Do you have a job that you love? Well, I do. I've been a floral designer for almost 17 years and
have seen so much change. Cap Hill Flowers has gone from a busy, busy florist (like 40-50 orders a day) to just half (sometimes less) during a slower day. I have some ideas of why. Here's one that really speaks to me and makes me extremely angry. It's called "order gatherers".
As consumers, it's easier to go online and order something that you want to give as a gift or even to get for yourself. I like to shop online...it's convenient. But here's where things start to go wrong. Say you want to order flowers. You go online. You find a website that fits your budget and promises all of these wonderful things. More than likely, you've just been misled by an "order gatherer".
An order gather is a business that typically does not own a flower shop, is not a florist, or is not even very familiar with the flower business. Typically these order gathers are web designers, or people with a marketing degree that spend a lot of money going out and promoting a brand or name. They typically make money in volume, selling hundreds or thousands of orders a week and wire these orders out to local florist.
To an outsider more orders means more business for the local florist. But this is not the case, actually many of the orders actually cost the local florist more money to deliver than they make. (Example: if you buy $30 arrangement from a order gatherer and then $10 for delivery, that's about $40. How much does the florist that actually delivers the flowers get?$21.00) that's right HALF!!! Here is why:
If you spend $30 for the arrangement and then $10 for "Delivery".
The order gather keeps the "delivery" fee (for their time).
The order gather also keeps 20% of the order, in this case about: $6; they made a profit of $16
Wire Service keeps about 10% of the order in this case they made a profit of $3.00
The florist delivering the flowers gets $21 and how much of that is profit?
Flowers cost about $10-$15 Wholesale, the Filler and Greens cost about $3, a $10.00 an hour employee to put the order together cost about $2.50, and the delivery driver cost about $8, so it cost the florist $23.50. So the local florist makes a profit of -$2.50
RECAP: Order Gatherer profit: $16.00
Wire Service Profit - $3.00
Local Florist Profit - -$2.50
Now I know why so many local florist are going out of business!!!
Yeah, so you got what you wanted. But at what cost?! Your local flower shop is one of the last real small businesses. Usually family owned, and if they're not family owned, I can guarantee you that the employees and owners certainly feel like family. From the 80 hr work weeks during Holidays, to the hour droughts during the summer, we are in this together. Buying the freshest product, cleaning the dirty buckets, watering the plants, answering the phones, sweeping up at the end of the day, arranging beautiful bouquets for our clients. We are here for YOU! Please be here for us! Buy LOCAL! Support your local flower shop, support Capitol Hill Flowers! Our lives depend on it.
Hi there! I will be looking forward to visit your page again and for your other posts as well. Thank you for sharing your thoughts about flower delivery. I am glad to stop by your site and know more about flower delivery. Keep it up! This is a good read. You have such an interesting and informative page. You also have a very good choice of flowers and a very good flower arrangements.
ReplyDeleteGenerally, a florist's shop will contain a large array of flowers, sometimes displayed on the street, or will have a large plate glass window to display the flowers. To keep them fresh, the flowers will be inside of a cooler and kept in water, generally in glass or plastic vases or other containers. Most shops have a cooler near the front of the store with large glass doors so that customers can easily view the contents. Some shops also have another cooler out of the customers' view where they keep extra stock and arrangements for customers' orders. Most stores have a back section in which the designers can work on orders with more privacy.
Same-day delivery available.
Flower Delivery Washington DC