Question:

What services does your studio provide? Which services do you find most profitable? Least profitable?

Answers:

I am active on three fields: wedding, editorial and teaching. All of them are really different in terms of time / energy and profit. I love them all, and they complement each other well.

In terms of wedding, I do all floral design (bouquet, centerpieces, boutonnieres, etc…) as well as installations (arches for ceremony, stage decorations, etc…) and I also have a collection of vintage furniture that my customers can have access to if they want to. I do as well a little bit of styling, even though this is not my main activity and I try to focus more on flowers.

I also create DIY for magazines, which means i create mock-ups, take pictures and write the texts. Sometimes it is just a bouquet, sometimes a full table decor for special occasions. I do this on a regular basis (monthly entries) which allows me to have regular money incomes all over the year to compensate for the wedding season which happens mostly around summer in France.

Finally, I give classes. This is really a small activity for me, as I do it only when I have time (which is not that often…). I have a great collaboration with a flower self-picking field since two years. I give classes to create hand-tied bouquets and flower wreaths on site. The participants love to go pick the flowers by themselves and then learn what to do with them directly in the field.

Laetitia Mayor (Floresie)

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We do weddings mostly and occasionally birthday parties, baby showers, and other celebrations. No retail space. For weddings, we offer full service where we handle everything decor-wise and go set up and tear down the event. We also offer a service where we design whatever the couple wants (usually the bridal party flowers) and then they have to come pick it up from our studio rather than us delivering it. Since we are a farm as well as a studio, we also offer bulk flower orders for DIY couples. This latter option is definitely our least profitable and something I am hoping to phase out. Full service weddings are our most profitable service.

Jennie Love (Love ‘n Fresh Flowers)

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When it comes to flowers my business is home-based and I provide services like weddings, funeral / sympathy work as well as styling for commercial photo shoots and magazines. But my business is quite complex, since I also works as a photographer and stylist, so the flowers are approximately 1/3 of the business. When it comes to profit, it’s hard to say which service is the most profitable. I think it’s quite the same.

Emelie Ekborg (Svenska Blomsterbloggar and Flora Inspiro)

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The last 2 years my business has morphed from a wedding/event business with some teaching to a teaching business with a handful of weddings/events. Teaching is a lot less stressful and more profitable.

Francoise Weeks (Francoise Weeks)

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Our studio offers the following services: wedding flowers, corporate and private events, weekly contracts to hotels and restaurants and professional and hobby classes at Flower School Glasgow. The most profitable are corporate events as it involves replicating one table design 30-40 times. It’s easy to get the exact stem count and buying can be spot on. Weddings are also profitable but it’s about finding your sweet spot. A wedding for less than £800 with lots of varieties means we have lots of stems leftover. Large weddings can provide healthy revenues but there is also additional expenditure on items such as additional freelance labour and vehicle hire. Our sweet spot here in the UK is £1,500-£3,000.

The one service we found least profitable was one-off deliveries of single gift bouquets to customer’s homes. We often had to buy specific flowers meaning extra trips to the market. Also,  no-one was willing to pay the true cost of delivery and often the customer was out or we had been given the wrong address. We stopped providing this service back in summer 2014 after 11 years and we have never looked back!

Nick Priestly (Mood Flowers)

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Flowers at Top: Botanique