That's a lot of money for JUST flowers!
Disclaimer! This is an attempt to educate and not preach so apologies in advance if this feels like one of those times your parents sat you down at the dinner table to give you a lecture!
‘That’s a lot of money for just flowers!’ Is a pretty common phrase a floral designer can hear. First off, yes, our prices are expensive for just flowers BUT did you know our prices aren’t just for flowers.
It’s very easy to assume that because you know what you do so do others but I have no idea what the process is for a plumber or architect or any other profession that isn’t my own.
So here it is, a rough breakdown of what your money actually goes towards! Let’s use the example of a bouquet of flowers for your dear old mum...
Research
So you’ve come into the shop/phoned or sent an email;
You:‘I want a bunch of flowers for my mum.’
Florist ‘OK. give me your money’
You ‘OK’
*bouquet magically turned up for your mum!
No.
Questions! A good florist will take time to ask questions, are there any flowers she likes/doesn’t like? Are there any flowers she’s allergic to? What’s her favourite colour? Do you want a card? Do you want a message in a card? Where would you like them delivered? What’ the best time to deliver? What’s your mum’s name?
These are just a few questions a floral designer could ask you. -And this is just one bouquet, let’s not even get onto a bigger subject like a wedding!-
Product Selection
There’s loads of different products but to keep things simple let’s stick with flowers. It’s changed over time with the world getting more digital. We spend time looking at our different suppliers looking for the most competitive prices, then it’s the early morning trip to the wholesale to collect the stock. Gone are the days of not being out and about by 6 in the morning! Then it’s back to condition those bad boys!
Conditioning
Flowers don’t come ready to use they need to be conditioned. Even if you walk into a shop and there are flowers ready to use they will have still gone through the process of conditioning. Conditioning is the process of preparing the flowers so they are ready to use. Dependant on the amount of flowers you have this can take from an hour up to a whole day! Flowers need to ideally sit in water for approximately 12 hours after conditioning before they can be used.
Ready Right?
So, your flowers are ready to use, awesome! Now comes the actual job of designing your bouquet. But your design doesn’t just need flowers right? So what about the other stuff, the wrapping, the container, the mechanics of the product? Yep you guessed it! Research and product selection on that again!
Design Time!
Crazy as it may seem a good floral designer won’t just chuck a bunch of flowers together without thinking about it. It’s our job to think about the colour scheme, the form and general style of the bouquet and the placement of flowers.
Finishing Touches
Now comes the wrapping, more design, more selection of colour scheme and style of wrapping. Whilst it’s very popular to use cellophane there are some crazy awesome things we can do with a bouquet of flowers using different products to wrap and finish off before delivering. This all adds to the custom product you can’t get at any supermarket.
Delivery
Delivery is an additional option but let’s include it to cover all bases. Sadly teleportation isn’t a thing yet (one day!) so it’s good old fashioned driving for us -or cycling if you’re feeling eco friendly and fit-. Petrol isn’t free, neither is insurance, or tyres or all the other wonderful elements of owning a vehicle. So yep, you guessed it, the price includes that too!
And after the cost of all of this there is a small margin of profit left for us. We’re not going to be swimming around in £50 notes any time soon, maybe pennies if you really wanted to!
I hope you aren’t feeling too told off after reading this and you now have an insight into a bit of why we charge what we charge, we’re a wonderful people really!
Pick Me.
