Florist News

I read with interest the article on page 18 FWB. re Are florists their own worst enemies? The cost implications were taken at a 2.5 mark-up as an average to give a uk wide price point. The labour charge was interesting too.
£21 per hour. How do you all go about this?
I've worked several places with the following pricings;

A, flowers x 3, plants & Sundries x 2.35 labour £25 (that was 4 years ago!)

B, flower, plant and sundries all x 3 plus 20% for labour (you can imagine some vases stuck around at that mark up!)

Just my opinion but arrangements are harder to sell over the phone, unless its a basket.

Strange but we have higher gift value sales over the phone than in the shop

yes we sell better over the phone they seem to spend more don't know why!!!

when i first opened my shop i did everything x 2.5 but when the ex boss saw this he pointed out this would not work i would have to x3 to be able to pay all the bills and as you already know my shop is tiny and rent/rates etc... are small compared to others so if they x 2.5 or less they are mad sin some areas i have taken off here and put up the price on things i can get away with to tally out

as for mark ups it depends on who does the work if i did by the hour its £20.00/hr for myself £15.00 for 2nd designer and £7.50 for traninee helpers as for shop designs then i charge30% on arrangements aqua packs are 10% plus 10% for giftwrap and weddings are at 100% does that sound right with all of you?????

I read that too. Does it really take 20 mins to make a handtied? I'll be honest, haven't timed myself but can't be that long. It was def.an eye opener for me though. Haven't been charging nearly enough. Was quite shocked that in a 30.00 bouquet you only actually get 20.00 (retail) worth of flowers. Lots to learn methinks.

We all have lots to learn

but in my experiance the biggest problem shops have is over valueing orders

when i hear one my florists saying they can make it look big for the money i start to worry lol

I'm just about to put my mark up to x 3, was on x 2.85. I know of a place up norf that uses x 4.

Hand tied......5 minutes max with your eyes shut....£1.00 to cover the cello and ribbon/raffia...money in the till...thank you madam...next please..

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I dont know how u all like to work prices but on the retail side i like to keep the prices as stable as possible.

So we keep most product at certain price points for example good roses we generaly sell at 1.95 all year round (except peaks) if i average the price throughout the year that works out about right for me . This week roses have been expensive however do u really want to explain to your customers they cost more because of the french lol . and there are plenty of weeks when we pay a lot less.

To keep our retail margins up we always try and have what i call gravey flowers .By this i mean a flower than can be used in most of our work.

For example if green eustoma is only 25p a stem i will make sure there is a bucket in the work room and let the girls use it at a fairly good price ie £1.30 ,giving customers good value while keeping our margins up.

There are nearly always some good deals out there just make sure u know what they are and try and use those products. I recon u can add 5% to your bottom line doing this


Anyway thats quite enough serious posting what kind of flower am i going to call fly this time lol

Oh fly ...I was about to lay down the gauntlet and say 8 mins..now youve beaten me!

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well us men have bigger hands lol