Trending Subjects: Let's Talk Prom and Delivery

Episode 116: Vonda and Lori make it a goal to have their pulse on the floral industry. With their  ears to the ground and eyes scrolling through social channels (mostly Lori!), they have found two subjects that have a been getting a lot of chatter. Prom prices and delivery charges.
They share some insight and ideas from Flower Clique members.

Pioneer Imports and Wholesale Trend Report
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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Another shop. She's like, honestly, do any of you guys ever just want to say, no, I'm not doing that to the customer.

SPEAKER_00 0:19

Welcome to the business and pleasure of flowers. We're your hosts, Vonda LaFever, and Lori Wilson.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

And we believe that business and fun are a perfect combination. Kind of like us, Vonda.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Oh my gosh, Lori, it was so good to be able to be face to face with you last week. I know.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

So we did our podcast face to face, and I gotta say, it was weird. It was a little weird. It was slightly, I mean, and I've been around you for 10 years or more. But the minute you clicked record and we were like staring into each other's eyes face to face, I was like, this is awkward. And you wouldn't think it would be, but it was just no, it wasn't because I was like, this is really weird. But um, I liked it, it was fun, it was really fun. We it was a it was a whirlwind. We were doing a photo shoot, we were doing other projects that we're working on that we will talk about at a later date. And you did a lot of social media or Audrey, who posts on our members' Facebook pages, um, like the bundles and like you, not your face, but you creating the other thing. I was thinking, I would think I was telling my husband, you know, when I'm with you and Ellie, especially if I'm learning something, it's it's incredibly different than usually Ellie if she's trying to teach me a new technology or something, right? She'll she's really good about making quick videos, and then you kind of just keep practicing those videos, and then I reach out to her. Hey, when you get a minute, I have a question, and then you sit there and go, Oh, I hate, I know I have too many questions. Anyway, it's so different learning face-to-face. Right. And I mean, it was so great. I feel like number one, I learned faster and I learned more because uh she was saying, She's like, you know, when I do the videos, as I'm watching you do stuff like over your shoulder, other things are going through my head, going, Oh, I forgot to tell her about the border shape or little things that she goes, I I forget to do in videos. So every once in a while, I think it's really good to take that class face to face if you can.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

Absolutely. Which brings me to face to face in just a couple of weeks. We're going to Albany to the profit blast up there, and we will be face to face.

SPEAKER_01 2:54

We will be face to face. And what's fun is some of our members are gonna be able to, it's drivable for them. Um, so they're gonna be there, and you're gonna be able to see Tim Farrell. I'm so excited and watch him, and he's so entertaining and funny and delightful. So I'm excited. That again is gonna be quick. Like we fly in on a Monday and we fly out Wednesday morning, 6 a.m. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_00 3:21

So uh, but yeah, and get to see and connect with our friends at the Bill Doran Company up there in Albany, so that'll be good too.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

Yeah, it will. And and this, you know, it's funny, we were doing these things, and these were things in our mind we were gonna start doing at the beginning of 2020 before COVID started. Exactly. And we just took a few detours, we detoured through a pandemic and are starting over, so it's finally happening, and so it's fun, it's it's it's very exciting. So we got stuff to talk about today that uh I would assume that there's a lot of chatter.

SPEAKER_00 4:02

First of all, first there is a lot of chatter on the social media, right?

SPEAKER_01 4:06

We have our members-only Facebook page, and it's always full of chatter, sometimes funny, sometimes you know, whatever. But there's been a lot of really good questions, and when I gauge what I believe is a good question, I usually gauge by how many comments.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

That's right. Right.

SPEAKER_01 4:27

So these couple of things have over 30 comments each, and they just keep going and going, and they're still, and they were so we were thinking maybe this is what's trending kind of in our industry right now.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

And that's what we had talked about the beginning of 2022, is every month we were gonna have a little bit of something about what's pending, and it's like, oh my gosh, we have like let that go by, and here it is March. Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 4:54

Well, we have, and we because we have had a lot of guests and we've had little detours, we've had other topics, but uh this this is as good a time as any. We've finished up Valentine's Day, we're ramping up for Mother's Day, there's a war going on, gas prices are like all of the things that all of these, what I like to say, these are all elephants in the room, and we got to deal with them. We don't need to think of the whys. Why are these things happening? We got to figure out what is the solution, how am I gonna stay in business? What can I do to stay in business? And so the one thing we're gonna talk about are delivery, right? Delivery prices, um, which also spurred a whole conversation about, you know, like a like a service fee, like a lot of restaurants do. So we're gonna get in that. And then there was another topic that you wanted to really talk about.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

Exactly. And that's prom because that's really right here and now. And we had Sarah Bostich from Pioneer Imports and Wholesale reach out and say, hey, I've got a prom report. Do you mind if we share it? So we're like, no, please put it on our podcast group and let people be able to read that and you know, to make some decisions based on all the research you've already done. So that was great. And we can drop that in the show notes if somebody has not seen that at this point. Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

So let's start with the prom. So this week or this past week, we had actually two separate threads in our in our Facebook group about prom. And I think one person posted, but the other person didn't see that it was already posted. They posted a different question prom related, all about croissages, all about the stuff and glue, you know, all of the things. And so I'm trying to kind of coordinate both of them, but prom prices, you know, what are you going to do this year? Prom prices, uh, crousages, boutine ears, all of that kind of thing. The other part that you have pointed out, which is one of the reasons you always hated prom, is it's it so many of them follow Mother's Day.

SPEAKER_00 7:04

One of the threads was about Mother's Day, prom. And then I had several calls with our members, and they're like, I'm trying to get ready. Prom is on Mother's Day, and or they're like, that hasn't happened in 15 years. Now I have to call the school and try to get them so they don't do it again next year. So being proactive, yeah, telling them why, you know, and and it doesn't help to go to the school and say, it's not good for my business. No, you have to use the angle of don't you understand? Mothers can't enjoy Mother's Day if their children are out all the night before for problems. So, you know, if you're running into that situation, just choose your words wisely because they don't care about you, but they do care about the all the students at the school.

SPEAKER_01 7:50

Yeah. My suggestion is get the PTO or PTA on your side and have them go to battle for you. They are what's gonna get stuff done because the majority of them are moms, and they're like, hey, wait, I don't want my child to fall asleep during Mother's Day brunch, you know. So we let's move it.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

So I want my child out of bed Mother's Day morning. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

It's hard enough getting my child out of bed Mother's Day morning. So um, but the the other part of that was is is like prompt prices, and what yeah is interesting to me is I don't think I realized the amount of shops that get annoyed with crusages, like it's labor-intensive, right?

SPEAKER_00 8:36

Very labor intensive, and especially with a glue shortage, makes it even more challenging, right? And stressful, right?

SPEAKER_01 8:45

So they were asking, what are you charging? Are you upping your charges? You know, and some people, you know, they were giving their exact price, but they were saying for just very, very basic. And this is a person in the Midwest, minimum for them, minimum wristlet would be $30.

SPEAKER_00 9:06

Which makes sense because we usually recommend that you have a 45% labor charge on that because it is so labor intensive, and so your spray roses are probably going up in price. So, because we know the flower prices, the wristlets take into account what type you're getting, and then that's gonna play into the price. But you know, the years of a $10 wrist croissage is are gone by, you know, that's not gonna happen. And let me say it shouldn't be happening, it just takes too much time and too much money to put into those for you to be able to sell them at such a low price, right?

SPEAKER_01 9:43

Especially for those of you that are um fighting Mother's Day the same weekend. You're gonna make more money focusing on Mother's Day than you will croissages, I would think.

SPEAKER_00 9:55

What you have to think is how many designs the designer can put out in a vases of flowers versus how many wrist croissages they can do. And let me tell you, they can knock out a heck of a lot more vases than they can wrist croissages in an hour's time. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:12

Well, that brings up somebody posted, like, how many do you think you're gonna do and how much? And again, other people in other places, somebody's like, I would not sell a wristlet under $60. Wow, wow, and ties start at $75, $100, $125, boots start at $24.95, nothing less.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

Well, they're smart. I mean, they really are because they know how much time it takes to do that. Um, my suggestion if you have something going on Mother's Day weekend, to get them almost completely done in permanent botanical. There's some beautiful silk. That's what I was gonna ask you.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

What are your thoughts?

SPEAKER_00 10:52

And you can get them, you know, pretty much 90% done, and then just take one fresh blossom or three fresh blossoms and put in there and have the combination of the permanent and the silk, because the labor that it's gonna take like that week is gonna be so minimal, and you should be able to do both because start the prom croissages now. You know, they're gonna come in and they're gonna need certain colored ribbons. You probably should limit the number of choices that you have, right? Here's our five basic, we can upgrade them with, you know, like you had talked about earlier, a croissage bar, maybe some additional that you can put in here. Here's some special ribbon that will match your dress, but get them almost completely completed and then just plop in a few fresh flowers, right?

SPEAKER_01 11:40

And I think you know, a lot of people, again, I think pre-COVID, I haven't really talked much prom during the last couple years. Great, we haven't had to back in the day. So many shops would go to great lengths to set up their prom corsage bar, right? Prom bar. Come in, you have this and this. My suggestion would be, and it's based on all of the conversations I've had with shops. They need to feel there is choice that you control what's there.

SPEAKER_00 12:13

Absolutely, Lori. Good point.

SPEAKER_01 12:15

Control what's there to a point. You don't want to have overload, you don't want it to be like you know, a container of glitter. There's so many different pieces, they just don't even know what to do. Have stations one through five or one through four done. Right. You know, and and so they feel like they have choice, but really you've controlled what those options are.

SPEAKER_00 12:41

And if you look at the trend reports and then you look in your area to see what colors are trending in your area, you're gonna be able to have the right choices for those limitations that you're giving them.

SPEAKER_01 12:55

Yeah, another thing I thought was interesting, and a lot of people spoke into this and said the majority of people that order prom corsages and such, they don't do it online. So now they walk in.

SPEAKER_00 13:10

And sometimes, well, why? Unfortunately, a majority of the times it's the moms.

SPEAKER_01 13:15

No, I agree, I agree. I I knew where you were going. You have a boy, you I knew where you were going with that. You have a young man who was like, Mama, can you take care of this for me? Yep, yep, exactly. I did. So I think it's important to have prom inspo on your website to show your work, to show how pretty you can have be. But bottom line, very, very rarely is someone gonna click, click, click, order.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

But you do need to have it on your website because if it doesn't say prom on your website or boot nears the versages, they will not even know that you do them in your store. So be sure you have something there for them to look at, like you said, for inspo, but again, so that it's searchable when is everybody's on their little phones and they're like prom, Dixon, Illinois, and you want to make sure that you're searching to come up in that area.

SPEAKER_01 14:05

So I just have to read you a couple of what I think are hysterical comments um from our members when people asking them like a story about a customer coming in, or especially a mom. So one of them, I won't say his name, he's funny. He says, A woman barked at me today because she wanted a croissage and a bouton ear. So I told her one is 35, the other 20. As she walked out of the door, she was mumbling, fine, I will go somewhere else. I just told her, May the odds be forever in your favor because he has a point, no one else, and the shops that are gonna do it super, super cheap. Well, the quality is gonna be super cheap, and he's not willing to take that much time to make something for 15 bucks. Now smart you can make those. That's a great, that's a great comment. That is a great another shop. She's like, honestly, do any of you guys ever just want to say, no, I'm not doing that to the customer? I feel like I turn the other cheek when it comes to rising costs, but the labor intensiveness is really there. And I know people love our work and count on, but every freaking year you have those certain moms that just make it unbearable.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

Yeah. The other thing we have to keep in mind is that these young women who you're making their crusades gorgeous could be your future bride. Now, if you're not worried about that, right? If you don't want their wedding work, then that's okay. But you do want to show them that it's good customer service and try to educate them if they come in like the last minute. I'm really sorry that I'm not able to do that because you know, and give them a good reason. Yeah, and I still think have permanent botanical ones completely finished. I like that idea.

SPEAKER_01 16:01

Yeah, yeah, I like that idea. Um, somebody else said, like, we can they just flat out stopped making corsages unless it's for weddings. And she said, What happened was, and I know there's a lot of people listening that can deal with this. A mom and a daughter come in, they want a full-on 45-minute consult. They do, and you promise. You can't do that. You just you it's you know, it takes longer to make than a $200 arrangement. She said they started doing like there's a pre-order, there's a very small booking window for if people want croissages from her shop. And once it's done, it's done.

SPEAKER_00 16:40

So anyway, I'm sure everybody can feel the pain here. I like this one. Someone said, I don't take orders unless I can make my markup and go home and rest. Let the competitor do them and take the loss.

SPEAKER_01 16:54

Exactly. May the odds be forever in your favor. I love it, I think it is respectful, it is good luck, and let me know how it works out for you. So it's great. It's great. Okay, segue to trending number two. Yeah, big comments.

SPEAKER_00 17:15

Delivery charges, delivery service, all of the above, which which is a tough one, you know, with gas prices being twice as much as they were a year ago, actually. Especially the last month. Yeah, exactly. It's really makes operating your delivery service very expensive. So you really need to take a look at that and say, okay, well, it's always been $9.95 or $14.95 and and just realize you can't do it at that anymore. A couple weeks ago we talked about profitability, right, Lori? Right, yeah. And so when we look at delivery charges, half of what you're getting in on a delivery charge should be able to cover your driver's salary or what you're paying them. Okay. So if they're doing just deliveries, half of your 10. So $5 of that should be able to go to their salary. The other is supposed to cover your fuel and your uh vehicle and maintenance. So now we're looking at that going, wow, that's not going to cover 50% of it. So now you're gonna have to make that increase based on it's costing you that much more.

SPEAKER_01 18:30

Right, right. And here's what I would like people that are fearful of making this change. I'd I'd like them to think about, and it's hard, it's hard. It truly is. I mean, we as a company, flower click, we've had these conversations. We don't want to move our prices like you know, you're constantly what can we do to keep things the way they are, but not go out of business? Everything else around you, restaurants, dry cleaning, grocery stores. We talked about gas, post UPS, everything is having to raise their prices. Some probably more than they should because they can, but others for the most part, like especially the local restaurants around here that where I am, they raise stuff maybe a dollar here, but you know, everyone has to do it, so I don't think people are gonna get mad at you. Like they're like, I don't want to price, you know, I don't want my customers to get mad, and the ones that do, they're gonna get mad at something.

SPEAKER_00 19:39

Well, and I think you give them the option. Our delivery charge is now $17.95. Right. Oh you can pick it up. Yeah, you come over and pick it up. Well, I mean, it's fine. We'd love to get it ready and have you pick it up. It's very expensive to run our delivery service, sure, but we want to be able to accommodate you.

SPEAKER_01 19:55

Yeah. So we had a shop that said, you know, who is readdressing their delivery prices? We've done our calculations and we absolutely have to, which is smart. You need to run your numbers, and you know, you can't lose money on this. Somebody said, I changed all of ours yesterday uh because their gas bill was $200 higher last month than the month before. I mean, you even if you change it to a dollar more and you have 200 deliveries in a month, you're it's at least gonna help.

SPEAKER_00 20:30

Yeah, it absolutely yeah, we're not saying drop double your delivery charge, we're just saying increase it based on what you're paying as the increase.

SPEAKER_01 20:40

The other thing I think that you absolutely should do is have your own map, like here, a certain amount for this far out, a certain amount for this part out, and a certain, you know, as I go, a lot of shops kind of haven't done that, and they've been around a long time because they've always just absorbed it. You can't afford to absorb that anymore.

SPEAKER_00 21:04

No, you certainly can't. You you can't absorb it, and nobody else is in their business, is either. I think the the hardest part for for flower shops in delivery is that Amazon is doing it for nothing, right? You're an Amazon Prime, and so you're not having to pay a delivery charge, but we have to think about that too. They're not delivering in most places the same day on a time frame that we're you pay extra if you want it the same day.

SPEAKER_01 21:35

Here's the other little fun fact about Amazon annual membership went up.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

It did this year.

SPEAKER_01 21:42

So it's yes, it's technically free shipping, but because you pay a monthly membership fee, so it's probably kind of even that well, depending not for me, because we order from I'm just saying the mindset of people is all, you know. But even Amazon raised their membership fee.

SPEAKER_00 22:03

True.

SPEAKER_01 22:03

Yeah. Is my point. So if Amazon needs to raise theirs, well, heck, all of you small business owners working your rear ends off. Absolutely, absolutely should. One of our members, I do think she is in in the west somewhere. She says, I charge $15 for local, $20 to $30 for the further out. I also charge a $7.50 processing fee on my website and $5 processing fee if they call or come in to place their order, which wow. And there's a lot of people saying, wow. So if I want a hundred dollar bouquet delivered, you're going to charge me $15 delivery plus five for the service of taking my order. And she said, Yes, if you are the general public, Florida Florist, no. And she's she runs a great business, but it's interesting. She said, I offset the credit card processing fees with it, which is a whole other conversation.

SPEAKER_00 23:03

That's a whole nother conversation.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

Those things again, those can suck you dry. She said, I have never had anyone even question it. A lot of the there is a lot of business out there, and they all charge fees if you use a credit card. All of the vendors we use charge the fee. So the only concern I have, we have some shops go, okay, so we've temporarily raised our delivery only a dollar each in every zip code, which is another thing. Don't just raise it for one, raise across the board. Don't do it temporarily. No one's going to expect that to go back to take up, remove a dollar. A dollar. It's not for me as a customer, instead of $9.95, $10.95, that's a dollar. It's still worth it for me to have you deliver it so I don't have to. So don't worry that it has to be, you know, in your customer service when I'm going to well, we have had to increase our delivery for a dollar. Don't make a big deal out of it. Don't even talk about it. Just say with delivery, that total comes to blah blah.

SPEAKER_00 24:06

Exactly. You know, and you know, I'm not going to say a dollar. You probably are going to need to do two dollars depending on your town, right? So a couple dollars. And if we see that gas continues to rise, so my suggestion, and I think that's what our members are saying too, is make it a couple dollar leap in that. So go up. Somebody said they went up three dollars across the board, every one of their zones. So somewhere in there, find the right number for you. Now, if gas goes from $4 to $6, instead of raise it again, then you do a fuel surcharge because it probably you could do a $12.95 delivery charge and you know a $3 surcharge. It's covering more. And then you're not having to change everything all the time. You just have this extra three bucks you're throwing on there until gas prices come back down, which we hope and pray they do. We do, right?

SPEAKER_01 25:00

And this there are quite a few people that now that you're talking about that have said they have added a temporary fuel surcharge as a percentage. Then other people said they added it as just a price, like a two dollar or three dollar. But the question is, how do you do that in your POS system?

SPEAKER_00 25:19

That's a good question. And I think it depends on the point of sale system. You can put on an extra fee, so maybe it's just you would just manually put in extra fee and put fuel, you know.

SPEAKER_01 25:29

You would have to do it. It's interesting. I I gotta say, I'm really proud of our members. So many of them have done this, and it's not easy to do.

SPEAKER_00 25:39

It isn't. That's the thing, is that members are doing it and they're encouraging others, saying, Hey, I haven't heard one person complain.

SPEAKER_01 25:47

Yes, that's what's so beautiful about our little AO community. They're they're going, No, you can do this, you can't afford not to. They're saying things in there that I'm like, Vonda used to have to be the person to say it, and now they're it's like, oh, they're doing Mama Vonda, and now they're both I love it, I love it.

SPEAKER_00 26:05

They just so encourage one another, it's just such a wonderful group.

SPEAKER_01 26:09

They are, they are they're they're why we do what we do, but anyway. So, our point to you guys, the listeners, if this is you know, so much chatter in our little group over here. Certainly, one of these issues is something you've been dealing with, whether it's prom or delivery. Um, and we hope you got got some good information and maybe you can make some choices based on what we just talked about, right?

SPEAKER_00 26:36

Yeah, absolutely. We know they're on the top of your mind because they're on the top of all of our members' minds, right? So it's something that maybe you haven't talked about it or discussed it, but hopefully this will help you make a decision to move forward to do something.

SPEAKER_01 26:50

Yeah. And we need you and I need to commit to doing the trends more, maybe like every other month or something, because this was fun. We didn't even need notes for this one. No, we didn't. We just, you know, we just read what we saw and we're like, oh, this is what everybody's talking about. So anyway. All right, we'll see you next week. Okay, see you next week, Lori. Thank you so much for listening to our podcast. We hope you enjoyed spending time with us because we enjoy spending time with you. If you did, make sure you hit that subscribe button or add the Business and Pleasure of Flowers to your Google morning routine or your flash briefing on Alexa.

SPEAKER_00 27:32

We look forward to seeing you next week. So please come back and join us and discover how a bit of knowledge and one small change in your mindset can take you to new levels in your life and business.