Florist News

the real question should be how can we get better wages?
I think one of the main problems is the public perception of florists in general and the skills we have.

__________________
Sarah Creating Bespoke Wedding Flowers Cheshire

I don´t think the wages would be better before our union overhere exept that florist and not only trades people behind a counter, but more like artist or craftsmen. Craftswomen.
Not everyone can do what we do. I think.


But we have to start earning the real money for the store. Putting in some prices for our worktime.

No mechanics say he did not use that much time putting the car together. So it would be cheaper. and thouht in a ekstra set of batteries.

Were to soft overhere. how does it work overthere do you calculated the worktime.?

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all your responses.

I'm definitely in love with flowers, and working with flowers all day, creating new designs and using my inspiration to make others happy appeals to me more than a good wage.

Having said this, I still have bills to pay and so it's probably better that I am realistic now rather than later.

I can afford to take a hit on my salary while I am training, however I would hope that if I went down the route of owning my own shop, once it was established I would be able to take home a salary of £20k upwards. Am I in cloud cookoo land?

Alternatively I have thought about working from home (I know this isn't a popular suggestion on this forum) Does anyone currently work from home, and do you do it to supplement your full time job, or have you been able to go full time working from home?

Thanks everyone.

__________________
Newbee

Don't think working from home is a good idea 1. you are on your own 2. To get enough customers you will have to undercut florist and ok you may not have the overheads but you need to be realistic with your prices 3. In a shop environment you have passing trade everyone can see your shop at home you order enough flowers for a job what do you do with the leftovers --- stand at the side of the road give them to old peoples home or hospital Don't think orders would come in quick enough to start with to have as a sole income

You need to be realistic about future earnings. You could do this by basing it on industry standard average earnings (whatever they are?) By doing this you cannot be accused of too much optimism/pessimism. That is not to say you cannot achieve more than this. They are only an average, which means there must be higher and lower earnings. If you are contemplating starting a business, you must be able to put together some figures that show you can (at least) achieve average earnings. This doesn't need to be too complicated. A simple business plan which shows how you expect to generate income, how much income is expected, a detailed breakdown of your operating costs, your gross and net profit, etc, etc. The difficult part is your expected income, the other elements of the equasion will be derived from that or will be fixed at the outset.
So how do you project income? You will have ideas as to what sort of things you would like to do or are capable of doing. Lets say you want to concentrate on weddings. What is a good 'average' budget for a wedding these days. There are of course quite a few 'high value' weddings to be had, but we want to avoid introducing 'paid help' at this stage which is what you would need in order to cope with these. Let's say an 'average' wedding is £500. How much of that is net profit after buying the flowers, sundries, fuel etc. Also don't forget to knock off about £75 in vat before you start. I am assuming you will need to be vat registered before your turnover is high enough to produce circa 20k earnings.
Your profit element will vary according to the content of your wedding. Some will be very intricate with a lot of design work resulting in a higher labour charge. Some will be quite straightforward with less time involved making it difficult to justify a high labour charge. Yes, you could say "I'm only going to do designer weddings, that's what i trained for" but will you be brave enough to turn the first one away?

So lets say your gross after vat is £425 and out of this you pay £150 for wet & dry stock, this leaves you with £275. How many hours work is that. This will also vary considerably and you will inevitably spend more time thinking and doing than you anticipated. If you set yourself a time limit and say "that's all i quoted for", then you will not be on the road towards perfection.

So now you have £275. If you're working from home you won't have to pay any rent. I'm also assuming that when you purchased your flowers and sundries you didn't need to buy more than you required. That is, if there are ten stems in a bunch, you estimated for ten stems and when the spec requires 11 stems of cala lily, you have an outlet for the other 9 that cost you £2 each.

But how are you going to get these wedding orders in the first place? At the moment, assume that nobody knows you exist. How do you let them know that you are willing and able. Lets forget about friends and family at the moment. You don't want to go there. It's the quickest way to fall out with friends and your family certainly won't want to pay you. There are many ways to advertise your business, but from my own experience of 30 years in the high street, 90% of it is a total waste of time and money. I can't give you the definitive answer to that one. I would like to think it is personal recommendation, having done a decent job for someone and then letting them spread the word around. But this takes time and life is so short.

Doesn't that all sound so negative! How often does the wife say "you should look on the bright side". Well yes, the bright side is that i can't complain about how i've done in this business, It's enabled me to look forward to early retirement in the sunshine. With all the 'doom and gloom' i still believe it's possible to earn a good living in the floristry trade. You do have to pick the right location, adopt the right approach and be prepared to work very hard for what you believe in. You need to know your strengths and weaknesses and capitalise on them. Coming back to negatives, you need to look for all the things that could or may go against you and develop a sytem to prevent that happening. In this way you engineer your world to be mostly positives.

So..is that it?...not by a long shot..there is so much more and i guarantee you will never learn it all. Nobody does. So don't ever think "i need to know a bit more before i start my own business" If you do that, you will never start. Only by getting involved and giving youself a challenge will you start to learn.

And..isn't learning so much easier these days. What i wouldn't have done 30 years ago for a pc and a trade forum!

hi fly2hi
ever thought of runing courses on motivational training - you just got my vote !!!!!!!

Would I have to wash any buckets?

We could make bucket washing optional if you wish
or you could review the practice of 'regeneration of aqua support units' delving into the question of the advantages of rubber coverings as protection of extremities - personaly I advocate marigolds and barrier cream

thats funny dragonfly, LOL!

I could live with that....