Frankly Speaking Florally

We have two sayings we're fond of at Monday Morning Flower & Balloon Co. "Keep your eye on your competition but don't become obsessed with them" and "compete with yourself".  The first saying is self explanatory but the second warrants further discussion. Competing with yourself can be pretty straight forward and help you develop a strong business model. Basically look at what you've done previously, both good and bad, and try to take corrective action if it's bad or repeat if it was good. This concept can be extended to most area's of your business including one of the toughest and most boring - Budgeting. There are lots of articles and books written about budgeting even some great spreadsheet templates available. Nevertheless, if you use the "compete with yourself" concept it's much easier. Of course you need to know what you should target as a percentage of sales for the main expenses, Payroll, COGS etc. Once you know where

Let's face it, every thing costs money and to make money you have spend some. I recently read an article in Floral Management that really hit home with me. For anyone that may have read it, it's the one about the two guys from Bouquets who just won the Marketer of the Year award again. The part that really struck me was that they talked about the economy and how they had stepped up their advertising and marketing by spending more than they had in the past. We started doing the same thing about almost 2 years ago when the dreaded "R" word reared it's ugly head with a mention by Kevin at our 2008 "Employee Kick Off" meeting. How right he was and so happy am I that we also started spending more on our advertising. With that being said our sales have gone down but I agree with BJ Dyer who basically said he felt that sales would be even further off if he (and I) had not been proactive back then. So, the point of this blog, is more than ever it's import

When we first started our company the administrative and accounting demands were pretty straight forward and easy. Heck, I have a background in accounting and finance and worked for company's large and small - how complicated could it be? Then came the Wire services and their monthly statements, wow was I wrong. Wire service accounting has to be the most bizarre area of floral accounting, everything else is pretty basic. It took a long time for me to get my arms around it, since we have multiple locations and 3 major services we represent it has a significant impact on our financial reporting. If you want to get serious about accounting for wire services, or direct you  accountant to get serious, there are two people in our industry that have this area down cold; Paul Goodman and Kevin Murray. These guys can cross every T and dot every I with the best of them and I've "picked up" some great ideas from both over the years. Search them out and pass their information

The economy is bad. This we know. Flowers are not a necessity. This we know. Flowers are an easy and afordable gift. This we know. Why not play to our strengths and forget about what we can't control? I believe that the concepts below really do play to what our strengths are as florists. We deliver hand crafted, customized gifts fast. Ok, so the flat out skinny is that some of these things will cost you some money and some are free but these are my bare bone, quick fixes that I believe pay back in immediate sales as soon as you impliment them. Here's the first step in my five step process. #1 - Your Website!! This one is a freebee if you already have a website. If you have a website hosted by any of the wire services, go ahead and make those sites as custom as you can but at a bare minimum, you must change your website homepage at least every week if not more often. I believe that the web hosters do a great job but with a tiny, itty bitty bit of work (and I mean the smalle

If you are reading this blog, which happens to be my first, you may already know that together with my wife Georgianne, I own Monday Morning Flower and Balloon Co. Over the years she and I have done a fairly good job at "dividing" up the company responsibilities and staying out of each others way. She's the President and manages the creative side along with the marketing but because of my background in Accounting and Finance I get to handle what is commonly called "back office" functions such as technology and most other non-creative areas. I get to play General Manager. Now, I've been told that because of previous jobs and things I've learned along the way working in manufacturing and finance, our company has some very thorough financial reporting and benchmarking systems for a flower shop our size! This brings me to the question, when is enough enough? A few months ago we were having a discussion on the company's performance and Georgianne pointed