reminding customers Valentine’s Day is approaching.
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Flowers & Supplies
(Best implemented before mid-January)
Order Flowers: We encourage you to order your flowers early from your suppliers, ask for price breaks and be sure to order all you need but do not over order. Remember, Be Smart, Buy Smart!
Try A Flower Auction: Due to large quantities, you must buy in order to get a great deal, this may not be a good option for all year long but great for Valentine’s Day. Look into getting roses for a super value and again ordering early is key.
Order Supplies: Make sure you have good tools, and all the prep supplies you need (wire, tape, oasis, flower food, etc). Besides your tools and prep supplies, you will need vases and containers. Order your standard vases and shop around home decor stores for unique finds for great deals.
Order Add-Ons: Do not forget to order updated plush, candies, chocolate, balloons and candles. Anything is really up for grabs and can be an add-on. Cross-selling creates huge profits and these items generally last from year to year. If you can, invest in quality products and watch them sell.
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Floral Website Checklist
(Best implemented before February, 1)
Ideally, it is best to have your floral eCommerce all set and ready for Valentine’s Day before the first of February. However, it is never too late to do a few website renovations that will attract customers. Remember to implement some Valentine’s Day keywords for your SEO.
Website Products: Start with your Valentine’s Day product images, these should be displayed throughout the website in various pages. You may certainly add Valentine’s Day products to your Best Sellers, Birthday and any other pages you like. The key here is to add a few products sporadically on different pages, all while keeping your Valentine’s Day page.
Call To Action: Great practice is to have a call to action on your floral eCommerce. Add a “Shop Now – Valentine’s Day Flowers” which will direct customers where they need to go. Make sure Valentine’s Day is clearly shown on your menu nav bar so customers have easy access to the page.
Clear Valentine’s Day Policy: If your policy is somewhat hidden on your website, now is the time to post it more clearly. It is a great idea to post a delivery policy as well as it is impossible to deliver everyone’s arrangement at a set time. Picking a time range is always best (Valentine’s Day Delivery – Guaranteeing between 9:00 am – 5:00 pm). This is also something that can be posted on your website top bar.
Promotions: We encourage adding an early bird special. Unlike other holidays, Valentine’s Day is one day which can get very busy. Having customers select a different delivery day spreads the holiday throughout the week. Offer a free delivery or percentage off for anyone who opts for delivery before February 14.
Pricing: If you are charging more for Valentine’s Day flowers, make sure your floral eCommerce has holiday pricing set.
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Valentine’s Day Employee Checklist
(Best implemented before February, 1)
Employee Scheduling: Discuss what is required from your employees as far as their scheduling goes. Most flower shop employees understand the importance of this holiday, have a clear understanding of days and times they must work.
Cross-Selling & UpGrades: Valentine’s Day is a such a busy holiday in a flower shop that sometimes cross-selling or upgrading is not even thought of. We encourage you to make upgrading and cross-selling mandatory in your flower shop. The difference is astronomical in profits, every employee should offer a customer more with every sale.
Extra Help: Hire any extra help you need this week, front counter help, designers, and delivery drivers. Make sure to go over all that is required including scheduling.
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Valentine’s Day Prep Checklist
(Best implemented after February, 5)
Prep Your Flowers: When your flower supply arrives, be sure to quickly prep all your flowers, do not cut corners. Prepping is the key in selling beautiful long lasting flowers. How to flower prep.
Supplies: Cut your ribbon ahead time for quick access. Line up all your codified containers and make sure you have enough, same goes for pics, pins, plush, candies and so on.
Get To Greening: Practiced by many florists, green vases before the holiday. Greens are very long lasting, doing this ahead of time will save you some valuable time (be sure to keep in cooler all pre-greened containers and vases).
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Valentine’s Day Week Checklist
Get Your Display On: Create bundle deals and display them throughout the shop. Add special offers for roses purchased with plush, candies, or any combination. Make sure these are visible for easy purchase for walk-in customers.
Single Roses: A big seller from many florists has been the single wrapped rose. Pre-make tons of these and place them at your front counter. These sell quickly and most customers will almost always purchase an add -on to go along with the single wrapped rose. Be sure to display them close together.
Tip: Wrap single colored roses as well. Customers love these, with the color pink trailing right behind red.
Delivery Route: Look over the orders you currently have and make a set plan with your drivers on what areas they are delivering to. Remember more orders trickle in the day before Valentine’s Day and day of, so be as organized as possible, with the delivery routing for each driver.
Tip: If you can, we advise having a standby driver at the shop, this driver will handle all new orders that come in on Valentine’s Day.
Attire: Why a section on attire? We want you to be comfortable! Please wear proper shoes. Do Not allow employees to wear open toe shoes, this can be an insurance liability. Be comfortable and wear closed toe shoes.
Do Not Be Wasteful: With the orders piling up it is so easy to be wasteful, make sure to use what you need. Amazing how many flowers and supplies are simply thrown on the floor and then thrown out. Discuss the importance with your employees on not wasting products, this all cuts into your bottom line profits.
Watch Your Finances: You are exhausted we get it, however, please be sure to check your daily sales for each day leading up to Valentine’s Day. Keep clear reports on all accounts payable and accounts receivable.
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Valentine’s Day Checklist
All the preparations have paid off! Valentine’s Day is here!
Everything Will Be Great: Florists by nature tend to be perfectionists. Our advice is everything will come together. The day will fly by so enjoy it, focus on your task at hand rather than feel like you have to be doing everything.
Keep Up The Sense Of Humor: Do not sweat the small stuff. Things can happen and they are all part of the Valentine’s Day flower shop process.
Treat Employees To Lunch: This is great for the fellowship in the flower shop and also keeps employees from venturing out for lunch.
Delivery Confirmations: If you participate with a floral wire service, be sure to confirm all your delivered orders. Doing so will keep you from being charged high non-delivery confirmation fees. Most floral wire services have a time that they need to be confirmed by, so please do this accordingly.
Florists, have any great Valentine’s Day tip to share with our readers? Please post your feedback below, as it is so important to us! We would like to wish all florists a very lucrative and successful Valentine’s Day!
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How to diplomatically deal with customers Who complain about the price increase and also mention things such as where they can get the roses cheaper?
What a great topic you just mentioned Lina!
There may always be a few customers who disagree with the price increase during holidays, and thus state “I can get this cheaper somewhere else” these customers are generally looking for some kind of discount or price match.
Although always good business practice to keep customers at your store and for those general few it could be possible to accommodate them.
That said most patrons understand the nature of the business and sometimes you just cannot accommodate price match or discounts, this is perfectly OK, with high Valentine’s Day flower and supply costs, you must not ever give things away.
Running a floral business is no small feat, explaining to the customer that you kept your prices as low as you could considering the high cost you paid for your merchandise is an excellent way to explain the price increase.
I’m very curious to see how other fellow florists would handle a customers price complaints.
Thank you for bringing this up.
Idalina
as usual, your suggestions and comments are very good!
Thank you to help us with new ideas, new concepts and new ways to organize our business (and with a plus – new vision about the segment).
Arnaldo
Deerfield Florist
Hi Arnaldo-
Thank you for the great compliments. 🙂
Floranext strives on providing exceptional service to our florists. It is with the help of all our florists that our blogs are such a success.
Selling flowers at high seasons like the Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day are like booking a vacation during the summer time or Holidays. Flowers are the same and nothing a florist can do about it. When we put this fact in the equation, most customers will accept that but of course, some might look for alternatives. Trying not to lose a customer, some small discounts might apply depending on the size of the order. Hope this helps!
Thanks for the comprehensive list. It seems to cover most of the details. Route optimizing apps and software makes life a lot easier on the delivery end for us. Road Warrior is a good one. Good luck to everyone.