Is 30% of Something better than 0% of Nothing???

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Mark Anderson said:
And one last time I would like to apologize if I have disparaged any consultant. That was not my intention! Based on repeated comments I thought I had an understanding of their basic message - I see now that I did not.
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it bears repeating, but, NOT the "apology".....every once in a while, YOU, my friend, make MORE "sense" than all of us put together!!
NOW, we can Kumbaya......:musical:
 
Well, I'll add to this......Ya'll mark this one on the calendar. I don't remember when we had a WS debate in which it seems that EVERYBODY learned something new that they did not know before.

Thanks for the education all. :thumbsup
 
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CHR said:
In all sincerity and honesty, I would like to hear from the folks who nominated Goldie's post in this thread for Thread of the Week.
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I'll bite. We talk about the pros and cons of WS here daily. I've just been around so long that I know the opinions of many folks here. That in no way means that WS membership should not be discussed here. For me, I simply long for a new look at an old problem.
 
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bloomz said:
I just came back from buying my little boy some Bakugans, on the way home I passed our main local competitor's shop. She's been the one who wants all the incoming. I've been content to get all the outgoing and let her have all the incoming.

I see a brand new delivery van sitting outside her shop, covered with flowers, ala Expressions in Bloom (sincerest form of flattery I guess) -
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Not sure what time of day you drove by, BUT... shouldn't this brand new delivery van have been DELIVERING??!! Otherwise... it's just a very expensive sign.
 
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Sorta related; there is a florist in a neighboring town with a dumpy store and no discernable style anywhere, and she has 4 or 5 vans! And a full page yellowbook ad! So who knows. :confused: I sure don't. I'm just gonna keep plugging away over here and do my thing.
 
Give Heather the gold star for stating the obvious......She's right, Rather than seeing the new van at the shop......shouldn't you have seen it OUT AND ABOUT?
 
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Joe Mioux said:
Except you aren't supposed to do that.
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I'm not supposed to make money off of an order??? I have two teenaged boys to feed..

That is exactly my point! If I make money it is only because the consumer was cheated...

And we don't do that here... SO - we just don't fill OG orders! :O)
 
makescents said:
That is exactly my point! If I make money it is only because the consumer was cheated...
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Well on that one...indeed

I'll stop just short of saying baloney and just say.....

opinions vary ;)

RWK said:
Give Heather the gold star for stating the obvious......She's right, Rather than seeing the new van at the shop......shouldn't you have seen it OUT AND ABOUT?
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Actually no.

It was at nighttime.

Connie said:
Believe me, it can be done. I did not believe it, but it can be true.
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Connie and I both have a very good and very smart friend who does math quite well and is proving that. He's doing all the bloomnet orders in his area.

He used to be here as well and he has heard it all, believe me.
 
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RC in Dayton and Cincinnati said:
Bloomz,

Now that we know this thread was all about you and that your consultant suggested you fill more incoming wire orders how will you go about doing that?

Also, which wire service did he recommend you drop?
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Dead silence.... what'd ya do to piss him off Randy?
 
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RC in Dayton and Cincinnati said:
Maybe he thinks I'm trying to bait him.

Let me approach this in another way.

What does a florist need to do to get more incoming wire orders?

Anyone?

RC
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Well, you can call up all the OG's and ask to get added to their preferred list, if that is something you want to do...This was a tactic I used a while back to get one of my employers operating into the black for the first time in 12 years....There was a whloe lot more to may plan, but it worked...we were filling 30% of the shops gross income, it was a quick way to up production and consumption of product to get a better price on flowers...it was in a very large market, Boston...

Note, this shop was struggling with many problems, first of which was major stuffing second of which was over staffing and over buying of low quality flowers to get the deals....I cut staff way back and watched recipes like a hawk....I upped production of all employees, drivers included and made things way more efficient...then I used the fact that we were in a large market for incomings and got put on many lists because we still had excess production at non-holiday times...lastly I changed the low quality deals to high quality flowers at a deal...business increased across the board from all of these things...

The owner went from struggling from day to day to getting a steady paycheck week after week and able to make his rent on time...he was well on his way to getting some real assets for the business so he could sell it and retire, but screwed it up by buying a personal property at the height of the real estate fiasco with not enough momentum behind him business wise, hence the reason why I am now in my own shop..trying everyday to figure out my best course of action...

Funny thing is I was grooming the previous business to be mine, I had a vested interest in it...I knew it better than anything in my life and knew the market...The one mistake I made was buying in a different market than I knew and now I have a steep learning curve working against me...

Final thought, everyone's market is different, everyone's business is different...each one of us has a vastly different situation and what we do with it is our very own strategy. We all have differing factors for and against us...complicating matters...This is why we can never agree...and anyone reading here that would take anyone elses situation and read it as gospel probably won't make it very long in business, because you can never ever make any decisions based on someone elses facts...it just doesn't work that way...also business strategy is very similar to risk, you must look to the future and know where you want to be and make a strategy and guesses on how to get there with the info you know...sometimes you will win, sometimes you will lose, it is knowing when to quit a losing strategy or stay with a slow winner that make some complete winners in the end...
 
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I'm going to ask a question - There is no right or wrong answer, except how you feel.

After looking at several other threads....the 2 hour response thing, FTD Dollar a day, and some of tht other postings......Let me ask you this.

Are the Wire Services MORE trouble, More headache, More PITA than they are worth?
 
RWK said:
I'm going to ask a question - There is no right or wrong answer, except how you feel.

After looking at several other threads....the 2 hour response thing, FTD Dollar a day, and some of tht other postings......Let me ask you this.

Are the Wire Services MORE trouble, More headache, More PITA than they are worth?
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At the holidays, when you have more than enough of your own work they can be a PITA, other times I very rarely have problems..The order comes in I can either do it or not, a reject goes out and the order gets filed or it get done...easy peasy
 
RC in Dayton and Cincinnati said:
Let me approach this in another way.

What does a florist need to do to get more incoming wire orders?

Anyone?

RC
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Provide excellent service and a high quality, fresh product... IMO this entails:

1. offer same day delivery up until 3pm EST
2. guarantee to satisfy the customer and/or recipient as you would your own local customer
3. fill as pictured (or notify significant substitutions) to 100% value minus your codified delivery charge.
4. be prepared to handle holiday, even same day (excluding Xmas Day for same day, but all other holidays)
5. open and delivering 7 days a week, Offering express deliveries is an added plus (of course for the proper fee)
6. have an EXTENSIVE variety of FRESH flowers and plants EVERYDAY of the week.
7. be VERY quick with dove/merc correspondences (every florist hates getting a refusal hours or days after it was sent for lame reasons)

Ironically our Tel rep just dropped off our top 100 Tel plaque about two hrs ago. (is that plaque like a wall plaque or nasty grime on your teeth - no time to check that sorry LOL)
 
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Just a thought but what IF the Same Day delivery guarantee could be applied ONLY Florist-to-Florist? Wouldn't that kind of knock the OGs down a bit? Most of us know OG orders take extra attention/time to figure out (if you're paying attention to your bottom line) and therefore it takes extra time to fulfill/reject those orders because an actual florist (in many cases) isn't interacting directly with the customer/consumer in the first place. It's just NOT the same as a REAL F2F incoming wire. Open for discussion....
 
HeatherTuckey said:
our Tel rep just dropped off our top 100 Tel plaque about two hrs ago.
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Heather thanks for the tid-bit... put's a whole new light on your spin for filling incoming....

As far as your #"s 1-7... no thanks, I don't want to work that hard for discounted orders, that service is reserved for my 100% customers.
 
It appears that reality is setting in....

The way I see it is as follows

Many of your operating costs are fixed (they do not necessarily change dependent on your volume) these would include rent, equipment leases, utilities, etc.

Other operating costs are variable (will increase or decrease dependent on a number of factors) such as labour, delivery, etc.

So if a shop is making money their fixed costs are covered. So the margin on additional sales volume does not have to go toward paying covering these costs.

So if a shop is working on say an average 70% gross margin that breaks out as follows

30% Fixed Operating Costs
30% Variable Operating Costs
10% Profit

This means if they are already breaking even you have the first 30% Fixed Operating Costs covered already and do not necessarily have to account for those costs in your margin on additional business.

As well your Variable Operating Costs are already being covered at their current level with the business you are doing.

Lets for the sake of argument say tha when you start doing lots of incoming wires your variable costs jump by 20%.

You should still make money on incoming wires and a profit to boot.

I think part of the problem is most operators work on margins and have a set number in their mind that it takes to keep the doors open.
 
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Dorothy said:
Just a thought but what IF the Same Day delivery guarantee could be applied ONLY Florist-to-Florist? Wouldn't that kind of knock the OGs down a bit? Most of us know OG orders take extra attention/time to figure out (if you're paying attention to your bottom line) and therefore it takes extra time to fulfill/reject those orders because an actual florist (in many cases) isn't interacting directly with the customer/consumer in the first place. It's just NOT the same as a REAL F2F incoming wire. Open for discussion....
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As an OG, and a "real florist" - I will tell you - not that many orders are for same day delivery, probably not even half of them.

And Doug made me think of something...

If my fixed expenses are already paid, another way of looking at that 30% is....

drum roll.....

profit! :drunk:


And RC - the one he told us to drop was FSI - we don't send or receive enough with them to keep an additional one on.

'scuze me for not answering promptly - shop to run, orders to gather, money to count, and all that, ya know...:treadonme
 
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