Mornings with Mayesh: Flower Math

Alison Ellis of Real Flower Business joined me to talk about flower math, pricing, and business. Topics like markup, margins, itemizing, flower purchasing & more will be discussed.  Join the conversation!

Mark your calendars for October 8th for our next show featuring an interview with Putnam & Putnam. I hope you can join us and keep on sending in your floral questions!

Here are the video, podcast replay, and show notes:

SHOW NOTES

QUESTIONS

• Laurie - The most difficult part of calculating flower quantities is the inevitable flowers that come in unhappy! Do you increase your order for that right off the bat? When your dealing with so many different flowers, how do you decide which one (s) to increase?
  
  
• Breck:

• • Do you mark every flower up 3x? For standard weekly arrangements and weddings or different for weddings? 
  • Do you charge labor on weddings or just for flowers? If so, is it 20% of flower cost or how do you calculate?
  • Does labor account for delivery and set-ups like archway installations?
    
    
• Annelise: How do you structure your pricing? I do weddings and special events, and I price out piece by piece. I find that sometimes the margin is too small. I’m wondering if there is a better method.
  
  
• Email: Do you mark up the same for greenery in a bouquet/arrangement as flowers?
  
  
• Roxanne:
  • How do you know how much product to buy for an installation, in my case a wedding arch, if you have never made one before?
  • My brides are getting married in 2020. How do I know what the pricing will be so that I may provide them with a proposal?
    
    
• Sarah: 
  • To itemize or not to itemize? That is my question. I feel like as the customer I would want to know what I am paying for (example: 9 Bridesmaid's bouquets at $120 each = $1080 etc...). But I'm afraid itemizing would just bring up more confusion and questions like "hey why doesn't the itemized list add up perfectly to the minimum you quoted me at?" Do I then have to explain cost of labor, designs fees, etc...

If you think of new questions, you can post them to the next show or email them over to marketing@mayesh.com.  What do you need help with? What are your pain points? We want to know!