Valentine's Day Winter Forced Tulip Sales!: My sales outlets, the good, the bad, and the numbers
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 13 ก.พ. 2023
- What a weekend and experience. Planning for Valentine's Day starts as early as when you buy your bulbs. I had some success, made alot of mistakes and trialed a few sales outlets. I cover all of this and of course my numbers in this video!
Thank you so much for this video!!! Explained so much and great helpful tips!
I love the sound that tulips make.
I'm not sure about your area, but in mine, the majority of customers of boba tea cafes are young and broke/cheap usually lol. And it's usually a stop to meet up, so even if they wanted to buy flowers, they might not because they might not be going home right away. I agree that you should find a more upscale coffee shop. And yes, females buy more flowers, regardless of the holiday. Take me for example, I love love love fresh flowers. But my husband will not buy me flowers that are "just going to die", he'd rather buy me a fake rose or something, so that it'll last forever. So I buy flowers for myself all the time!
Great video, love that you are sharing everything with us! Keep up the good work!
That's actually pretty funny because it's the exact opposite here. I think an average cup of boba is like $6.50 at this cafe which I feel is relatively pricey. But to your point, I do think boba cafes attract younger people vs coffee shops have a good mix!
Good point about females buying flowers. I had quite a few customers who said their partners wouldn't buy flowers so they bought themselves their own flowers!
You are so inspiring and motivating.
☺️☺️☺️
Thank you for sharing so much of all you have experienced with this tricky growing method. I have the pleasure of seeing tulip bouquets from von Trapp Flowers when I work at the coop in Vermont.
Ahh what a gift! I visited Emily's farm back in October and I can only imagine what it looks like now during the height of winter tulip season!!
Im not a flower.farmer ..just pushing 80 old.woman .who loves to.garden now to keep.fit and share flowers
and i just.like you a lot.
I really wish u well and am confident that u will have a wonderful life..
I find your growing in a.basement amazing
Our soil prevents basements but my squirrels live tulips so i cant.grow them..i havent for 8 years but they still dig up everything looking.for em
I really.hate squirrels
Not to the point i would harm.them but i hate them
I have the same relationship with deer so I get it!! I am so thankful for a basement in this situation and recognize that most of the US can’t have basements. It’s also tricky in TX bc you don’t get the natural cooling that I get here- like I have a natural “cooler” and rooting zone. But there may be other stuff you could grow inside assuming you’re willing to tolerate a jungle hahaha
Thank you so much for your time and effort in making this video! I am a micro scale, part time, 2nd year flower farmer, and I am talking with a local coffee shop owner for selling my flowers in her store, I don't expect it to be my main income source but instead, I will see it as an opportunity to spread the word for my business. Would you share in the future video on where you would recommend to source the bulbs based on your winter forcing experience? So glad I follow you, and thank you for being a real person and an inspiration!
Best of luck to you at selling in the cafe! I totally agree- a cafe is great for awareness and just bc someone doesn’t buy today it doesn’t meant they won’t later! I will talk about where I source bulbs in the future for sure 🙂
Thank you so much for sharing all this information and experience!
My feelings regarding men vs women buyers for Valentine’s comes down to #1 guys who don’t regularly buy flowers are likely to go where they already know the flowers are available - grocery store or flower shop - #2 many men aren’t aware of the carbon footprint of most commercial flowers - and unless the person they’re getting the flowers for have educated them OR they have learned the value of locally grown flowers from a grower, they will default to “get the biggest bouquet possible” from a familiar source (they’re likely not the usual farmers market clientele).
If getting men to buy Valentine’s bouquets is a goal, I’d say the trick is finding ways to reach them and educate them that their recipient will appreciate the special benefits of a locally grown bouquet AND/OR getting the people who will be receiving the bouquets to ask specifically for locally grown.
Both marketing strategies could be interesting to explore.
Agreed with this!!
Very true to both points! Some of the men who bought flowers from me were directed by their partners lol!!
I also agree that there's a need to reach and educate them ahead of Valentine's Day. I was so not sure of how many stems I would have and didn't have photos that I skipped this but I think since now I have so much "content" to use for next year, i'll be able to do that. And.... start ahead for Mother's Day!
Flower farming really does follow the traditional marketing funnel. You need to make people aware that you exist. They may not need flowers at that time when they're made aware but when they do want flowers, they'll reach out!
Thank you so much for taking us along on your journey. You should really push the idea of buying flowers for yourself. You did the right thing buying stems and making sure to wow your customers. Willing to bet you'll make $1,500 next year :)
I have learned! I am definitely going to be agnostic about who I market to next year. Even more funny is that you think that people are done with flowers after vday but so many people either don't have a significant other or didn't get flowers that there's still people who want flowers lol! And thank you for the kind words :)
Very interesting I bought flowers to sell with CSA's for Valentine's. I also tried forcing tulips super fail on that. But all of my sales were to men none to women. Sold 3 CSA's and 2 $30 bouquets going into my 2nd year of flower farming.
That is funny indeed!! Where did you end up selling your flowers, if you don't mind me asking?
Great job! All learning is a success! The jars were adorable- were they singles? I'm totally rethinking next year's plan. Can't wait to hear about your favorites from the field! Also, what are your thoughts on pre-orders taken to a pickup location?
Thank you! Most in the jars were singles except for the very short doubles (columbus and foxy foxtrot). In all honesty, the jars were stems that i really wouldn't have been able to use so I call that a win.
I think in the future, I would definitely be open for pre-orders taken to a pick up. I also do like talking to customers and getting a feel for who is picking up, how they found out about me, and all that good stuff!
Thanks for being so open and thorough, this is all great information.
I wanted to ask about the “winter-forced tulips” sign you used at one of the locations. Have you considered “winter-grown” or simply “winter tulips” instead? I’m not saying it would’ve made a significant difference but I find many people like to think of flowers as more whimsical and I wonder if the word “forced” could put-off some of them. I think “winter tulips” conveys the same message, makes one think ‘oh yeah, those come usually in spring,’ and if anyone is curious could engage them to ask how you’re doing it, but I bet some would rather think it’s magic. lol
I think the hydroponic/winter-forced part is fascinating, but perhaps not so much to all potential customers upfront? I don’t know who your target customers are though, not that I could do much more with that, I’m no marketing expert 🙂, but the sign stuck out to me for some reason so figured I’d share fwiw.
Best of luck with the rest of your tulips!
Words matter, so this is a really good point! I'm going to test "winter grown" tulips in the future. The hydroponic piece of info for me actually ends up being a good conversation starter but... I think to your point it's also how you word it. Some people don't know what hydroponic means, so I think there are definitely ways to "break down" the messaging.
I may actually do some testing via ads to see which do better. Thank you for this suggestion!
Great info!! It’s so interesting bc there are definitely men looking for flowers on vday- I happened to be at the pharmacy/florist on Tues and the florist was saying how many guys showed up looking for flowers that day and she didn’t have any extra. I wonder how to find those guys.
Definitely!! They exist! We just need to find them lol! I think doing some "advertising" to them via social media ads in the weeks leading up to vday would be a good idea for next year. That's assuming I feel like I need to- a sale is a sale so even if it's to a female, I have no qualms! It's when I run out of females that I would start looking at capturing the male target!
Where do you purchase your flower sleeves? What size rubber bands are you using and where do you get those?
The sleeves are from A-Roo. They're 12 x 12 x 4.5. The rubber bands are from office depot. I'm honestly not sure what size they are- they only had 1 at the time and I made them work :)
You can seal the crack in the tray with some 2-part epoxy. its very cheap to purchase at either Home Depot or a local hardware store. just put it on the bottom of the tray so any chemicals wont leech into your water.
Ah thank you!! I've been meaning to research what I could get at the hardware store so this is super helpful! I'm going to try this soon!
hello! thank you for posting this and your flower journey :) if you don't mind sharing, when you have your flowers at a cafe or other places to sell, do you need to pay a fee to have your flowers there?
I offer 20% of sales to the shop. So for a $25 bouquet, I give $5 to the shop. I'm still at a point where I don't have enough of a local social media following (in my view) to drive significant traffic to the cafe, so I feel this is a fair arrangement!
@@bareflowerfarm thank you for answering and for being transparent :) wishing you the best!
Excellent video! I add this because it seems you (like me) love the minutia of a cost/benefit analysis. When you sell on consignment, the shops should be adding sales tax and charging that at the register. That means that you do not have deduct sales tax on those sales from your gross later on and it, at least theoretically, also reduces office costs associated with calculating and sending the government that check later on. So even though your split is 80/20, you keep the full 80% as opposed to having to further deduct 8% or whatever. I don’t love selling consignment, but one thing that makes that pill a little easier to swallow is to think is that when I sell retail I’m already in a 92/8 split with the government, so a 80/20 in consignment is not that different than that. If that didn’t make sense, hit me up and I can explain it better.
That's a really good way of framing 92/8 split - i never thought about it that way so I guess 80/20 isn't as bad. In my case, I took my own form of payment via Venmo. We didn't want to add more SKUs to the shop's POS and I think that in general if you keep the payments separate, it makes life easier on both sides (even if I have to pay taxes within that $20!)
Hey, so a question because I am curious. When you sell on consignment, do you still calculate tax on the whole amount, or then you pay sales tax on the 80 percent only? And do the shop pay tax on their 20 percent?
I calculate tax on the whole amount bc that was the sale price to the customer which is what the govt cares about at the end. To make things easier, I cover the tax for the whole amount. At these quantities, it’s not an issue. But I can see if you’re selling thousands it will. Tax is just something that I bake into my margin thoigh. Like getting $2-2.50 a stem minus 13-16 cents is something that is still in my tolerable range 🙂
Next year do jacuzzi over purple prince! Way better stem length and much pretty flower in a similar color!
Ohhh yes, thank you for that! I saw Linda selling that wholesale, and the color looks amazing!!
With the venmo that people pay thru at the boba shop, does it have to be a business acct or can it be a personal venmo?
Both should work, but I think Venmo will only send you the QR stand and stickers if you have a business act.
Which specialty varieties grew best for you forced?
I chose all varieties that I was confident in forcing because of the info provided by The Tulip Workshop. I stayed away from varieties that they mentioned would be prone to things like stem topple. However, stem length satisfaction is a different story. I found that the bulbs that I bought prechilled at 5C from a trusted source (Tulip Workshop) gave me the best stem length results and mixed results from a typical bulb supplier who didn't give me the most accurate cooling info. But right now, my favorites are definitely Verona Sunrise and Mystic Van Eijk!
What happened to selling wholesale to florists for Valentine's Day? Did none come through?
Ah yes!! I forgot to mention this. I had a florist who had committed to 100 stems but had to back out bc she took on a wedding. That was honestly a relief bc the varieties she wanted came 3 weeks early. Another florist ordered 30 stems but the stems were quite short so I delivered but didn’t charge her. I basically stopped all florist orders after most of my stems came in too early. The good news is they all went to be updated about tulip availability still!
What size & source are your paper bouquet wraps?
The wraps are from aroo and are the 12x12x4.5
@@bareflowerfarm Ty!
What tulip forcing workshop did you take?
The Tulip Workshop 🙂
@@bareflowerfarm lol who teaches it? Where can I find more info?
@@3PMedia www.thetulipworkshop.com
6 hours is not relatively close at all. If I thought I was buying local flowers and found out they were anything but I would be pretty upset. Plus lying to my clients would bug me too. Guess that’s just me.
As i've come to learn, in the flower world, 6 hours is actually "local", especially if it's 6 hours by car. We have designers who shop at a cooperative where 6 growers grow collectively and it is still not enough flowers. They will visit other co-ops and then have to order flowers from wholesalers and these are imported from around the world.
I did eventually let my customers know that they were a mix of my flowers as well as some from a farm in NY. People do think of NY as local here as many of the farm vendors in our farmers markets are from NJ, PA, and NY. They were all happy and didn't have an issue.
Man
.sire wish i.could support u..being in Texas its not.possible unless u ship..im not picky so them.showing up.kinda aged isnt.a problem to me but bot really something u do.
Haha. But I do appreciate your moral support on here! ☺️
Hi. Stumbled upon this video and picked up a couple of tricks that might help you. I particularly reacted to his comments about the amount of light tulips need. th-cam.com/video/rytb1-8Digk/w-d-xo.html
Yes! This was a great video and I thoroughly enjoyed it. There is definitely a misperception around how much light tulips need. I brought 2 trays into my garage where they got minimal artificial light. I brought them in there when buds were just starting to show to slow them down and they still ended up budding beautifully!