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Extra Features and Video Online FloristsReview.com R E A D O N L I N E 45 1. BUY SMART Cost-of-goods-sold (COGS) is a huge part of what makes a florist profitable. Your COGS should include all materials used in a design: flowers and foliage and all hard goods and supplies. Do you know what your overall COGS is? For a typical profitable retail business in our industry, it should be between 28 percent and 35 percent. My goal is less than 30 percent because I inevitably forget to add the cost of something in (wire, flower food, ribbon, glue, tape, etc.). Your COGS may need to be even lower if you are in a large city with high operating costs (rent, labor, etc.). Once you know your COGS, if it's not in an acceptable range, buying smart needs to be in the forefront of your mind. Here are a few of my most important tips for buying smart. • Take advantage of your wholesalers' prebook and box-lot specials. • Plan your specials around the best flowers for your money. • Look for the best deals, buying in-season flowers whenever possible, for their amazing quality and fabulous prices. • Ask your salesperson to be your eyes in the wholesale house, suggesting the newest and most interesting items and informing you of the best deals of the day or week. • Stock all colors of flowers in your cooler so you will always be equipped to make appropriate substitutions. • Order vases and supplies in bulk and when they are on sale. For example, many manufacturers and wholesalers offer substantial discounts on containers, floral foam and other supply items at various times of the year if you buy a specified number of cases at a time. Look in to this; you can save a significant amount of money. • Keep good sales records of past holidays and seasons. 2. DESIGN SMART Not keeping labor expenses under control is a huge killer of profits in a flower shop. If the owner/manager is on the payroll, your labor expenses should not exceed 30 percent of your overall sales. If that person is not on the payroll, your labor expenses should not exceed 20 percent of sales. Let's look at some ways to keep labor expenses at 20 percent of sales—or less. • Develop recipes for each of your weekly, monthly and/or seasonal/ holiday specials, and post them at every design station. • Designers can spend so much time choosing which flowers to design with, so always have them create multiples of an arrangement at a time. Provide a color wheel at every design station to assist designers with planning beautiful color harmonies. • Create arrangements in three to five price points at one time using the same assortment of flowers. I love pretty much everything about this beautiful industry we are in: the flowers, the people and the emotions our artistic work evokes. While we are all great at our craft and can create gorgeous floral designs, smart florists are always thinking about profitability. After all, you can design the most gorgeous arrangements in the world, but if you don't make money on them, it is likely that you won't be in business long. Having been in the retail flower business for 25 years and running a successful and profitable store in a small rural town in South Dakota (population 2,500), I've learned a few things about making sure that my bank account is as happy as I am. Here are my tips for designing profitably. Let's begin by breaking designing for profitability into three key points. Even though I could write a short book on each point, I'm going to hit just the highlights. Take a moment to think about each of the suggestions on these pages; you may be surprised by how tweaking just a few of your current business practices can make a dramatic difference in your bottom line and cash flow.

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