During February's Mornings with Mayesh show, we discussed some of the moment's hottest flowers, how you can stay on top of new varieties, Tweedia care & handling, how to open peonies, best practices for preparing for a major holiday (like Valentine's Day), how much to budget for advertising, what's new with Instagram, and more along with chatting with our special guest, Eddie Zaratsian, of Eddie Zaratsian Lifestyle and Design! Keep on scrolling for the show notes.
Here is the podcast replay:
SHOW NOTES
FLOWER UPDATE
WHAT’S GOING ON IN THE WORLD OF FLOWERS?:
Today our featured flowers are beautiful blooms imported from Japan and Italy!
Japanese flowers are gorgeous, on trend and in all of our Mayesh locations from December through May each year!
From giant sweet peas to unique ranunculus varieties to super tall gloriosa. No one does wow factor like our friends in Osaka Japan. The Naniwa flower Auction has quickly become a powerhouse of unique flowers with an incredible range of variety, And talk about vase life… We vase tested some of the giant sweet peas & gloriosas and they lasted well over a week and a half, that’s downright amazing for such fragile flowers.
Check out some of these photos of Japanese grown flowers:
NOEL RED COSMOS
BENISHIKIBU SWEET PEAS
NAME UNKNOWN
ORANGE HEART GLORIOSA LILY
And from our friends in Italy, check out these Giant Icelandic poppies and Giant tiger striped anemones available right now:
Pricing on our exclusive Luxe blooms can fluctuate so make sure to ask your Mayesh rep when ordering!
GENERAL FLOWER QUESTIONS
- From Morgan: What is the best way to stay on top of new varieties coming to market and current flower lists available by month?
- Morgan, your timing is impeccable, because we just recently launched our Seasonal Product Availability guide! This document contains 12 months worth of availability lists in one single document. Visit the link http://info.mayesh.com/flower-guide-offer to download the guide today. It’s great to use for your consultations, planning, and a great reference for onboarding new employees. But remember, that this is to be used as a guide only as we deal with Mother Nature and availabilities forever changing.
- As for keeping up with new varieties, just having a great relationship with your Mayesh rep would be my advice. And have a conversation with them to let them know that knowing about the newer products is very important to you. Also, follow along on our blog and Instagram because we try to help keep everyone updated.
FLOWER CARE
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- From Jayme: My question is about Tweedia care. It has milky sap. Should it be processed separately? Will it affect the water in arrangements and shorten the life of other flowers? Is it toxic? What about other milky sapped flowers and vines. I use Tweedia a lot so I want to use it properly. Thanks!
- Tweedia aka Oxypetalum Caeruleum is a relative of the milkweed or asclepideacea family. It is a beautiful flower but the milky sap is mildly toxic to humans and animals if ingested. It has also been noted to cause skin irritation or dermatitis for some people. As with any flowers that secrete sap, they should be processed and stored separately from other flowers until utilized in your design work. The sap can clog stems of other sensitive flowers and shorten their vase life.
- There are mixed results with this but you can also cauterize the stems with a flame much like you do with poinsettias. This helps seal them so they don’t continue to leak there sap. Also cutting them and the rinsing them in very hot water works as well. Just keep in mind they don’t hold up out of water for as long as other flowers do.
- From Jayme: My question is about Tweedia care. It has milky sap. Should it be processed separately? Will it affect the water in arrangements and shorten the life of other flowers? Is it toxic? What about other milky sapped flowers and vines. I use Tweedia a lot so I want to use it properly. Thanks!
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- From Roxanne: What are your tips for opening peonies with tight buds and anemones?
- Peonies: The key here is to receive them well in advance of your event. A single bunch of peonies can have buds in different stages of development so they are going to need time and patience to stage for your event. Start out by hydrating them at room temperature. Remove all foliage under the water line and use a floral food intended for bulb flowers. As your buds begin to open move them into the cooler to slow development.
- My advice is to only purchase peonies in season as well. Any other time of the year they are just too underdeveloped.
- Anemones are nyctinastic or sensitive to light and will open better under bright lights. You can follow the same hydrating directions as peonies moving open blooms to your cooler to keep in stacis. They tend to open quite quickly at room temperature.
- From Roxanne: What are your tips for opening peonies with tight buds and anemones?
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- From Susanne: I recently used some tulips in a design. Is there any way to prevent them from drooping?
- Tulips are phototropic by nature and will continue to stretch and grow towards any light source. Some say you can rotate your vases daily to keep them from flopping over in one direction or place them directly under a bright light so that they grow upwards instead. By nature, there is really no way to keep them from this behavior but if you cut them short in your arrangements it can help compensate for the natural growth and movement that will occur.
- I agree I almost always plan to use them with the idea that they will move in the design so I either cut them shorter or play up the fact that they will naturally droop. some designers I have worked with have cut a small slit in the neck of the stem or have put a penny in the bottom of the vase apparently this helps straighten them out. Also allowing them to grow towards the light first and then arranging them later helps.
- From Susanne: I recently used some tulips in a design. Is there any way to prevent them from drooping?
- From Susanne: I also had some kangaroo paw and the pods seemed to “wrinkle”. Is that an indicator of aging or sensitivity to cool weather(40-50) degrees inside the building?
- Anigozanthos or Kangaroo paw are prone to dehydration as the hairy stems create a lot of surface area for transpiration to occur. Try using a quick dip solution before hydrating in your favorite floral food. Your kangaroo paw should last 7 to 10 days in your floral cooler if hydrated properly.
FLOWER DESIGN
- From Carie: Just curious how other small flower shops handle the valentine craziness. How soon do they start their designing, both water-based and foam based designs?
- It is usually a good idea to prep all containers and vases at least a week in advance with tape, foam and chicken wire,etc.you can also make your ribbons, prep cards get all hard good ready. You can begin greening rose vases and containers 3-5 days in advance. If you have the cooler space you can also pre-design your floral designs as well up to 5 days in advance as long as you take care to change the water and are using hardier flowers like carns, lilies, roses etc..Florist know thy flower! Some are more delicate than others. It is also great to have a separate room with table set up and mapped out with days of the week for deliveries. to help you stay organized with your orders.A lot of florists even rent a large refrigerated semi truck to handle the extra volume of orders, but you can easily work 2-3 days ahead.
FLOWER BUSINESS
- From Marsha: How do I decide how much of my budget should be spent on advertising if the majority of my bookings come from referrals from brides and venues?
- The most common figure is 10 % of sales factoring in how much rent you pay. If you are in a choice location the thinking goes you may not need as much of an advertising budget because you are more “seen” If you already have good word of mouth and have a comfortable amount of business you may want to adjust that number. If you work from home and are just starting out you may want to up that number.
- What Shelley just shared is a good rule of thumb to get started, but I can tell you although we are a different type of company than you, I do not spend 10%. My approach since I’ve helped build our marketing team from the ground up would be considered a little bit backward. This is a very simplified breakdown of the approach that I took:
- look at what you want to accomplish.
- what you plan to do to accomplish your goals - live events, inbound marketing, social media, print, direct mail, web, etc ...
- what do you think your ROI will be for each one?
- don't forget to figure out a way to measure your results.
- look at the costs of the different avenues you can take to realize your goals, and look at what you can afford to spend.
- You may need to pare down your plan or beef it up depending on what your research comes back with, but if you have to scale back some of your plans, you already have an idea of what you want to add to your marketing and sales funnel.
MARKETING NEWS
- Instagram is testing out a feature that allows you to share other people’s stories!
- Another reason to make sure your IG page is a business account… so you can use third party software, like Hootsuite, to plan, schedule and directly post to your IG account!
- It doesn’t work with things like filters, videos, stacks and geotags, but how great it is that you can plan your posts and then move on!
- Other sites like Buffer, Sprout, and Talewind are working on getting their platform updated with this amazing functionality.
- Personal profiles will see this update rolled out next year, but for your biz don’t wait to try this out.
- https://business.instagram.com/blog/instagram-api-features-updates
- IG is bringing carousel ads to Stories … up to 3 images:
- IG Type Mode - try it out on your next story:
SPECIAL GUEST - EDDIE ZARATSIAN
- First, before we dive into anything tell us a bit about yourself and your businesses?
- Looking through your website, I see that you offer some things that are a bit different than your regular flower design … the Floral Subscriptions and Shop the Video.
- Can you talk about how these offerings have peeked consumer interested and how successful both of these campaigns are?
- Having gone through several dips in the market and still has remaining relevant - do you have any advice for the rest of us on how to ride the economic waves?
- What are your suggestions for how to think out of the box?
- What trends do you see happening in flowers right now?
- A question from Carie: I would like to know what Eddie's go to floral design is.
- What is your most memorable event you have been apart of?
- Lastly, after all of this talk about flowers, tell me something that you are obsessed with that isn’t flower related??
Here are the questions that we didn't have time to get to during the show, but Eddie answered afterward:
- Javier: How do you staff for larger events?
- We have a full team but bring in free lance florists as needed.
- Lita Alfaro Delacruz: Do you use freelance floral designers and if so how do you find them?
- Yes, word of mouth, people reach out to us.
- Bita Barzi: Are your classes gears towards florist or general public ?
- I am a florist. - My teaching method/ skills are made to be understood by all hobbyist and professionals.
- Jennifer Bleakley: Hi Eddie...What aspects of the floral biz are your fave and least fave?
- Favorite would be the design aspect. Least favorite is the trash of it all. By that I mean the foliage and stems that aren't used in the final piece.
- Sharon Babic: Would you teach on line?
- Absolutely! We currently have a YouTube channel that is teaching based. We have been looking at other methods of teaching online.
If you think of new questions, you can post them in the comments here or use the contact form to send them to Yvonne.
Be sure to mark your calendar for March 13th at 10 am EST. See you soon!