Fun, Flirty & Fashionable—This Shop Is Hooking Up With Youthful Customers
Every year, your clientele shifts just a little bit. A few of your senior customers will move to a stage in life where they simply won’t be buying flowers any more (though we hope they will still receive them from loved ones). More of your middle-aged customers’ interests will shift, and their floral purchases may skew from buying corsages for their sons’ prom dates to buying arrangements to decorate dinner-party tables. And your young June brides will become distracted with babies and careers and rely on you mostly as their go-to gift of choice for birthdays and holidays.
As each customer moves into a different stage of life, you serve them in different ways. But to maintain that continual flow of new customers into your shop, one thing remains critical: Encouraging younger customers to recognize and appreciate the beauty and value of flowers.
That’s why so many florists focus on catering to those high school students clustered around their prom bars each spring. Those young women (and their sometimes overbearing moms) may take forever to choose their blooms and ask unending questions about ribbon colors. But they are tomorrow’s brides. And their friends are the bridesmaids who will be paying attention and making notes for the day their own weddings become reality.
You, then, need to find creative ways to share the beauty and value of flowers with these young customers. Sure, you can place ads in the school newspapers and sell schools discounted buckets of roses or carnations at Valentine’s Day or St. Patrick’s Day for fundraising efforts. But those techniques don’t come close to matching the impact that Moon Canyon Design Co. has created among stylish, trendy young women in the Los Angeles area.
In a recent collaboration with a local clothing retailer and graphic design blogger, the floral stylists behind Moon Canyon, lifelong friends Kristen Caissie and Amy Lipnis, carted in bundles of flowers and set up an on-site floral station. There, as guests of the event watched (see the photos that accompany this post), they created imaginative and colorful floral hair pieces. In a temporary photo booth, the customers posed and preened for the camera as the blossoms curved daintily behind and over their ears.
The joy of the women (and even a few obviously self-assured men) with the flowers in their hair was palpable. They were unexpectedly giddy with delight!
The Moon Canyon pair is an imaginative duo in other ways, too. They participate in craft fairs, selling beautifully understated sage “smudge sticks” and wreaths, miniature succulent arrangements, terrariums and “floral bundles” (fresh and dried flowers and herbs wrapped tightly together in colorful, tubular packages). With their blogger friend, they even created the idea of a flower “bomb”—an idea in which they express their gratefulness to a friend by placing flowers in an unexpected place—in this case, the entire front passenger seat of a vintage Mercedes.
Their Pinterest boards are gorgeously organized, tempting the visitor to click from one to the next, getting lost in the images of the women’s romantic stylings. Their Instagram profile is similarly engaging, with a mix of personal pics and photos of their work. And their Facebook page has a fun, flirty, personal feel—one to which the studio’s many young fans can undoubtedly relate.
If your shop hasn’t been connecting with a younger clientele, perhaps it’s time to consider what steps you can take to appeal to these up-and-coming customers. Check out how these hipsters are hooking up with and enchanting their patrons. Perhaps you’ll get inspired to organize your own high-spirited and cheerful activities and lure in some youthful customers of your own.
Share your creative endeavors with FlowerChat! Send a note to [email protected] or add a comment to this discussion below.
Don’t Be SHY!
Make a comment! FlowerChat can’t fulfill its mission to help florists without your participation in the forums! So take a moment to add YOUR thoughts to this discussion! Don’t see any comments listed yet? Be the first to start the discussion and encourage others to join in.
Every year, your clientele shifts just a little bit. A few of your senior customers will move to a stage in life where they simply won’t be buying flowers any more (though we hope they will still receive them from loved ones). More of your middle-aged customers’ interests will shift, and their floral purchases may skew from buying corsages for their sons’ prom dates to buying arrangements to decorate dinner-party tables. And your young June brides will become distracted with babies and careers and rely on you mostly as their go-to gift of choice for birthdays and holidays.
As each customer moves into a different stage of life, you serve them in different ways. But to maintain that continual flow of new customers into your shop, one thing remains critical: Encouraging younger customers to recognize and appreciate the beauty and value of flowers.
That’s why so many florists focus on catering to those high school students clustered around their prom bars each spring. Those young women (and their sometimes overbearing moms) may take forever to choose their blooms and ask unending questions about ribbon colors. But they are tomorrow’s brides. And their friends are the bridesmaids who will be paying attention and making notes for the day their own weddings become reality.
You, then, need to find creative ways to share the beauty and value of flowers with these young customers. Sure, you can place ads in the school newspapers and sell schools discounted buckets of roses or carnations at Valentine’s Day or St. Patrick’s Day for fundraising efforts. But those techniques don’t come close to matching the impact that Moon Canyon Design Co. has created among stylish, trendy young women in the Los Angeles area.
In a recent collaboration with a local clothing retailer and graphic design blogger, the floral stylists behind Moon Canyon, lifelong friends Kristen Caissie and Amy Lipnis, carted in bundles of flowers and set up an on-site floral station. There, as guests of the event watched (see the photos that accompany this post), they created imaginative and colorful floral hair pieces. In a temporary photo booth, the customers posed and preened for the camera as the blossoms curved daintily behind and over their ears.
The joy of the women (and even a few obviously self-assured men) with the flowers in their hair was palpable. They were unexpectedly giddy with delight!
The Moon Canyon pair is an imaginative duo in other ways, too. They participate in craft fairs, selling beautifully understated sage “smudge sticks” and wreaths, miniature succulent arrangements, terrariums and “floral bundles” (fresh and dried flowers and herbs wrapped tightly together in colorful, tubular packages). With their blogger friend, they even created the idea of a flower “bomb”—an idea in which they express their gratefulness to a friend by placing flowers in an unexpected place—in this case, the entire front passenger seat of a vintage Mercedes.
Their Pinterest boards are gorgeously organized, tempting the visitor to click from one to the next, getting lost in the images of the women’s romantic stylings. Their Instagram profile is similarly engaging, with a mix of personal pics and photos of their work. And their Facebook page has a fun, flirty, personal feel—one to which the studio’s many young fans can undoubtedly relate.
If your shop hasn’t been connecting with a younger clientele, perhaps it’s time to consider what steps you can take to appeal to these up-and-coming customers. Check out how these hipsters are hooking up with and enchanting their patrons. Perhaps you’ll get inspired to organize your own high-spirited and cheerful activities and lure in some youthful customers of your own.
Share your creative endeavors with FlowerChat! Send a note to [email protected] or add a comment to this discussion below.
Don’t Be SHY!
Make a comment! FlowerChat can’t fulfill its mission to help florists without your participation in the forums! So take a moment to add YOUR thoughts to this discussion! Don’t see any comments listed yet? Be the first to start the discussion and encourage others to join in.
