Frankly Speaking Florally

If your shop is anything like ours, it a very busy time right now, not to mention exciting. Wedding flowers every weekend, graduation, communion and anniversary parties galore! I love the month of May not only because is it good for business, it's usually good for company morale. I have found that when florists are busy, they are happy!! We all work so hard and we love what we do, so why not document our wonderful business by taking some photos. I love taking pictures at the shop, especially when we are having fun. Take photos, post to your website, on flickr , on your Facebook Fan page, show the world what a great place you have. Show them the fantastic work you do. Let them know you are an independent business, family owned and operated. Make copies for your staff so they too. You'd be shocked at the response you'll get. I've had staff send them home to their parents. Why? Because it makes them proud. It's a way of showing their family what they do and they wil

A lot of talk is happening right now in our industry about wire services, order gathers and the general condition of the flower business. I have many opinions on where we were and where we are going but this blog really isn't about that. My main concern right now is being able to handle my customers outgoing flower orders. Truth be told, this past Mother's Day holiday became a nightmare. I know for sure, that there were nice, hard working shops out there that really wanted us to fill their orders and we wanted them to fill ours. The problem? Order gathers and even FTD.com completely choked up our computer systems by sending us orders for product that we did not have, below our stated minimums with unrealistic timelines. Yikes, we had orders coming in quicker than we could see if we could even do them to the point that my FTD mercury machine ended up being suspended for a good part of the holiday (not to mention that my modem broke and FTD was not able to get me a new one until