March 2017 Newsletter

Women’s Day — Flower Duet’s Appearance on American Grown Flowers

A Facebook Live Event

On Mon­day, March 6, Flower Duet will appear on Face­book Live on the Amer­i­can Grown Flow­ers page to cel­e­brate Inter­na­tion­al Wom­en’s Day and its theme #BeBold­For­Change. Kit and Casey will talk about the women in their lives who influ­ence them on a dai­ly basis and how we will cel­e­brate them and all women on March 8th. Join us!

Tips on Starting a Floral Design Business

To sup­port the mis­sion of the 2017 Inter­na­tion­al Wom­en’s Day, we pledge to help empow­er women to forge their own advance­ment. Make 2017 your year to #BeBold­For­Change in your own life.

Many of our stu­dents are explor­ing new career paths which include fresh flow­ers. Dur­ing our work­shops, we offer guid­ance on how to choose the fresh­est prod­uct, arrange the flow­ers and trans­port them so they arrive in good form. After each work­shop, we answer many more in-depth ques­tions such as:

How do I price my work?
Use the stan­dard indus­try pric­ing (see below tip on pric­ing). Pric­ing that is too low will under­cut your com­peti­tors and hurt the over­all local industry.

Do I need a flo­ral cooler?
No. Buy just the flow­ers you need for your projects. Cre­ate them in a space that is cool. Make designs like bou­ton­nieres a few hours before delivery.

How do you bal­ance a full-time job with week­end flower jobs?
Start small. Enlist help from friends and fam­i­ly. Be pre­pared to get up ear­ly before work to go the flower mart on a reg­u­lar basis!

Here is a short list of tips we offer to our stu­dents and to you, our loy­al readers!

Tip 1: Keep Your Day Job

Keep your day job while try­ing out a new career like flo­ral design! Pho­to from #WOCin­Tech.

A tip you’ll often hear from career coach­es is to keep your day job while work­ing on your flo­ral skills. There are many rea­sons for this. A day job will assure you extra income to fund your flo­ral edu­ca­tion. It offers you the abil­i­ty to take risks on week­end flo­ral jobs. It helps you test the waters to deter­mine if this new flo­ral career is right for you. We start­ed our flo­ral busi­ness­es in the kitchens of our apart­ments while we worked full-time cor­po­rate tech indus­try jobs!

Tip 2: Take Lots of Floral Design Classes From a Variety of Instructors

Flower Duet teach­es class­es each month at our stu­dio and gives guest lec­tures at gar­den shows, gar­den clubs and for cor­po­ra­tions and pri­vate companies.

While there is no cer­tifi­cate required to prac­tice the art of flo­ral design, it is a great idea to take a vari­ety of work­shops from a col­lec­tion of sea­soned instruc­tors and work­ing flo­ral design­ers. We’ve been teach­ing flo­ral design for almost 20 years and we’ve tak­en class­es from lots of dif­fer­ent instruc­tors. While class­es on YouTube can offer an intro­duc­tion, there is a lot to be gained by attend­ing class­es in per­son and learn­ing from the instruc­tor and from net­work­ing with oth­er students.

Tip 3: Start Small

When start­ing out, try to tack­le small­er jobs first such as just the bou­quets for a wedding.

Take small jobs as your first jobs. Our first paid wed­ding was for just the bride’s bou­quet and her brides­maids, the bou­ton­nieres, cor­sages and a sign-in arrangement.

Tip 4: Use Standard Pricing

In the stan­dard flo­ral design stu­dent text­book, “The Art of Flo­ral Design” by Norah T. Hunter, she writes in chap­ter 21 how to price flo­rals. This is her guide to pricing:

[box][box_header]Standard Flo­ral Design Pric­ing Model[/box_header][box_content]

• Cost of goods = 30%
• Labor expens­es = 20%
• Prof­it mar­gin = 15%
• Oper­a­tional expens­es = 35%

= Retail Sell­ing Price[/box_content][/box]

Anoth­er way to price would be to use the stan­dard divi­sion­al pric­ing method. Add up the whole­sale prices of every­thing tan­gi­ble that goes into a design (flow­ers, foam, con­tain­er, rib­bon, card) and divide by 30% to fig­ure the retail sell­ing price. For exam­ple, if the whole­sale cost adds up to $18.60, divide $18.60 by .30 to arrive at retail sell­ing price.

$18.60 ÷ .30 = $62.00 (which would be the typ­i­cal sell­ing price with labor at 20% equal­ing $12.40).

But…if you are cre­at­ing a more inten­sive design which requires high­er skilled labor and costs more, you’ll need to price with those costs in mind. If labor were 30% of the cost of the flow­ers and the flow­ers are only 20%, here is how the flo­ral design would be priced.

$18.60 ÷ .20 = $93.00 (retail price for a high­er labor inten­sive design which takes longer or more skill to make)

Be mind­ful of the time it takes to pro­cure flow­ers and to con­di­tion, pre­pare and design them. Include your trans­port and set up time. All of these labor costs need to be reflect­ed in the bot­tom line price of each flo­ral design.

Tip 5: Be Nice, Be On-Time, Be Consistent

Be nice — Be on time — Be consistent!

To be a pro­fes­sion­al in any job is to be nice, on-time and deliv­er a con­sis­tent­ly good prod­uct. Greet every per­son you meet nicely…one of them might be your next poten­tial flower client!

We enjoy refer­rals from all aspects of our lives from the moms of our kids’ base­ball teams to the teach­ers of our chil­dren. Show up when you say you will show up and always have fresh flow­ers that will last beyond the event.

These are just a few tips of hun­dreds more. Sign up for a class and we will help you explore your pos­si­ble next career!

Empowering Young Girl Scouts to Learn a New Skill

By Kit Wertz

Lessons include how to dye a flower, iden­ti­fy its parts and how to make a cor­sage. Recent­ly, I taught a group of Scouts to make a  bou­quet of flow­ers empha­siz­ing each of their meanings.

Casey and I were Girl Scouts and, at times, our par­ents were Troop Lead­ers. In addi­tion to camp­ing, white­wa­ter raft­ing, learn­ing skills and vis­it­ing the elder­ly, we marched in parades, sang songs and sold cook­ies. Casey’s troop was approved to design its own avi­a­tion badge and car­ry out its require­ments to earn it. In high school, I learned to fly a small air­plane with the Explor­er Scouts and even soloed!

Girl Scouts have many excit­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to earn badges and I would have loved to have earned the Flow­ers Badge as a Junior Girl Scout.

In the most recent Girl Scout work­shop that Kit taught to a group of Juniors, she cov­ered the Lan­guage of Flow­ers, How to Dye Flow­ers and What Flo­ral scents help heal people.

Flower Tool: Rolling Cart Tables

Our new rolling carts have two lev­els for build­ing flo­ral designs and mov­ing them from our work­space to the flo­ral van!

When we redesigned our work­space last sum­mer, we upgrad­ed our work table from fold­ing tables on bed lifts to stain­less steel rolling carts with two lev­els! We have about 15 of these fan­tas­tic tables and they allow us to change the for­mat of our stu­dio for each event we are design­ing for and for each class from our inti­mate pri­vate lessons to small groups of 5 or 6 stu­dents to our ful­ly sold out classes!

The old tables did not move or have a sec­ond lev­el for stor­age. We use the sec­ond lev­el for our work stools or for flower buck­ets or for our stu­dents to place their per­son­al belong­ings on dur­ing class.

These are won­der­ful tools to have in any workspace…but we love ours for our flower studio.

Book Recommendation: Floret Farm’s Cut Flower Garden: Grow, Harvest & Arrange Stunning Seasonal Blooms

“Grow the flower gar­den of your dreams.” In this sec­ond book from the sea­soned flo­ral farmer and blog­ger Erin Ben­za­kein, you will learn what you need to grow, har­vest, and arrange sea­son­al blooms.

This book includes:

• Steps for plant­i­ng, cul­ti­vat­ing, and har­vest­ing more than 175 vari­eties of flow­ers includ­ing cot­tage gar­den favorites and new varieties.
• Design­ing your plot and prepar­ing the soil.
• What tools you’ll need to grow and design with flowers.
• Three flo­ral projects for each sea­son with titles like: “Sher­bert But­ter­fly Bou­quet for Mom” and “Dahlias en Masse.”

On sale date: March 7, 2017. Can be pre­ordered on Amazon.com.

Book Tour Dates & Locations