Article Software Aims To Save You Time And Money On Wedding Proposals

Katie Hendrick

Contributing Author
Jan 19, 2014
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When Ryan O’Neil married Rachael, owner of Twisted Willow Design in Florissant, Missouri, he quickly learned just how much time went into landing a bridal client.

“I watched her spend hours AFTER a consultation, writing out every flower the bride would want, looking each one up, multiplying it by her markup and adding up the numbers,” he said. “I could tell it was a very arduous process.”

It bothered him to see his wife frustrated, and he couldn’t help but think about all the quality time the couple was missing out on due to math. Then he started pondering how the gap between holding the consultation and presenting a quote might be costing his wife business.

“I figured, brides want three things in their florist. They need to like you. They need to trust you. And they need to be able to afford you,” he said. "The first two are usually solved in the consultation." But the more downtime you give the bride before giving her a quote, the more time you give her to shop around for the cheapest option.

“Photographers, bakers, deejays…they can all say, ‘These are my prices,’ while florists are forced to do back-of-the-napkin math to give a quote or stem count at home to respond with a proposal a week later,” he said. And with the scope of products and services a florist deals with — personal flowers, ceremony flowers, maybe even table settings and furniture rentals — it amounts to “more pieces than you’d find in a Maytag refrigerator,” O’Neil said. To see Rachael invest hours researching prices only to lose the bid to someone cheaper gave Ryan O’Neil the motivation to do something to streamline the process.

He started with Excel sheets, inputting prices for the flowers Rachael used the most often so she could just enter the quantities for a fast estimate. When he saw how well that improved his wife’s efficiency, O’Neil, founder of LOGOS Identity Branding, figured he could apply the same principle to software, which could help more florists. Thus, StemCounter.com was born.

StemCounter.com prelists the 50 most commonly used wedding flowers, and allows florists to enter hard goods and other fresh products they use frequently. Updating prices from your supplier takes mere seconds, O’Neil said. It quickly generates a price for two types of proposals, conceptual or precision, which O’Neil explains here.

Currently, about 20 florists use the software in a private beta. Among them: Samantha Bates, owner of Especially For You Florist in Ponchatoula, La., and the 2014 Louisiana State Designer of the Year. “Stem Counter has made the process of quoting and ordering weddings seamless and accurate,” Bates said. “After customizing in the initial set up, I am now able to quickly input information during consultations, present the bride with an professional quote and know that all of our cost are covered. No more number crunching!”

Since Rachael O’Neil started using StemCounter.com and quoting prices on the spot, she has increased her booking rate by 20 percent, with the majority (75 percent) of brides signing a contract at the end of the consultation.

“We’re very pleased with how it’s working,” Ryan O’Neil said. “Now, our next goal is to have not 20 florists using it, but 1,000. The more users, the better functionality StemCounter.com can have.”

To accomplish that, the O’Neils have taken StemCounter.com to Kickstarter and are asking for your help to reach their $10,000 funding goal by April 15. Learn more and offer your support here.
 
Wonderfully done Katie! Thanks for helping us share what we're doing. Would love to answer any questions that florists may have right here!
 
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