Profitable floral designers stand out from the crowd!
Hey floral design friends, are flower recipes too intimidating or time-consuming for you? Do you know you need to change something to become part of the community of profitable floral designers, but just can’t crack the code?
They used to feel that way for me too, but it doesn’t have to be that way. We as humans tend to overcomplicate and overthink things. Do you find yourself struggling to create flower recipes, client quotes, or flower orders in a reasonable amount of time? Then, this blog post is for you!
I’ve had the pleasure of meeting many floral designers over the years and there is one thing that all profitable floral designers have in common. Can you guess what it is?
I’m going to reveal the secret…
They stay within budget!
Now, I’m not talking about the most popular designers on Instagram, I’m talking about profitable floral designers. The ones who are hitting their profit goals consistently. These designers create beautiful work of course, but they are also dedicated to earning a healthy profit on the events they produce. This is the profit first mindset that every successful small business owner needs to have no matter what industry they find themselves in.
So how can you build this profit first mindset into your business? You can start by simplifying your designs and focus on creating flower recipes and wholesale flower orders that consistently hit your profit goals.
Later, I’ll also share a tool that profitable floral designers use to make creating flower recipes and wholesale flower orders even simpler.
It’s so obvious that it seems foolish to say, but keeping things simple is often the most overlooked path to success. Let’s dig into that a bit more today!
Keeping recipes simple is one of the main ways to simplify your business workload. I know many profitable floral designers who share this mindset.
Keeping your flower recipes and wholesale flower orders simple has three major benefits.
Less confusion: Keeping recipes simple leads to less confusion when processing and designing flowers for your clients.
Whether you are working solo or with a large team, processing flowers can get complicated, but only if you let it.
My best tip for processing as a team is to assign one team member to each variety of flower. This enables the team to accurately count in the flowers and avoid confusion.
My best tip for processing flowers alone is to tackle one variety of flower at a time, count all the bunches first, then un-package and process with care. Many designers I know do not count their flowers as they process them. It takes a little more time, but it is important to know what you receive is equal to what you ordered.
When you take the time to prepare by creating flower recipes and counting in your flowers, you are setting yourself up for a profitable event. It’s worth the effort! Can you name a company who doesn’t count in their products when they get a new shipment? Flowers are our inventory and it’s essential to count them.
Better prices: Buying flowers in quantities of more than 5 or 10 bunches is typically accompanied by a small discount.
This might not seem like a significant amount of money. However, I know firsthand that little savings on each flower order can add up over several months during a busy season.
My most helpful tip here is to calculate your flower recipes based on the wholesale prices before the multiple bunch discount. That way, the advantage of the discount is additional profit for you. These savings increase your profits because you are the one making smart purchasing decisions.
Think of it this way, if a company that manufactures and sells coffee pots figured out how to lower their wholesale cost on that item they would not automatically lower the retail price of the coffee pot. They would keep the price the same and make more profit. It’s a great example of a profit first mindset and it’s making me long for a cup of coffee!
When you buy in bulk or get a better price for your flowers, you are working smart to fulfill your clients’ requests and do a beautiful job. If you lower your wholesale costs you don’t automatically need to lower the retail price. You can choose to make a little more profit on that sale. That's the true mark of a profitable floral designer.
Using this concept, you can feel good about making money and making your clients happy at the same time. This strategy can also help to offset times when flower prices fluctuate higher than you planned.
Time savings: It’s easier to create a simple flower recipe with 3 to 5 ingredients than one with 10 to 12 ingredients.
Time spent thinking through complicated recipes is time you could be spending on a lot of other things. So, please remember that your time is your most valuable non-renewable resource and you need to use it wisely!
I’ve spoken with several designers who run large wedding studios with over 10 years of experience and they’ve all told me that over the years their recipes have gotten simpler.
That’s right. They are using fewer flower varieties overall and their clients are just as happy as they were when the flower recipes were super complicated.
I’ve noticed that by using the design concepts of proportion and size progression these designers create beautiful artistic designs with very few ingredients.
Let’s look at a few examples.
This gorgeous ceremony aisle by Maxit Flower Design was a bounty of white delphinium.
This arbor designed by Ashley Fox was created using 4 varieties of floral as a nod to their anniversary: lunaria, beech leaves, dried dill florets and miscanthus feather grass.
Now that we’ve gotten some of the concepts of why simpler flower recipes are beneficial and you’ve seen some examples of how impactful and profitable this strategy can be, I want to share 5 of my recipes with you!
Here’s what you’ve been waiting for. I’m sharing five simple recipes with only five flower ingredients in each, that you can use to build profitable floral designs.
Large bouquet:
5 base flowers, sedum
5 line flowers, foxglove
5 focal flowers, dahlias
7 dancer flowers, zinnias
2 stems of structured greenery, honeysuckle
Just 5 ingredients can create a beautiful and textural bouquet. It's possible! I know it is.
Small bouquet:
3 base flowers, sedum
3 line flowers, foxglove
2 focal flowers, dahlias
5 dancer flowers, zinnias
2 stems of structured greenery, honeysuckle
Bud Vase:
1 base flower, sedum
1 focal flower, dahlia
3 dancer flowers, zinnias
Centerpiece:
9 base flowers, sedum
7 line flowers, foxglove
7 focal flowers, dahlias
7 dancer flowers, zinnias
3 stems of structured greenery, honeysuckle
Profitable Floral Designers use fewer flower varieties. EveryStem is the best software for florists to build receipes and ensure their profit margins.
This low and lush centerpiece would work well in a 5 to 6" wide cylinder or footed bowl.
Recipe listed above.
Tall Narrow Bottle:
1 base flowers, sedum
2 line flowers, foxglove
3 dancer flowers, zinnias
1 stem of structured greenery, honeysuckle
You can adapt these simple flower recipes to any season by swapping out the varieties. Consider the types of flowers you want to use and then pick based on the season and your chosen color palette.
Here are some examples of flowers you can swap out in these recipes.
Base Flower: Sedum was my choice for these recipes. However, I could use small hydrangeas, double carnations, or rice flowers.
Line Flower: My choice for these designs was foxglove. There are so many beautiful line flowers- too many to list here. Some of my favorites are snapdragons, delphinium, larkspur, bells of Ireland, and stock.
Focal Flower: I picked some gorgeous dahlias as my focal flower here. Focal flowers can vary in size quite a bit so this plays a factor in the variety chosen, but I love a big lush open peony as much as the next gal. I’m also a fan of garden roses, this time of year locally grown marigolds could be an excellent choice as well.
Dancer Flower: The dancers make the arrangement come to life! So, if you are going up to 6 ingredients, may I suggest picking 2 different dancers for your designs. The size variations of zinnias fascinate me and that is why I picked them for my recipes. I may have chosen something like cosmos, sweet peas, ranunculus, or scabiosa depending on the season and what I could purchase from my local growers.
I hope these examples of simple 5 ingredient flower recipes will spark something in you to simplify your own flower recipes and help to save you time whether you hand-write them all or use a florist spreadsheet on your computer. If you need a straighforward florist pricing formula, check out this post about pricing for profit.
Speaking of fussing with your florist spreadsheet or trying to keep track of all those hand-written flower orders, remember that tool I mentioned earlier that makes pricing your flower recipes and wholesale ordering even easier?
I want to share it with you now because I want you to become a profitable floral designer too!
It’s called EveryStem and it’s the only florist software that’s been created to solve one specific problem: the challenging work of pricing and ordering your flowers for profit.
If you are the type of floral designer who likes to handwrite recipes, but would love to save time and get rid of all that paper, EveryStem is ideal for you.
If you are struggling with a florist spreadsheet filled with uncertain or unreliable formulas, this software is absolutely for you.
Pricing your floral designs, creating flower recipes, and building wholesale flower orders are so much simpler when you use EveryStem. If you are looking for an affordable software to make this specific part of your workflow easier, you’ve come to the right place. Click here to learn more about EveryStem today!
It takes less than 1 week to learn this profit powering software and many designers learn it in one day! It doesn’t need to be as epic as you think. It’s possible. I know it is.
With EveryStem you’ll see your profits on every event. So, you can power your profitability and stay on budget with every flower order you create.
Working smarter, not harder is what separates the profitable floral designers I know from the rest of the crowd.
I hope you enjoyed me spilling a few secrets of profitable floral designers today. Try out the recipes above to simplify your flower ordering. And if you want to fast track your path to profitability, join us over at EveryStem today.
LuAnn
P.S. - In case you haven’t worked with them much yet, Zinnias don’t love being very cold so keep them out of the cooler. Also, a big thanks to Clara Joyce Flowers for the beautiful American Grown blooms I purchased to create these designs.