Holiday Economics: Making Money When it Counts, Part 2

Floral Finance®

Having good information is just one part of planning a profitable holiday. You must also apply that information to your operation. You do that by managing aggressively in several key areas.

Organizing the Workload

There is no reason why foam must be cut and placed in containers at the design table. As soon as your new containers arrive, put them in a place where anyone with a few spare minutes can get to them.

Use slack times to cut the foam, place it in the containers and secure it. Then, put the prepared containers back in their shipping cartons for storage. This little trick will save a lot of time (and workspace) when the crunch hits.

The same thing goes for bows. Get hundreds of bows ready and pinned on Styrofoam® boards. You can even do this in the summer.

Some florists hire retired workers to make bows for them. This helps the senior citizens keep busy and feel productive. And, if done ahead of holiday time, it will save a lot of headaches when things get hectic.

Anything that can be done early should be done early. It makes for greater productivity during slow times, as well as an easier pace during the holidays.

Design Productivity

Not all the design work must be done at once.

Greening containers takes time. But it can be done several days ahead of time. Especially for "look-alike" holiday specials.

Use production techniques as much as possible. Reduce common arrangements to recipes. Produce as many as you are confident you can sell in the next day or two.

Never make just one of anything. Extras can be placed in the cooler and sold to walk-in customers or used to fill orders coming in over the phone, from your website or wire-ins.

Don't Stuff

If you want to make a profit, controlling your Cost of Goods Sold is as critical as controlling payroll.

Your pricing formula has to be followed on each and every arrangement that goes out the door. Use a design room control form. Write down every item you use in every design.

You can speed up the process by having standard recipe arrangements. Once the recipe is set, every arrangement is the same as the first. This way, you can skip the design room control form.

Of course, if the basic recipe is out of whack, every one you produce will be too. So double-check your pricing on recipe arrangements.

Using a design room pricing wall chart, as found in The Profit Minded Florist book set, can also save considerable time in the design room.