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Extra Features and Video Online FloristsReview.com R E A D O N L I N E 45 Social Media: Prepare your content, and have it scheduled and ready to go before you get too busy. Early Ordering/Early Delivery: Encourage your regular customers to order early. Maybe offer free delivery or a free add-on as an incentive for orders placed for delivery on or before the 12th. Email Marketing: Email your customers to present your Valentine's Day offerings and to remind them to order early. Get them to think about your shop before they start searching for other gift ideas online. Google Ads: Boost your budget for February to increase exposure for your shop in internet search results (ads.google.com). Multiple Colors of Roses: Red roses are a Valentine's Day staple because they symbolize romance and love, but promote other colors of roses—perhaps as one of your shop's holiday specials—which are often cheaper than red, leaving you a bigger profi t margin. "Designer's Choice": Create and promote "Designer's Choice" arrangements that feature beautiful but nontraditional Valentine's Day fl owers and color combinations, to help you navigate the available supply of fresh fl owers and to avoid substitutions. • Long before it become a commercial celebration of romance and love, Valentine's Day, also called Saint Valentine's Day or the Feast of Saint Valentine, was as a religious celebration—a Christian feast day established by the Catholic Church to honor one or two early Christian martyrs named Saint Valentine. One of the martyrdom stories is an account of the imprisonment of a Roman priest named Valentinus, known today as St. Valentine, for ministering to Christians persecuted under the Roman Empire in the third century. • February 14 was offi cially recognized as a secular holiday, Saint Valentine's Day, by England's love- struck King Henry VIII in 1537, and the composing and sending of rhyming love letters and amorous verses on that date became customary as a result. • The tradition of giving fl owers on Valentine's Day dates back to the 17th century, when Sweden's King Charles XI introduced the "Persian language of fl owers" tradition to Europe by sending the fi rst Valentine's Day bouquet, with each fl ower conveying a specifi c meaning. • The fi rst heart-shaped box of chocolates was introduced in 1861 by English chocolatier Richard Cadbury. • Nearly 6 million couples worldwide get engaged on Valentine's Day. • Americans send 145 million Valentine's Day cards each year. • Furry friends need love, too. In fact, around 27.6 million American households purchased Valentine's Day gifts for their pet dogs in 2020, and more than 17.1 million picked up gifts for their pet cats. WORKING EFFICIENTLY MEANS WORKING PROFITABLY Production-line designing, where designers and even lower-cost novice arrangers create multiple units of a singular arrangement at one time, is the most labor-effi cient and, therefore, profi table method of producing a large volume of arrangements during busy holidays. Having several of each design you off er made in advance enables you to quickly fi ll orders as they come in. It is helpful to produce "designer's choice" arrangements last, to ensure you have the product you need to create all of your holiday specials and to fulfi ll specifi c orders. Don't throw money away. Create one or two designs—possibly as "designer's choice" options—in which you can use short- or broken-stemmed fl owers. Also, package petals from broken-off rose heads to present as a "romantic" add-on sale item, or off er dainty corsages, boutonnières or hairpieces fashioned from broken blooms as add-ons. Marketing Tips Fun Facts

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