Here’s the replay of January's Mornings with Mayesh featuring answers to YOUR flower questions and a Q&A with Ryan O’Neill from Curate! Keep on scrolling if you are looking for the show notes. Enjoy and post your questions for next month’s show in the comments below!
Also, I have exciting news. You can now listen to our Mornings with Mayesh show in a podcast format!!
SHOW NOTES
FLOWER QUESTIONS
WHAT’S GOING ON IN THE WORLD OF FLOWERS?
- link: https://www.mayesh.com/flower-411-january-2018/
- This is one of my favorite times of the year because we import some of the most beautiful flowers in the world from Japan. Located in Osaka, the Naniwa flower auction provides some of the most stunning varieties to the world flower market.
- Their sweet peas are out of this world, cut with super long stems that are full of blooms. Amazing, fragrant and extra sturdy for a long vase life. A classic in any Ikebana arrangement is the Gloriosa lily. It really is a stand-alone flower!
- Some of the coolest varieties of Ranunculus are available from Japan this time of year…
- Also very hot right now is lisianthus: Here we are showcasing Black Pearl, Arena red and Roseanne Brown.
- Now for some show and tell with my fave Valentines day rose varieties:
- Ashley is one of my favorite garden roses. It has a deep saturated pink color and opens to a wide aperture. It is a pompon shaped rose with a slightly four quartered center. What it lacks in old-fashioned garden rose fragrance it excels in extremely long lasting vase life (up to 12 days).
- Ballet is a strong long lasting pink with gorgeous scalloped petals and a long vase life.
- Cherry O is A large-headed hot pink with a high petal count. It opens to a very large aperture that grabs your attention.
- Keira is a subtle blush cupped rosette with a strong garden rose fragrance. Beautiful for not only bridal work but also in high-end Valentine’s arrangements.This muted beauty is reminiscent of the old-fashioned cabbage roses. It has a dusty pink to peach tone that compliments a more modern design color palette.
- Another muted color, Yves Piaget crosses modern color with the beauty of old-fashioned peony shaped roses. It is highly fragrant and fades to a pinky mauve.
FLOWER CARE
- From Rachel: What is the most effective way to tint a flower that has petals that spread and overlap, like a Gerber daisy so that there are no white spots after tinting with design masters.
- Almost all multi-petal blooms need a little gentle manipulation in order to get the paint evenly distributed. You can do this with your finger by gently ruffling the petals as you lightly spray in layers. Or use a chenille stem (pipe cleaner) if you don’t want to get oils from your finger on the petals. You can also use a chenille stem as a paintbrush or an actual paintbrush dipped in design master paint that you spray into a dish. This works really well with metallic paints too.
- We have experimented a little with stem absorption dyes here in Phoenix. They are extremely messy and seem to work best on flowers that have not been hydrated. Timing is tricky, the instructions on the jars give a suggested time but depending on the flower, it can need more time drinking the dye. Best advice, do this outside if you can!
FLOWER DESIGN
- Pantone just announced the color of the year to be Ultraviolet. It's a great color, and I would like to see Mayesh's approach to designing with it.
FLOWER BUSINESS
- From Tricia: What is the average margin for wedding florals? I’ve found myself pricing based on competitors prices bs what I actually purchase. Hasn’t worked out well
- Well first things first, Bravo for realizing that you can’t run your business based on what everyone else is charging or doing for that matter. When you stop doing that and base your pricing on what YOU need to do to make a living and a profit you will be one step ahead of your peers. It’s disheartening to realize when it’s all said and done, you are barely making minimum wage on that gorgeous wedding you just put your heart and soul into. So make sure you take the time to really figure out what you need to make to make a living.
There is no set industry standard. Everyone's market is different. What there is is a general pricing markup:
3-4x mark up on fresh flowers unless you are doing seriously huge events (100Kplus)
2x on hard goods, 20-40% added labor and additional charges for delivery and set-up
5x markup on bridal hand work ie corsages and bouts and heavy labor items.
- Well first things first, Bravo for realizing that you can’t run your business based on what everyone else is charging or doing for that matter. When you stop doing that and base your pricing on what YOU need to do to make a living and a profit you will be one step ahead of your peers. It’s disheartening to realize when it’s all said and done, you are barely making minimum wage on that gorgeous wedding you just put your heart and soul into. So make sure you take the time to really figure out what you need to make to make a living.
- From our last Mornings with Mayesh: How should you handle plagiarizing florists? Another local florist is using other designers work to fill their knot.com portfolio (in their storefront advertising). The knot is slowly acting, after I contacted some of the original designers but they aren’t doing much.
- This is such a bummer I am sorry this happened to you.
It used to be popular for photographers to watermark their photos to make sure they got protect their work. Now that everyone's a photographer and anyone can screenshot an image it’s very difficult to always know the source of one’s work. The florist that is doing this kind of behavior is a heinous one to be sure. What a rotten little tulip! Well, clearly she thinks highly of their work and wants to pass it off as her own. So they could be flattered -flattered and PO’d.
I think taking a screenshot of the work and submitting it to the publication and contacting the florist and asking them to remove their images is the first step and you sound like you have done that. Also, it would be a good idea for all florists to copyright their images as well. Unfortunately, when you post on IG you are only protected on IG they will remove anything that has been plagiarized. But once it leaves their site you are on your own.I know a few florists this has happened to and they have publicly “shamed” the other florist on Social Media. Just tread lightly here that it doesn’t backfire in your face. Most of your followers know your work and will spot a fake a mile away. Handle things like this with integrity and grace and you will come out shining.
- This is such a bummer I am sorry this happened to you.
MARKETING NEWS
- Facebook updated its news feed algorithm that will affect your business page!
- From the article, one part that should interest all of you:
- What does this mean for Pages and public content?
- Because space in News Feed is limited, showing more posts from friends and family and updates that spark conversation means we’ll show less public content, including videos and other posts from publishers or businesses.
- As we make these updates, Pages may see their reach, video watch time and referral traffic decrease. The impact will vary from Page to Page, driven by factors including the type of content they produce and how people interact with it.
- What does this mean for pages? We will see declines in reach, video watch time, referral traffic, etc. If you create posts that no one reacts to or you post too much every day, you will be greatly affected by this change. One of the social media gurus that I keep up with is going to recommend to his team to completely stop posting links to their blog and focus on entertaining and engaging content, like this video show.
- Why is this happening? Because Facebook is running out of room in the news feed.
- If you are a fan of Mayesh, then go to your feed and ask to see our page first - that way you can see our posts still.
- This change has not happened yet but will be rolled out in the next few weeks. So you have time to re-strategize how to make Facebook work for your business.
- Get more information here: https://media.fb.com/2018/01/11/news-feed-fyi-bringing-people-closer-together/#more-6991
- Instagram is still pumping us their messaging. You can send live videos in Instagram Direct Messages.
This is more for if you are broadcasting live, then ask your viewers to invite their friends to watch with them.
SPECIAL GUEST - RYAN O’NEIL
- How do you determine if rentals are profitable?
- How do you respond when they ask for a discount?
- How do you price when you have no idea what the pricing of flowers will be at that point? (This is a double-edged question. Half of the florists stem count up front and half stem count about 2 weeks before the wedding)
- We always think we're going to stick with our plan but then get on site and start adding more product to make the arrangements more beautiful. Then we look at each other and say, "We'll just add these costs to the marketing budget." How do we get back on track?
Tell us more where our viewers can find out more about StemCounter?
http://info.stemcounter.com/blog
If you think of new questions, you can post them in the comments below. See you on February 20th for our next show!