Spring bucket of flowers
Video introduction to me
Would you change your job description that you wrote down now? How are you going to "Big Yourself Up"
Customers, who are they?
Introduction to Customers
So now we know that we're talking about the selling of our flowers, and that the growing of them (while important) isn't the activity that will make us money and profit, we need to think about the most important part of flowers as a business.
Claire showing florist customers her flowers
' The Customers'
So who are your customers for your flowers?
If this is the first year of selling you might be tempted to say "anyone who will buy them" but that will make it very difficult to focus on where to find your customers, and at what price to sell to them, so the first question we need to ask is
Retail or Wholesale?
The dictionary definitions are
Retail
the sale of goods to the public in relatively small quantities for use or consumption rather than for resale.
Wholesale
the business of selling of goods in large quantities and at low prices, typically to be sold on by retailers at a profit.
The 3 key differences to take into account here are:
1) The quantity of goods sold - i.e small quantities for retail, and large for wholesale.
2) The difference in price. Basically goods are sold at a lower price wholesale, so that a retailer can add value, take into account their costs, and still sell at a profit.
3) Whether the buyer is the end user. Are they going to be the one displaying the flowers for themselves, or are they selling them on to someone, or adding value to them (making them into a display) to sell on to someone.
I’ve written more about this in the Introduction to Pricing course, so please do go back to this if you didn’t complete the exercises in that section.
Retail customer expectations :
Your retail customers are the end user.
They are often the first type of customers that new flower growers have. -
They are likely to buy flowers less regularly so will have less knowledge about them, particularly about their price and worth, they will expect you to know your pricing, and be able to tell them what they can afford.
They are going to ask more questions or need more information to make a purchase - particularly when you get past the "friends " stage.
They are often going to need "added value" items - wrapping of flower bunches, labels and cards for presentation, time spent making into a bouquet, vases and props for parties and weddings. These all need to be taken into account as well as the price of the flowers.
Wholesale customer expectations :
Wholesale customers are going to be taking your products, adding value to them, and selling them on to their customers. They are not the end users.
They are likely to have a good knowledge of the products as they will be using them regularly.
They are likely to have a good knowledge of the market price of flowers, but will want a good quality product as their reputation is at risk if they sell inferior products.
They will need goods for their clients all the time, and expect to have products available that they need regularly.
They will expect to be able to buy all that they need for that day's customers in just a few places, so will want larger quantities at a time.
Retail V Wholesale
Whether you sell Wholesale or Retail or a mixture of both will depend on a whole variety of factors.
Here are some
Size of growing area
Undercover growing area?
Growing all year round? - or for how many months?
Do you have previous horticultural/growing experience?
Do you have previous floristry/flower arranging experience?
Your location
Transport links
Storage
Your personal circumstances including which days of the week you can or want to work, and how many hours you can work each week.
I've attached a check sheet below with some of the markets you may want to choose. Have a look at what attributes you think might be important for each of them.
Local V National
Your growing conditions also dictate whether you'll be able to find a market locally, or if you need to go further afield or even nationally.
The last survey of UK customer buying habits (which was a while ago, but are the only figures out there to work from), found that the British Public spent an average of £28 per adult per year on cut flowers and £8 on pot plants. Source The Flowers and Plants Assoc
Are your local customers above or below average?
If you live in a rural area, that isn't particularly wealthy, or an inner city area, the amount may be smaller.
If you live in the home counties or in the suburbs of our cities the amount is likely to be above average.
With dedicated marketing to a particular market, you can expect a 1-5% market share (in time, that won't happen overnight)
Do the figures, can you get enough money from your local retail market?
Here’s my figures as an example
My local village has 2828 inhabitants
If I can reach 1% of them, and get them to spend the average £28, then I can get £792 worth of sales.
If I can reach 5% of them that's £3959.2.
(So I can’t live on retail to my local village, with an average spend, but….)
If I include my 2 next nearest villages with 4290 and 268 inhabitants at 5%, that's £10340.4
So far, I've only moved 3 miles from my front door, and sold them half a bouquet.....
that was 370 items sold @£28 (there's a bit of rounding in there)
If you've got a large garden, that's only
10 small bouquets for 37 weeks of the year or
20 small bouquets for 18 weeks of the year -
Work out whether you can just sell to your local market or if you have to be looking further afield on the resource below
Can your local retail market support your business?
Spend per head
Retail bouquet at the end of May
The Spend per Head is the amount each customer spends with you on each transaction.
If a retail customer buys a bunch of a single variety = £5-£10
If a retail customer buys a market style bouquet = £15-£25
If a retail customer buys a wrapped gift bouquet = £35-£75
If a wholesale customer (e.g florist) buys several buckets of flowers = £50-£100
if a retail customer buys several buckets of flowers = £150-£300
If a customer wants flowers for a party or wedding = £200-£2000(or more)
The ideal customer spends a good amount per transaction, and comes back for repeat transactions.
“What’s the average that your customers spend with you?”
Back in the 1990’s when I worked for Homebase, my first Garden Centre management role was at the Portsmouth store. This was a Category C store (the smallest category ) but the Garden Centre was a category B. The category rating mattered a huge amount to me, because it was what my bonus was based on, and as I’d just bought my first house at this time, every penny counted. The category was calculated on how much each customer spent - spend per head, and so we tried every trick in the book to make sure that all of our customers spent as much on our Garden Centre products as possible.
We made sure there were "pick up“ lines on every checkout end.
We were vigilant on all our special offer displays to make sure they were never empty, and always looked great.
We offered excellent customer service, and I went to great lengths every week to make sure all the staff were informed about all our new lines, so they could suggest extra goods to go with what was already selected. (Known as add-on sales) .
We made sure we never had “out of stocks” in our dry goods lines (how many chemicals did we sell for the garden back then!)
And our topping up and “pulling forward” of goods to make sure our displays were always full and inviting was an art form.
I use a lot of these tricks now to encourage my customers to spend more.
“Which of these retail ‘tricks’ might work for you?”
Your ideal customer
Ideal Customers for you
If you completed the Retail V Wholesale spreadsheet , you may already know about who you may be wanting to sell to this year. This next section is going to be about your ideal customer, so we can know about the prices and costs of selling to them. Please note: your ideal customer may change over time, but it's important you come back to this exercise each time it does.
Who is your ideal customer?
if you don't know the answer, you can't know how many customers you need, what you should sell to them, or at what price points, and you don't know where to find them.
A generalisation here isn't any good, you need a build a picture in your head of who it is, (if you've already got customers) or who might be your ideal customers.
I'll give you 3 examples
My ideal retail customer is Mrs Simons, (made up name, but i am thinking of a particular customer). She is a lady who has always loved having flowers, but didn’t know much about them or how to arrange them. Her personal circumstances now mean she has more time to spend on crafts, and the wherewithal to come to workshops and flower clubs as well as buying flowers regularly to arrange herself. She’s in her 50’s with children left home, and drives a mid sized vehicle, in which she can fit buckets of flowers in the back seat.
My ideal wholesale client is Dawn, She's got a lovely boutique florists shop in a village about 25 minutes away. She is a skilled florist and loves flowers and plants herself. She lives near her florist shop, and drives a mini, which she can cram an awful lot of flowers into each week.
My ideal wedding customer is Emily, her mum lives in my local village, and she’s having a big party in the back garden, and getting married at a registry office with just close family. She’s got an aunt who is helping to do the party table arrangements, who’s savvy about flower arranging, but happy to work with whatever she’s given. Emily and her fiancé are both keen on organic and sustainability, and just want to make sure that the bridal flowers don’t clash with the bridesmaids dress colour, but they have no particular colour theme.
An ideal customer won't make you stressed
You'll enjoy working with them, and look forward to the next opportunity.
You won't be worried if you see their name come up on your phone.
You'll know them well enough that you'll be able to look at what you're growing and think "Dawn will like that"
They'll pay on time
Your exercise is to think about your ideal clients, - if you are going to sell to more than one type of customer, then do this exercise with each. There is a downloadable resource to print off below
What will your ideal customer want to buy?
If you've got in mind an ideal customer, then it makes it a lot easier to market to them. You know where they will be, who their friends are (recommendations are a wonderful currency) and what they will want to buy.
You will also know their budgets and price points. This is a really important trick that a lot of small businesses miss.
They work out what they want to sell, rather than what their customer wants to buy.
Examples are (yes, these are stereotypes, please excuse that for illustration purposes!)
“The busy housewife just wants a bunch of flowers for a vase for when friends visit - She often buys from supermarkets where she spends £5-£10, - if you present her with a bunch that is £15 that is beyond her budget.”
“The retired lady is having her NAFAS friends for lunch, She wants a selection of flowers she can make up herself for a table centre. If you offer her a ready made bouquet, or bunch of a single variety, that won’t fulfil her brief.”
“The Gentleman who wants to spoil his wife on a special birthday, the bouquet he bought last year was £40, so he wants to spend more, and make it really special this year.”
If you don't offer them a product for their wishes, then they won't buy from you. But that means that they aren't your ideal customer.
TASK
Go back to your ideal customer and work out what they will want to buy. If you sell other products (or want to) work out who the ideal customers for those will be.
Would you want a customer that didn't fit into the definition of being 'ideal'