Real Florists Watch
FlowerChat National buying group
There has been some talk about forming a FlowerChat National buying group. This is something that could be done. Our main concern, if FlowerChat does this, what will happen to the local floral wholesalers FlowerChat florists currently support? Many floral wholesalers have been forced to shift a major part of their business away from perishable products and focus on hard goods because many florists purchase fresh product directly. Would FlowerChat National buying group be detrimental to local floral wholesalers???
As to effecting floral industry change, FlowerChat florists feel this is a somewhat obtainable goal. In the last few weeks, FlowerChat has seen new registrants from various floral industry publications. Welcome to SAF. FlowerChat hopes the word is spreading as to how Real Retail Florists feel about the current state of the floral industry. Do real florists think that FlowerChat florists will be able to affect change??
Real florists feel the need to move from the current conversations of flower order transfer. At this time, leave flower order transfer up to the individual real florists to come to their own conclusion as to what is best for their individual floral business. There are so many options right now that there is little hope to get enough real florists to make a change that would significantly impact any one method of doing so. An example: what if FlowerChat were to add that capability (which we could) to the FlowerChat forum. FlowerChat florists doubt that right now we would get enough real florists to use it to make the necessary programming worth the time it will take. So often real florists focus on order transfer as the problem, when in reality it is the least of our worries.
Before real florists try to tackle the flower order transfer issue, our focus should be on the floral industry as a whole. Real florists need to focus on getting more florists involved, and spreading the word of sharing information. FlowerChat florists have reaching out to other groups, their thoughts are that real florists must find a way to RE-gather, RE-form the alliances that existed between individual real florists when there was a local venue to get together and share ideas, information and work at the local level to educate.
Real Florists do feel the time has come that we MUST form up, we MUST make a choice and we MUST work with the ideas of what?s best for the floral industry and the real florist as a whole!
Just our thoughts, go ahead and shoot holes in the theory...
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I Agree,
1.First Get the word out to all florist about "real" florist and order gathers.
2.Form a meeting of the REAL Florist that are willing to take this step by step in the right direction.
3.Get the word out to the consumer.
4.Stop filling any order that is not from a brick and mortar shop no matter how large, small or lurative it may seem.
5. Market, Market Market all of this as much as you can with all involved saying the same thing nationally.
As far as the my personal view on the wholesalers go, is that the wholesalers have loss a lot of what they had by getting in bed with eveyone that hurt us, the real florist, that is why so many went to buying direct.
Maybe informing the wholesalers as to what we would like to do and see happen, will help them understand the need to stand up with the REAL florist and help us fight for the good of both them,and us.
Knife's Wife
Hey Misus K...
Good idea on the wholesaler end...now if we can just get everyone to invite their LOCAL wholesalers to either here or FlowerChat....
I'm onto mine!
As to the rest of your comments, I concur, it'll take time and hard work, but I feel it worth the time, and I have never been afraid of work.
Great Ideas!
As for wholesalers...Ours sell to just about ANYONE. The hair salon down the street, the banquet halls..EVERYONE with ANY type of tax id. They started doing that LONG before we started buying direct. That took a lot of basic corporate biz from us florists, so we don't hesitate to buy direct as often as we can. We'd participate in FlowerChat's buy group!