Wrist Corsage Pictures

Thanks for the input on the flower, will have to look that up and edumacate myself.

I love putzing with different flowers and such for corsages, but the moms around here have been taking it to the extreme with taking an hour or more to pick everything out for maybe a $30 piece and making unreasonable demands. We've had to "adjust" our dance choices and take them back to the basic designs and flowers again. We spent so much extra time accommodating people that it became an issue with justifying the labor expense including extra time to design the piece.

Was told by someone at a design show that if you offer unlimited custom designs you lose money.

We can't just ask them to leave it to us to design, they don't like that. I can see if it's your shop, you can putz away and enjoy it, but working for someone else you need to be efficient, productive and profitable. Maybe we just spoiled our customers?

Anyone else have input on this? I would love to hear it.
 
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Trish, this may work for you.

There are a lot of 'designers'who hate the idea of a menu/recipe......I'm not one of them.

Take a large peice of foamcore.......make 3 wrist corsages......using the SAMEflowers in each ( permanent flowers ).......make one a basic design, make one a little more fancier than the basic, and the last one is the fanciest.

determine the BASE price for a corsage using your five most popular flowers......i.e. Spray roses, dendrobium orchids, mini-cymbidiums, etc.

Now, take ALL your accesories......like satin leaves, rhinestones, pearls, various wristlets, netting, tulle, bouquet jewels, diamante pins, etc. and put samples of those items on the board. Number them and PRICE them individually.

When the Mom's/Kid's come in........show them the board......let them pick a base style OFF THE BOARD......and how many each of the accessories they want. It might be 5 of number 3, or 7 of number 8, - Tally up the base price PLUS all the accessories........let them pay and go out the door.

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Trish, I think Ricky's advice is great. My 20 years in retail (craft industry, not floral) taught me many great lessons... but perhaps the biggest one of all is that more choices DO NOT = more money! The 80/20 law applies... 80 percent of the purchase will be made by the top 20 percent best selling items. By offering your best sellers as Ricky suggests, you'll make 80 percent of your customers happy. For the other 20 percent, make sure you price accordingly so your labor time is worth it. They'll pay... really!
 
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We did have a board with all of the choices on it including samples, they took 15 mins picking out the color of pins for the stephanotis, or the color of pin for the bout, or another 20 mins deciding on leaves, can't make up their minds, mom wants to choose, argument begins, they can't agree. Taking at least an hour to pick out a $30 corsage and all the little doodads. We spent 3 hours with one gal coming in over and over.

We took away most of their choices and said it's up to the designer to pick the rest, 1.5 hours to take the order and design the corsage because of all the putzing, we were losing money. We now offer a few colors of roses, sometimes steph and sometimes dendros.

Cutting back to a few styles is what we've had to do, but if you give them the choice, they will spend forever picking each little thing out that goes with that style. Our biggest dance weekend so far we actually left on time for once, but some people were unhappy we didn't offer custom, custom, different as usual.

Maybe for prom we I can remake the samples in the way Rick said and then we can offer the ultimate custom piece starting at $50 and it can be as different as they want.

Thanks for the advice.
Trish

Sorry for derailing your thread Karen, wishing I could post pics of amazing corsages, but we are doing cookie cutters this year, sigh, always enjoyed doing the different stuff.
 
Trish, the secret to minimizing Mom's involvement in Prom........and to increase the creativity...........and to increase per dollar sales......is simple.

You need to send out flyers, advertise on your sign or marquee, get some of your customers to get their prom-age daughters and sons to get out the word......AND HAVE THE KIDS COME IN TOGETHER.......and order the corsage and bout at the SAME TIME. You need to encourage one-up-manship, you need to be able to say....SO and so got this.......What about this?


Trust me..........once you are able to get them in the store together.......THEN your sales will rocket.
 
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RWK said:
Trish, this may work for you.

There are a lot of 'designers'who hate the idea of a menu/recipe......I'm not one of them.

Take a large peice of foamcore.......make 3 wrist corsages......using the SAMEflowers in each ( permanent flowers ).......make one a basic design, make one a little more fancier than the basic, and the last one is the fanciest.

determine the BASE price for a corsage using your five most popular flowers......i.e. Spray roses, dendrobium orchids, mini-cymbidiums, etc.

Now, take ALL your accesories......like satin leaves, rhinestones, pearls, various wristlets, netting, tulle, bouquet jewels, diamante pins, etc. and put samples of those items on the board. Number them and PRICE them individually.

When the Mom's/Kid's come in........show them the board......let them pick a base style OFF THE BOARD......and how many each of the accessories they want. It might be 5 of number 3, or 7 of number 8, - Tally up the base price PLUS all the accessories........let them pay and go out the door.

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Click to expand...
Ricky this is a great idea!! Thanks
 
A couple photos from prom work we did in the spring. We only put our wrist corsages on the beaded bracelets, they can choose the color.
 

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You guys are so lucky we had one school in the area who only did the queen bouquet and no other flowers for the homecoming court as money is tight for the schools. So that meant the kids didn't do corsages then.
Are those mini cymbidims in the corsages?
 
Spookyflowers said:
You guys are so lucky we had one school in the area who only did the queen bouquet and no other flowers for the homecoming court as money is tight for the schools. So that meant the kids didn't do corsages then.
Are those mini cymbidims in the corsages?
Click to expand...

There is one school in the area, we only did a few wrist corsages... The bigger school in town rocked -- 76 wristlets..

Just get ready for Prom!

Yes I do use the mini cymbidiums... I love them!
 
Wow, very nice Keren! We had one school that did quite a few, reports were that there wasn't as much sales this season for dances including the styling salons.
 
You guys over the pond certainly have a head start on us when it comes to wrist corsages they are all so beautiful and creative. They are just starting to catch on oveer here and we do have the fitz bases and lovely they are but wholesale here they are about $13 is that about right over there? Also what else do you make the bases out of and do you all mostly cold glue them into place. That is what I have been doing but I never seem to get such a lovely shape as you guys do. Any ideas where I might be going wrong? All advice gratefully received I love to learn.
 
vivb said:
You guys over the pond certainly have a head start on us when it comes to wrist corsages they are all so beautiful and creative. They are just starting to catch on oveer here and we do have the fitz bases and lovely they are but wholesale here they are about $13 is that about right over there? Also what else do you make the bases out of and do you all mostly cold glue them into place. That is what I have been doing but I never seem to get such a lovely shape as you guys do. Any ideas where I might be going wrong? All advice gratefully received I love to learn.
Click to expand...

Thank you! I will come teach you!!! I use fitz band and the elastic bands... I just make them work no matter which one they choose.
 
Its that time again!!
01-07-2011_032_copy.jpg
 
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Great pics everyone !
We took part in a prom and party show here back in November...sadly it wasnt very successful ? Still not sure if some areas of the UK have come to terms with the Prom scene ? we push and promote wristlets, but sell them only for weddings !!!!!!!!
 
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