I was lucky enough to attend the Florida State Florists' Association Annual Convention in Weston Florida this weekend. I had heard great things about this event from friends in the industry and clients in the area for years but this was the first time I actually went.
This was probably the most ambitious show I have ever seen that was organized entirely by volunteers and it was an amazing experience. I really can't imagine how much work they did or thank them enough for their efforts. Special thanks to Gus and Deborah De La Flor of De La Flor Gardens Rodney Canady of Blooms a Million in Pensacola, Christie Brown of Roses are Red in Indialantic and Rick Rivers of a Floral Boutique Florist in Ormand Beach for their hard work and hospitality.
On Sunday morning I gave a presentation on pricing. It looked at some of the advanced pricing strategies used in other (non-floral) retail, as well as the entertainment, travel and foodservice & hospitality industries, and how retail florists could apply those strategies to pricing their fixed-price products with the goal of increasing both sales and profits.
These sessions are a lot of fun to do. Pricing is something that surrounds all of us every single day. It has fascinated me for almost two decades, and I have studied it seriously for almost ten years. During that time there were so many great little moments of discovery when what seemed like counterintuitive, even non-sensical, real world pricing suddenly made sense.
In these sessions we go through many of those examples and the strategies behind them. It is great to see some strange real world pricing strategy suddenly become obvious to a florist, it's even better when you see them realize just how easy and effective it will be to apply those same techniques in their own stores.
