Florist News

It may be that you need to set yourself some sort of 'achievable' goal and then evaluate what you need to do in order to achieve it.
Sort of reminds me of the joke about women and shopping..Like, what are you looking for? I don't know, but i'll know when i see it!. You can do that all day long and sometimes go home with nothing.

So the phrase 'working with flowers' covers such wide range of activities at both ends of the market and everywhere in between.

I'll assume you don't want to run a market stall selling bunches of flowers, else you wouldn't be talking about college training. There are a few options. You can specialise in one area or try and encompass all of them.

Let's assume you want to specialise in wedding flowers and not worry about anything else. You still have some choices to make as there are differing 'target markets' within this category. A lot of brides are 'on a budget' (isn't everybody?) so they will look for a florist who appears to be reasonably priced but still as good as a top designer. (if that makes sense!). So if you create an image for yourself of being 'reasonably priced' and doing a lot of budget weddings, you may well not attract the clients who want the best and are prepared to pay for it. (like...who did your flowers darling?...oh really!) You get what i mean.

On the other hand, you can aim for a very upmarket image for which you will need a lot of 'street cred' in the way of recognised qualifications, testimonials, experience, etc. At this level you will probably not even get phone calls from people looking for a 'budget wedding'.

How far will you be prepared to travel in order to gain clients and keep busy. Will you be happy doing the occasional wedding or do you want to be busy all the time.

You need to look at the area you are going to cover and try and gauge the ratio of 'upmarket/budget' weddings. How do you do that? Given the time, you could visit/phone every church and wedding venue in your area and enquire as to the 'rough' percentage of 'lots of flower/minimal flower' weddings in the past year.

You could try and get to know people at some of the wedding venues in your area. Ask if they would mind you dropping in after the florist has finished doing the flowers and before the guests arrive just to have a quick look at the flowers. Most will probably decline but if you explain why, they may be receptive.

Get up in the morning and go to a wholesale market. Try and find a wholesaler who is in the mood for chatting and ask about the types of flowers being ordered specifically for weddings. Have a look at all the flowers on sale. Take your digi camera (it's polite to ask before taking pictures). You can get most flower images off the net and build up your own reference library, but sometimes it's nice to have your own. Visit a sundries wholesaler. Most will only sell to the trade but won't mind you having a look if you say you are a student. Have a look at all the sundries available. Same applies, there are a lot of websites including smithers oasis that show the full range available.

Have a look at as many florist websites as you can and get some idea of the things being offered for weddings along with the prices and try and build up your own catalogue with average prices from this. look at the individual designs and see if you can work out for yourself how they are put together. Pick out a few designs, go out and buy the materials (a lot of florists won't sell you the mechanics, but if you get stuck just email me and i'll post everything to you.) then sit down one evening and have a go. What's the worst that can happen? you might waste a few flowers. But you will soon learn how difficult it is and how much you need to learn. You may even surprise yourself and say "hey, I can do this!) You certainly won't get the Spanish Inquisition knocking on your door asking why you are delving into the mysterious world of floristry!

It's all down to how much time/money you are prepared to invest. If/when you embark on a college course, you will need to do this anyway, so why not start now and see if you really want to have a go before you pack in your job.

There is still a lot of ground to cover here. Things like pricing, ordering stock, looking after stock (in the summer!), gaining clients, advertising, etc.

I'll call this 'Options in Floristry-Part 1' as there are so many other avenues to explore. Not to mention my exploring the aussie red wine on my desk at the moment which is bringing this chapter to a close.

Hi everyone,

Thanks for your replies, all your comments have been really interesting in their own ways.

Fly2hi, It's funny that you should pick Wedding floristry because I made a table arrangment on the weekend that would have been suitable for a wedding, and I started to wonder if I would like to specialise in that field! I also noticed that there is a wedding and event planner in my local area who is advertising for part time staff, and that also got me thinking.

Unfortunately I have decided that I am just too busy in my full time job to be able to spare the time to work p/t, however I have taken steps today to get myself on a course. I have contacted my local college who had advertised an evening course starting in February, however they have advised me it may start this week (they are going to get back to me - the admissions team don't seem to be very organised). Fingers crossed I will learn some interesting techniques and develop a better basic understanding.

I've been reading one of Jane Packer's books, and it has been a real insight. I can't wait to learn more! At the very least, even if I decide that full time floristry isn't for me, at least I will have gained more skill in something very beautiful and hopefully enjoyable!

Thanks everyone for your thoughts, I will keep you informed about how I get on!

Hi Newbee,
Glad you like my name,
We now have two shops, one is total floristry, the other does both. I don't care what 'florists' say, they do compliment each other.
I've got the best manageress who takes care of it, whilst customers are choosing their veg. they are watching what the florists are creating, and often buy or place an order.

I do think you should take a college course, I have since done several, also Dutch workshops are brill., but shop experience is a must.
Once again, good luck

well, to cut a long story short, we were greengrocers many years ago, 30 to be exact. We were the first greengrocers in our area to go self select,i.e. pick your own produce as the supermarkets do. All of my other greengrocer friends said "it won't work, not in this area, people want to be served" I was adamant that it had it's advantages. Over a weekend i completely rearranged the shop and on the monday morning it was 'self service'. I can remember people standing in the queue at the checkout saying "well, if this is progress, god help us" We lost a few customers, but the average sale shot up and more than compensated. We started selling more exotics that people wouldn't usually ask for. Within 12 months, every other greengrocer in the area had started to convert to self service. We sold a lot of cut flowers as well. About 1978 we had 2 trainee florists doing bouquets, arrangements and funeral pieces. It just built up from there. We didn't really push the floristry side as we were selling so much cut flower without the labour involved that it didn't seem necessary.

So all those years of selling cut flowers and fruit & veg gives you an invaluable depth of knowledge when it comes to retailing a perishable product. You get to know what sells, when it sells, how long it lasts, how to look after it etc, etc.

Over the years, with the rise of the supermarkets, the fruit & veg side moved downhill and the flowers side took over. Eventually we dropped fruit & veg altogether and concentrated on floristry. Given that background I was still in the mode of selling in volume and giving value for money. To me it was all about putting on a good show. If you didn't have it, you couldn't sell it. So you end up buying more flower than you know you can sell. That's when i started playing around, experimenting and teaching myself. After a while you gain enough confidence to put your work up for sale. Then you find out what is saleable and what is not. It had little to do with established design principles or 'text book ideas'. If someone liked it and paid for it, it passed.