How to make money from home with flowers
How To Make Money From Home With Flowers
By Carrie Leland
You may have always thought " wouldn't it be lovely to own a flower shop" Well at one point in time you would have been correct. Once you got past the initial cost of opening up your retail florist you should have been guaranteed success as long as you treated your customers right, sent out wonderful product and basically minded your business.
Over the past decade or so though that has all changed. I'm not 100% sure about your city but I know in mine (which has a population of 450,000 and is very close to several other cities with comparable populations) the number of brick & mortar retail florist has decreased by at least half and the larger companies stopped their rapid expansion some time ago.
It's a new day and age for florist due to many things. No longer do people have to visit their local florist for fresh flowers, they can pick up a beautiful bouquet for the same price I pay wholesale at their local Wal-Mart or grocery store. I do truly marvel at the cost and quality of these flowers. But to understand how the stores can do this is simple. Buying Power/Quantity and of course their suppliers are going to ship great product, they would never want to take a chance with that account!
Another reason of course is the internet. If you do a search for a local florist (which I did recently & was amazed) you may think you are ordering from a florist that is another mom & pop store in the city you want to send flowers to, but the majority of the time the websites you pull up are actually created by "Order Gatherers" This is basically a business that has set up web sites to impersonate local florist. The only business they actually do is gather your order and then forward it on to a "Real Florist" The real florist will only receive the order if they are a member of one of the large wire services, which some are starting to see the light and get out of thankfully.
What does all this mean? The person that answers the phone for your Aunt Betty's Flowers will keep 20% of the money for your order and usually receive a $4.00 rebate from the wire service that they are using. The wire service will keep 7% of your money. What does the florist that fills your order get? They will pay .75 to receive your order over the wire service system, they will pay 35% to fill your order and they will pay anywhere from $300 to $800 a month to be a member of this wire service.
If you do the math it's just horrible. The person that took your $60.00 order will make $16.00 just for answering the phone. The florist that actually does the work will make $21.45 for the order. So they would have to fill at least 15 of these orders just to cover the cost of being a member to the wire service.
So what can you do if the idea of making money with flowers is appealing to you. First, do not follow the majority of the business books on the topic. I have not seen a new book written yet that is relevant to todays marketplace. Second, and this is a term that I see more and more often now "Find A Niche".
In the past a florist wanted to be a "Full Service Florist" but my peers that have left the full service arena have generally gone on to specialize in Weddings and other Niches and are doing quite well without all of the headache and stress that goes with the brick & mortar full service route. In fact one wonderful lady I know that would fill in for me for my funeral work if I had to be away from the shop ( my regular employees could do day to day but not funeral work) left the flower shop she worked at when it changed ownership over 7 years ago and became a wedding florist.
I visited her in November (not a typical busy time of year for weddings) and she was booked each weekend. Initially she had to get over the stigma of working from home. But if you look at todays workforce, working from home is now something more and more people are doing and if they are not it is probably just because they haven't found the right solution to make the money they want to make.
The profits from working from home are also great. I used to spend $8,000 a month before I even made a profit and I didn't even advertise hardly. (That used to be one of the biggest cost for most business but the internet has all but done away with yellow page ads etc.)
Let's look at this example, say you do decide to do everyday flowers from your home with orders you receive from your website, word of mouth etc. The $60 bouquet we used as an example earlier will now put $39 or more in your pocket and you won't have to make 15 free arrangement's just to pay for your wire service. After 15 arrangements you'll have $585 in your pocket instead of $0. Thats a huge difference and face it You Should Get Paid For All Of Your Time & Effort. Don't you agree?
These are just a few insights into the florist business. If you would like to learn more please visit http://www.freshgiftsdelivered.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Carrie_Leland
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