Why I Sell Flowers to Florists

People ask me all the time where I sell the flowers from my farm. I sell my flowers primarily to florists, both brick and mortar florists and wedding and event florists. Let me tell you why.

Florist need flowers every single week. Think about when people want to buy flowers.

-weddings

-funerals

-to send to a loved on after a special life event like a birth, a birthday, or anniversary

-Mother’s Day or other flower holidays

I have no desire to arrange flowers for weddings or funerals, but I do love growing flowers and selling them to the amazing florists that take the beautiful flowers have lovingly grown and turn them into beautiful pieces of art. Seriously…it makes me so excited to see the amazing work that they do. (Thanks to social media I get a glimpse into their work which is so fun.)

Selling Flowers to Florists is Profitable for a Flower Farmer

We all need to make money….florists need to pay themselves and their bills, and I, as the farmer need to make money to pay my bills.

Growing flowers is a lot of work and takes a lot of risk and can be a lot of upfront investment. Think weather, bugs, disease, weed pressure, learning curve to grow and sell your flowers. It’s all a lot of risk. Investments can include irrigation, weed barriers, seeds, bulbs, fertilizer, compost, buckets, and then more expensive items like a walk in cooler, high tunnel, tractor, to name a few. (Check out this blog post all about how we built our cooler).

So the goal is to be profitable. There is nothing wrong with earning money from the work that you put into your farm.

Selling to florists can be profitable if you do it right.

I highly recommend becoming really good at selling to 3-5 florists and them growing from there.

Also, it is much easier to sell $500 a week to 5 florists than $200 a week to 10 florists. More sales to less customers will make you more profitable to streamline your business. Also with less customers comes less communication, less time delivering flowers, less relationships to manage, and more money.

Upsell….always take extra flowers when possible to give your florists more options to buy additional flowers from you in addition to what they have ordered.

Florists are artistic visual people and they buy with their eyes. In my experience florists will buy 15-20% more flowers off the truck when you show it to them in person.

There a lot of new flower farmers. Most of them start by selling retail bouquets WAY to cheap. These farmers are not making money and are not sustainable in business (unless they wish to personally finance their flower growing and selling).

Pricing….I can make almost as much money per stem selling bunches of flowers direct to florists as most farm around me charge selling retail flowers. I also find it less work to sell large quantities of flowers to a few florists. If I can go to a florist every single week and if they buy $200 from me, over the course of 18 weeks that is $3,600 from one customer. So that is only one customer relationship that you need to manage and communicate with. To sell $3,600 retail in my experience takes a lot of marketing and communication. Now, scale that up….what if a florist buys $500 of flowers from you every week.

If you want to know how to price you flowers to florists my best advice is to make an account with your local floral wholesaler and see what their prices are. This will give you the best idea for pricing in your local area. (Pricing is a whole different topic…maybe on day I will do a blog just on that topic).

Be sure to start by selling in a smart way that is sustainable to your farm.

Florists are great people to work with.

I look at the florists that I work with as a member of my team.

It is a WIN-WIN. I win because I am working with other small local business that are largely owned by women. We are all supporting one another and working together. I grow the flowers…they arrange and sell them. I have so much respect for what they do, and I think the feeling is mutual.

I have worked with some florists for several years and I really consider some of them friends. They are some of my best cheerleaders.

The longer I am in flower farming I believe you can make a profit selling flowers in many different models. You can be profitable and only sell retail, only wholesale, only doing weddings, only off your roadside stand, or farmer’s markets. So you need to look at the different ways to sell and determine what is the way that you would like to sell flowers from your farm.

I started selling to florists because I found selling retail to be a lot of work and I did not want to have a roadside stand due to my location and honestly safety consideration with my small children that run and play all over our yard. I want our home to be a safe place for my children and not have people on our property all the time. I also knew that I did not want to spend my Friday and Saturday at Markets every week as we wanted to have more freedom than that, and because we need to actually farm and you have to be able to have time to work on your farm to tend the flowers that grow.

To conclude, I find selling to florists profitable because it allows me to move a large volume of flowers to one customer week after week. Also, because once you establish those relationships you can sell to the same florist year after year. The scheduled of selling to florists fits into my lifestyle of selling flowers during the week (I don’t want to work at a farmers market every weekend).

I hope this gives you some ideas about how adding in, or just starting out your farm by selling to florists may be a good sales outlet for your flower farm.

-Ruth Ann