How to choose floral ingredients and create profitable flower recipes without sacrificing creativity.
Your ability to choose floral ingredients and create profitable flower recipes can greatly impact your business in multiple ways.
The most important way is that quoting accurate retail prices to your clients directly correlates to your profitability.
This means choosing floral ingredients and building flower recipes that allow for both creativity and profitability. You can decide to use flower recipes to build a level of certainty into your business and take it a step further by considering the flower ingredients in those recipes based on their profitability.
Do you think using flower recipes limits your creativity?
How can you use unique flower varieties as ingredients to increase your profitability?
How do you lower costs and increase margins by choosing the most profitable flower varieties to fill your orders?
In today’s post, I’ll be delving into these questions and looking at some of the best flower varieties for profitability.
Let’s look at the roadblocks that are getting in your way. So that you candiscover how to push past them towards a business that’s based on sound financials.
What are the roadblocks to building profitable flower recipes?
Some designers may feel that using recipes limits their creativity. Why is this? I’ve heard some say it’s because they like to shop on the spot and see what inspires them. I’ve heard others say it just takes the fun out of design days. I must disagree with both of those arguments. Recipe-based floral design doesn’t limit creativity. It just changes the timetable and process of creativity. It also ensures your profitability. So, I think it’s worth the effort. Let me give you an example.
Here’s a common situation: a floral designer creates a rough quote for a client’s event. It’s filled with best-guess estimates for retail prices. It includes a general idea of the flowers that will make up the designs, but the designer lacks the motivation to calculate an accurate price based on a flower recipe. Does this sound familiar to you?
When you create a quick quote or proposal for a client some level of calculation is required. When that calculation is off the top of your head or a guesstimate you are dropping the ball. You leave room for error. You can easily forget to add the cost of hard-goods or your design fee. It’s like going half way to the goal line and dropping the ball.
Without taking that essential step of calculating the costs and retail prices of each design there is no sure way to confirm you’ll be making a profit.
You have established retail formulas and margin goals for your business for a reason. That reason is to ensure your business is profitable. How do you know if you are following your retail formulas and margin goals if you don't calculate them when you create proposals?
This is simply a missed opportunity to take control of the financial portion of your business.
Designers who are not considering the compositions of their arrangements and the flower math that goes along with them at this early stage of the client relationship are missing a crucial step. Don’t miss that step because it is the difference between making top-line revenue and ensuring a profit.
When a client requests a proposal, it is brainstorming time. It can be challenging to sit in front of a computer to create those ideas when we’d rather be in a cooler filled with flowers! This is where the business side of you and the creative side of you need to collaborate to ensure that your floristry is not only artistic but that it’s also profitable.
You need to find a flower recipe solution that works for you and your business.
The process can start with a walk through the flower market in the morning or a virtual stroll through your client’s mood board and inspiration images. Find a process that sparks creativity, ignites your brain and fires your imagination. This is the moment you enter your happy work place, grab the laptop, dream up that ideal list of blooms and foliage, and determine the stem-counts and details of your floral proposal. By doing this you are empowering yourself, confirming your retail prices, and sharing a proposal with your client that is not a guesstimate, but an accurate and confident proposal. You owe this to your customers so that you can assure them their florist will be in business for the long haul.
You also owe it to yourself to make sure you have a plan for profitability and are charging what you are worth!
A design for a special client last week that incorporates both long lasting and full floral ingredients. Thanks to
for the gorgeous zinnas and
for all the other varieties!
If you are challenged to create recipes for your proposals because you feel it limits your creativity, here are 2 ways to allow for creative freedom in your recipe-based floral designs.
The first option is to use a functional recipe instead of an exact recipe.
This means putting in generic floral ingredient names like spike flower, focal flower, basic greenery, specialty greenery, and premium bloom as opposed to actual flower variety names. It allows you to create a template that you can customize further when more details are confirmed by your client.
A functional recipe is not exact with pricing. So, here’s the kicker. You need to estimate all your costs on the high side when using a functional recipe.
Here’s how to go about this with profitability in mind. You know a premium bloom like a garden rose or peony will be a featured flower in the event design, calculate the numbers based on the highest price you might have to pay.
Garden roses may fluctuate around $5 a stem while peonies are $7 each. I’d recommend pricing that bloom at $7 or even $7.25 to ensure you are covered for either option when the time comes to place your flower order. This tactic of estimating prices on the high side of wholesale costs is key to quoting events 8 to 12 months in the future. You know prices can fluctuate so adding additional cost for future events is a smart way to cover your bases. This leaves you room to add a few stems if the cost is lower than your estimate or to make a bit more profit from that order. You then have the power to choose how you handle that order closer to the event date. Always estimate on the high end to ensure profitability and give your business some flexibility at the same time!
The second option is to leave yourself an allotment for spontaneous purchases in your flower recipe.
I’m not going out on a limb here. I feel confident saying most designers know 80% of the flower varieties for an event before they create the proposal for a client. You see their inspiration images and you know their color palette so making the effort to create a recipe isn’t much of a stretch. You guesstimate the quantities in your head for a quick quote. So, why not just go one step further?
It’s a step you need to take to confirm you are making a profit on every event.
Let's say for example that your client loves anemones, ranunculus, and roses. She also trusts your professional talents. Yes, she’s your dream client and you get to use your creativity to add surprise touches to customize her designs. You don’t want to pre-determine the floral ingredients for these surprise touches because you’d like to shop for them at the market a few days before the wedding. You think a recipe doesn’t work here, but it does.
There’s an easy solution to this common problem. You create a recipe with 80% of the budget allocated to her favorite varieties and greenery accents. It’s those special touches that make the designs come alive that you can’t account for in a recipe. You want to save a little room for those floral ingredients in your budget. You can easily do that.
Simply allocate the remaining 20% of the budget to be spent on specialty blooms and foliage that make the designs exceptional.
Then you shop for those at the market or discuss what's available with your wholesaler closer to the date when it's time to place your flower order. By doing this you both ensure your profitability and allow for the freedom to shop for some of the floral ingredients in a spontaneous fashion. This solution is a happy blend of common sense and spontaneous creative freedom, don’t you think?
Let's take the floral arrangement above as an example. I could create a recipe for the orchids, roses, QAL and greenery like in the partially completed design shown here. Then I'd purchase the specialty flowers including the zinnas and ranunculus in the photo shown above to complete the design based on the budget I alloted in my recipe.
It's simple, it's profitable, and it allows for creative freedom.
Now, this is important. The key here is to stay in your proposed budget when the time comes.
That can be a challenge for many designers so have a business advisor, an employee, or someone else you trust keep you inline if you're a habitual over-spender. Overbuying at the market a few days before the wedding will counteract all your hard work here. So, be sure to stay within your budget!
The 2 techniques mentioned above will help you to increase your profitability. How exactly? By arming yourself with accurate pricing before you send proposals and retail prices to your clients.
I’m working on a new project! It will help designers with recipes and the challenges that come along with recipe-based floral design. I’ll discuss that in more detail in a bit, but first, let's talk about how you can use unique varieties as floral ingredients to increase your profitability.
Flower varieties that amplify profitability and why
3 different factors can increase value and transform flowers into profitability workhorses in your studio. Want to know what they are? Let’s jump into why reusability, longevity, and fullness are significant when you choose flower varieties for your orders and events.
Flowers with the reusability factor
Varieties including thistle, statice, scabiosa pods, amaranthus, palms, proteas, strawflower, and craspedia dry and preserve well. There are many floral ingredients that can be dried and stored after events to be reused as accents for dish gardens, potted orchid embellishments, and “everlasting” floral arrangements.
As a gardener, photographer and Kew-trained designer, Christin Geall states in her book Cultivated: The Elements of Floral Style, “Lovely dead crap is back, not least of all for its ability to enliven designs with texture, whimsy, and airiness… Today there’s an environmental impetus to move toward dried product. Dried flowers mean no refrigeration and no water in transit. Preserving the harvest also give small flower farmers the opportunity to make their highly perishable products profitable beyond a flower’s bloom time, thus extending their out-of-season income. Dried product, though delicate, can also be reused.”
This concept extends to bleached foliage like Italian ruscus, eucalyptus, and ferns. Since these go through a less environmentally friendly bleaching process it’s even more imperative to get multiple uses out of them whenever possible. This increases your profit and lessens the environmental impact overall.
Scabiosa pods dry well and can be reused in many ways!
Another reusability example that I need to point out is Southern Smilax.
Everyone’s go-to greenery for large installations due to its attractive leaves and long vines. This gorgeous floral ingredient may not seem like a profitable option because of its large pack size and premium price. However, the longevity of this greenery is what makes it profitable. Smilax offers the reusability factor because it often lasts at least 3 weeks when properly conditioned and stored.
Now hear me out. The flowers you sell to wedding and event clients are theirs to keep. No doubt about that, but how many clients climb the walls to take southern smilax home? None that I’ve ever seen. This hearty greenery can be stuffed into trash bags at the end of the night and put into your cooler to use in daily arrangements or at another event the following weekend. If the product is kept fresh there’s no need to have any remorse about repurposing it. Give it a try with smilax or any other hearty greenery. It’s a simple straightforward way to increase your profits.
Flowers with the longevity factor
Retail floral designers know that the design of an arrangement is only one piece of the customer experience. Longevity is another essential piece of the customer service pie. You must create retail arrangements that hold up well for customers. There’s no way you’ll get repeat or referral business without designs that last at least 5 to 7 days.
A few of my favorite blooms that live long lives as cut flowers are brownie carnations, orchids and other tropical flowers like proteas, freesias, gladiolus, ranunculus, rose lilies, certain rose varieties, and sunflowers.
If you are a retail flower shop owner, don’t be shy about asking your customers what their priorities are for an order. Asking in-depth questions means a lot to your customers. You can ask them if they’d rather have a delicate mix with a shorter vase life or a hearty mix with longer-lasting flowers. Alternatively, if they ask for a flower that you know has a shorter vase life you can suggest another similar flower that holds up longer.
Cymbidium orchids have an exceptional vase life. I have serval blooms from this stem in my home right now. I purchased it 10 days ago!
It always comes back to communication and trust between you and your clients. So, do your best to listen to their needs and then provide the best mix of longevity and design with your choice of floral ingredients.
Also, be sure to provide a care section on your website. For example, Monica Scotland, the owner of Twig and Vine Floral in Whittier, California has a beautiful care section on her website. It’s simple, easy for customers to understand, and politely reminds them that they play a critical role in the longevity of their flowers via watering and placement.
Care instructions must accompany every delivery order that heads out your door! You can include the instructions on the card message where the recipient is sure to see them.
Flowers with the fullness factor
Hydrangeas, dinner-plate dahlias, in-season peonies, amaryllis, and rose lilies are premium blooms that add visual weight to floral designs. Although these flowers are typically on the more expensive side they pack some serious oomph! They are appealing floral ingredients that quickly help fill a vase. So, use these to add impact to your arrangements and make sure they are not crowded by other flowers or greenery. You’ll want your client to see the shape and feel the impact of these anchor flowers in your design. The value of these flowers is all in the placement. This is where practicing your unique design style comes into play.
Even lush and large headed Quicksand roses can impact and anchor a design as shown in the floral arrangement images above.
Spend the time to find your unique style and use these flowers to their maximum potential.
Another type of fullness can be achieved with sheer volume. Bountiful bunches of waxflower, baby’s breath, Queen Ann's lace, white dill, cottage yarrow, and heather are some varieties that come to mind. These beautiful floral ingredients can add volume and airiness to floral designs. They are often sold by the grower’s bunch and can be found at very reasonable prices when they are in-season. The value here is two-fold. These flowers can bring depth by placing them further away from the center of the design. Therefore, making the arrangement seem larger and more interesting to the client. They also can be used to balance the weight of fuller anchor flowers and help build movement within a design.
Queen Ann's Lace can offer depth, airiness, and movement to arrangements with it's volume. See the video below for this floral ingredient in action!
Here is a helpful tip for newbie designers.
One thing that I learned early on in my floral design career is that most customers do not think that green flowers or foliage counts when it comes to retail floral arrangements. They want the bloom factor and that’s why you need those premium blooms I mentioned above. For example, berries on the vine, bells of Ireland, green viburnum, and even green parrot tulips have been confused for inexpensive fillers by past customers of mine. I love viburnum and it’s a very expensive flower, but it is not often perceived that way by the average customer. The average floral customer knows very little about the nuance of these blooms and their prices. So be sure to use floral ingredients like these with caution especially in retail designs. Color and bloom size are what often equal value in retail customers’ minds.
It’s key to find a balance between anchor flowers, filler flowers, accent flowers, and greenery to create your unique design style. One that offers a high perceived value to your customers.
The reusability, longevity and fullness factors boost profitability in your floral designs.
Using flowers with the 3 factors I’ve mentioned above can give a huge lift to your profitability. Take time to think about floral ingredients that offer the reusability, longevity, and fullness factors on your upcoming events and orders. Let me know how it works for you.
In summary, do keep in mind that using a flower recipe does not have to be difficult or unenjoyable. There are ways to be profitable and creative at the same time. For example, you can leave a specific amount in your budget for market flowers that you select from your growers a few days before the wedding as I mentioned above. You will see that flower recipes for events can not only increase profitability but can also simplify the process of production. A recipe offers your team the opportunity to initiate tasks they couldn’t otherwise. Things like prepping flowers for bouquets and utilizing excess flowers for daily orders. Give recipe-based floral design a shot and let me know how it works for you.
Profitable Floral Design LuAnn Dickson
Hello! Here I am in my kitchen working up some recipe-based floral designs!
I also have some very exciting news to share with you...
I am currently developing a web-based application for florists! It's going to help you create flower recipes send floral orders to your wholesalers/growers of choice. There's no connection to one particular wholesaler because floral designers need to choose their own suppliers and support local growers!
It’s not stuffed with proposal design or mood board elements because you know how to handle that already. It’s going to be an easy-to-use flower recipe tool. It's for floral designers who need to increase their profitability. It will be inexpensive because I know you don't want to spend hundreds of dollars a month on floral software!
My new recipe app EveryStem is coming soon. So, if you are interested in a straightforward and helpful flower recipe app to increase profitability in your business, please sign up for my email list below! Thank you.
Until next time,
LuAnn