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Could you tell us more about your shop? I'm just curious.
 
Sorry, I'm not Jan. I am her husband.

I've spent 25+ years as consultant to troubled companies, including florists at various times. I have been looking into issues that face local brick and mortar florist shops.

This forums looks like a good place to learn more, and share observations.

Best regards to all.
 
Here is a link http://www.flowerfusion.info

There are two pictures inside the shop at the bottom of the front page.

We have a Teleflora cookie cutter at http://www.flowerfusion.net

We bought the shop from Jason Kenneth Designs late last year. There has been a flower shop at this location in the shopping center location for 10+ years is my understanding.
 
I have been looking into issues that face local brick and mortar florist shops.
I saw comments (under your user name) about order gatherers and Google SERPs on Mike Blumenthal's blog and in the G Webmaster help forum. They didn't sound like Jan (whom I had the pleasure to meet on several occasions), which is why I asked.

There are a lot of discussions here about search engines and local search. You'll find enough reading to fill days.

Cathy
 
I saw comments (under your user name) about order gatherers and Google SERPs on Mike Blumenthal's blog and in the G Webmaster help forum. They didn't sound like Jan (whom I had the pleasure to meet on several occasions), which is why I asked.

There are a lot of discussions here about search engines and local search. You'll find enough reading to fill days.

Cathy

I am very concerned about the issues faced by local flower shops. I have been going at Google hot and heavy for about a week now. I would be glad to share some of those comments on this forums, if anyone thinks they might be worth discussing among florists.

If you have followed some of those comments you obviously know right where I stand on the issues.

My expertise is in dealing with hard issues, business turnarounds and workouts has been my profession. I don't mind to get with the program so to speak. LOL

My dad used to say, "The barking dog gets fed first, if he don't bark he don't get fed".

There are so many failures of brick and mortar florists it concerns me. The internet has changed the way people will have to do business in the future.
It will require businesses to unify and influence the forces on the internet to change and level out the playing field for local business.

The order gatherers are going hard at this industry. If you search Google on floral, flower, or florist business you will find a myriad of software and other start a business tools for going into the floral business. The bad part is... they are only to start order gathering businesses.

Constantly giving up the order fee of 20% to an ecommerce site owner topped off by wire service fees is taking it's toll on the local florist shops profitability.

Anyway, if others are interested to read some of my comments mentioned above I can make a few postings and include them.:tunes:
 
We have close to 7 years of discussions about order gatherers, their business models, their tactics and how to deal with them. One of the first threads (and still one of the most read) is the Official Order Gatherer Registry.

Most of us are strong advocates for a big clean-up of the deceptive practices, but you'll also find members here who are also OGs and/or who firmly believe in filling their orders to supplement income.

BTW, I wondered what happened to Jason Kenneth and didn't realize you guys took over the location. Great spot! (It's a few doors away from one of the best bridal salons in Southern California).
 
We have close to 7 years of discussions about order gatherers, their business models, their tactics and how to deal with them. One of the first threads (and still one of the most read) is the Official Order Gatherer Registry.

Most of us are strong advocates for a big clean-up of the deceptive practices, but you'll also find members here who are also OGs and/or who firmly believe in filling their orders to supplement income.

BTW, I wondered what happened to Jason Kenneth and didn't realize you guys took over the location. Great spot! (It's a few doors away from one of the best bridal salons in Southern California).

Voila! I just mentioned this posting to Jan and she recalls you very well. She attended a seminar where you discussed SEO with local florists.

She said,"Hello and best to you".

Hadley has had a shop in Vegas for several years, and decided to give that his full effort. Jan worked with Hadley awhile selling and doing wedding events, so he called her when he wanted to sell.

I looked at your site as well; impressive and excellent SEO.

By the time you build a site and SEO it for favorable local positioning you had just as well spend a bit more time, and do order gathering as well. Afterall, you have got all the blocks in place if you do SEO on a local scale as required on an national scale.

My concern with SEO, is not to think inside the box, but outside. There needs to be impetus for Google to change their system, not the local businesses being forced to make inordinate constant efforts with SEO to present their local business to local customers.

SEO is the key now to getting favorably positioned on search results. Most florists cannot take the time or spend what it takes to constantly maintain favorable search result positioning. It is a lot of work, and it shouldn't have to be that way for local businesses. It is not right that small businesses should have to compete with businesses that are basically parasites. They couldn't exist without the wire services.

The wire services are a problem, but it will probably be easier to influence the search engines to address local business issues with the search than the wire services.

I've built alot of websites, and the SEO is a nightmare of organized content I have always hated to produce.

Google and the other search engines need to focus on the needs of local businesses, for local maps and listings. They force site builders to their algorithm and all it does is create more goolash and worthless information on websites.

Seriously, the adwords and adsense are Googles priority and their algorithm is wrapped around their ad business.

The directories, and order gatherers are constantly given favorable positioning within "Local search terms". Not just local listing results,but all the searches aligned under the little map thingy.

Anyway, this is a priority with me right now. I hope to help my wife of course, also all local florist shops as well.
 
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Give us some more insight...like CHR posted, many thread about so many issues, but a new voice is always a great tool for us looking at all the possibilities.
Thanks, Eddie
 
Welcome to this great community.

Love your dog. :)

V
 
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