Find Your 
“Paying it forward” is a movement that has swept across the United States. Receiving something unexpected brings smiles, joy and sometimes even tears. This year local florists are taking part in the movement to spread happiness nationwide.
FSN at SAF Mini Conference
June 12, 2015 by Leave a Comment
We had a fantastic time at Society of American Florists’ mini conference “Retail Growth Solutions.” Our FSN Account Manager Irving Casiano Flores enjoyed the conference immensely. Here are some pictures from the wonderful weekend.
Irving Casiano Flores with FSN Member Anne Siu from Abigail’s Flowers of San Francisco, California.
A great turn out to a very informative mini session.
A lovely design for the competition.
A beautiful arrangement with pops of color.
Thank you to everyone who stopped by our booth! We also want to thank all who made it a great weekend! Check back with the Bloomin’ Blog to see where we go next!
November Newsletter: Having a Terrific Turkey Day!
November 19, 2013 by Leave a Comment
November is the month that everyone sets aside for giving thanks, and Flower Shop Network is no different! This month we’d like to take a few sentences to thank you, our florists and customers! Without the talented men and women who take up the challenging mantle of florist in every city and small town in the world, Flower Shop Network would not exist. A person does not become a florist to get rich. Instead, they do it because it’s something they love. Making other people happy during their most special moments in turn makes the florist happy. So to all florists out there, thank you.
For those of you out there who love flowers and bring your business to local florists, thank you. Without you, there would be no local florist to use. The local florist is the life’s blood of the floral industry, and you are the ones that allow them to thrive! So thank you all, and know that Flower Shop Network is committed to doing our part to help the floral industry and local florists flourish!
Happy Thanksgiving!
FSN at the Society of American Florists Convention 2013!
If you didn’t make it to Phoenix, AZ this September, you missed out on an amazing, informative weekend full of conferences, fun and some serious floral beauty! Flower Shop Network was there in force and we’ve got some excellent photos to show you. So sit back, relax and enjoy the show!
Here is a photo of the FSN booth. As usual, our setup crew did a great job! But enough with the same old, same old. Let’s take a look at some of the cool stuff!
Continue reading FSN at the Society of American Florists Convention 2013!
Best Reasons to Send Flowers in November!
While we like to say every day is a perfect day to make someone happy with flowers, here are our absolute favorite reasons to spread love and kindness this month.
1. Hanukkah (first day) – November 28th – This is a very special year for the first day of Hanukkah. This is the first and last time Hanukkah will ever overlap with Thanksgiving! People are having fun coining terms like “Thanksgivukkah” and “Hanugivingkkah” just for the occasion. And there are so many beautiful blooms to help you celebrate. White, silver, and blue combinations are the most popular and are a perfect addition to the celebration table.
2.Thanksgiving – November 28th – Time to feast and give thanks with our families! And probably watch some football too. Make your celebration special with a fall-inspired centerpiece. Also, centerpieces make a wonderful gift to send to family and friends unable to come together for the occasion. Show gratitude for love and friendship with flowers
3. November Birthdays – November’s birthday flower is the chrysanthemum. Available in so many different varieties and colors, chrysanthemums will let someone with a special birthday know that you considered their gift carefully. A red chrysanthemum means “I love you” while white chrysanthemums mean innocence, purity, and pure love. Yellow chrysanthemums mean “slighted love.” Ask your local florist to include the beautiful and colorful chrysanthemum in a fresh cut arrangement or to deliver a gorgeous long-lasting blooming plant.
Continue Reading Best Reasons to Send Flowers in November!
Facebook Friday: October Favorites
We provide a Friday recap of all the wonderful posts and pictures from active florists on our Facebook Page. It’s been so much fun seeing all the completely different designs every day. We hope you enjoy these favorites and continue through to see more from each Friday this month:
Wilma’s Flowers, Jasper, AL |
Monday Flowers, Princeton, NJ |
Oran’s Flower Shop, Kingston, TN |
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Crossroads Florist, Mahwah, NJ |
Honeysuckle Lane, Aurora, NE |
Floral Design, Post Falls, ID |
See all Facebook Recap pictures in these posts:
- Florist Friday Recap 10/5 – 10/11: Fantastic Florals
- Florist Friday Recap 10/12 – 10/18: Pumpkins, Kitties and Guitars!
- Florist Friday Recap 10/19 – 10/25: Fun with Fall Florals
- Florist Friday Recap 10/26 – 11/1: A Profusion of Perfection
Posey Peddler – A Florist Improving Customer Service!
As part of Customer Service Week, (October 7th-11th) we wanted to share with you one of our members who is working hard to boost customer service and sales in their flower shop.
A Local Florist Taking Action
Bridgette Mills Arnold, a 30 year veteran of the floral industry, is the owner of Posey Peddler in Joneboro, Arkansas. The shop has been a fixture in the Jonesboro area since 1998 and serves the local community with custom gifts, flowers, plants and home decor.
Recently Bridgette brought in customer service and sales guru Tim Huckabee of Floral Strategies to conduct a workshop with her employees.
Read more about Posey Peddler – A Florist Improving Customer Service!
Don’t Forget the Florals for Thanksgiving!
Thanksgiving dinner. Is there a more delicious collection of food gathered together at one meal? Family comes together, gives thanks for the blessings in their lives throughout the past year and shares in a meal prepared to reflect the bounty they have received. It is a time of gratitude, love and appreciation for what and who has blessed your life.
What better way to express those emotions to your friends and family than through a gift of flowers?
Giving Thanks with Flowers
This year, instead of arriving at your dinner with a prepared dish in hand, offer a beautiful fall bouquet to your hostess! She will be far more grateful to receive gorgeous flowers than yet another green bean casserole. The flowers will make the perfect decoration for the festivities and will be a boon to everyone’s day!
Read more about Don’t Forget the Florals for Thanksgiving!
FLOWER CARE TIP After carefully removing the good flowers, clean the vase thoroughly with soapy water to remove any bacteria that could cause the fresh flowers to deteriorate even quicker. Be sure to rinse thoroughly. More Flower Care Tips
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Documenting Your Work – Photo Tips for Florists As a florist you are creating beauty everyday for others to enjoy and to help celebrate moments in their lives. But how often do you get to enjoy and celebrate your own work? Rarely, right? Between filling orders, making last minute rush deliveries, and trying to promote your shop, you are busy trying to run a business. But a passion for beauty got you into this industry so don’t let a hectic workday stop you from documenting your hard work.
FSN Member wins Second Annual Buckwald Scholarship! We would like to congratulate Lavender Hill Florals of Jeffersonville, IN for winning the second annual Buckwald scholarship! Way to go, ladies!
FSN and Rick Rivers at the Ozark Florist Association Convention The Ozark Florist Association held their annual convention on the 13th, 14th, and 15th of September. FSN was there to take part in the festivities and cheer on Rick Rivers as he gave his presentation titled “Marketing in Today’s Climate”. Here are a few photos of what we saw!
A Giving Boss’s Day with FSN Boss’s Day was a roaring success at the FSN offices, and for more than just our bosses! The sales department decided to do something a little different this year to honor Brock and Loranne, the owners of Flower Shop Network. Because our owners are such generous people, the sales department chose to do something that embraced their spirit, something that went beyond the walls of our offices and reached out into the community.
Help make Flower Shop Network‘s monthly newsletter even better! Got questions? Have an idea for a story? With your help, we can make the FSN newsletter just what you want and need. You can drop us a note in the comment section on the blog or email us at social@flowershopnetwork.com. We can’t wait to hear from you!
FSN Member wins Second Annual Buckwald Scholarship!
October 22, 2013 by Leave a Comment
We would like to congratulate Lavender Hill Florals of Jeffersonville, IN for winning the second annual Buckwald scholarship! Way to go, ladies!
About the Buckwald Scholarship
The Gary Buckwald Scholarship for Excellence in Floral Sales and Service consists of $10,000 worth of training, coaching and mentoring over the course of a year for a florist and her staff. This scholarship, the result of a collaboration between the Society of American Florists and Floral Strategies, has an application process open to any retailer who has been in business for at least 18 months. Tim Huckabee, president of Floral Strategies, says that they attempt to discover a retailer who “genuinely wants and needs the training, and is willing to put what they learn into practice.”
It is a recent award, but its lack of age is no knock on its incredible value. The tremendous benefit of having the opportunity to receive top-notch personal training from Tim Huckabee cannot be overstated. Tim will be making several trips out to Lavender Hill Florist over the next year to work with the staff on their sales and customer service skills.
Congratulations Lavender Hill Florals
This is both a great honor and great opportunity for FSN member, Lavender Hill Florals. We are excited for them and know that Tim will lead them down a path toward even greater success!
FSN at the Society of American Florists Convention 2013!
October 17, 2013 by Leave a Comment
If you didn’t make it to Phoenix, AZ this September, you missed out on an amazing, informative weekend full of conferences, fun and some serious floral beauty! Flower Shop Network was there in force and we’ve got some excellent photos to show you. So sit back, relax and enjoy the show!
Here is a photo of the FSN booth. As usual, our setup crew did a great job! But enough with the same old, same old. Let’s take a look at some of the cool stuff!
Take a look at these excellent varieties from the Outstanding Varieties Exhibition! That is some fantastic work!
Here’s a close-up of a gorgeous variety. I can definitely see why it’s a blue ribbon winner!
Another blue ribbon winner. Just gorgeous. But wait, where are the people?
It’s Brock and Loranne, the owners of FSN! They look very happy attending the Stars of the Industry Awards Reception & Dinner. Judging from the food on those plates, I think I see where all the good cheer is originating! That looks delicious!
This is Cindy, our VP of Sales and her husband Bobby. The dinner is making smiles all around!
Here’s a nice overview of the room. It should come as no surprise, but there are some lovely florals adorning this banquet! I love seeing florists putting their decorating skills to use! Speaking of florists and skills, I saw a few items that gave floral dresses a WHOLE new meaning!
A gorgeous interpretation. These dress/flower mixes are amazing!
This one is so elegant. Is it just me, or does anyone else feel this is reminiscent of the recent movie Black Swan with Natalie Portman?
It looks like the forest draped itself around this mannequin! I can’t help but think of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”.
What is this, Hawaii? Let’s go to a Luau!! Fun and beautiful all at once! Speaking of Hawaii, what does that state and Phoenix, AZ have in common? Beautiful weather and golf courses!
Here’s Brock standing beside the hole sponsored by FSN! Looking good!
Fore!
Umm … looks like someone’s in the rough. Oops. We here at Flower Shop Network accept no responsibility for the user’s ability to play the game. We just think our logo makes a snappy decoration.
I hope you enjoyed this photo recap of the SAF convention for 2013! There was a lot happening and a lot worth seeing. If you didn’t make it to this year’s convention, don’t fret. There’s always next year! And believe me, you don’t want to miss next year. SAF is going to be held at the Marriott Marco Island Resort in Marco Island, FL, August 13th-16th! Don’t miss your opportunity for fun in the Florida sun!
Tips From The Top With Tim Huckabee
July 7, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Jamie from FSN had a great opportunity to interview Tim Huckabee, president of FloralStrategies at the 2011 SAF Growth Solutions Conference in Dallas. FloralStrategies is the only on-site training program in the entire floral industry that teaches critically important customer care skills. [Read more…]
Flower Shop Network goes to the Northeast Floral Expo
March 10, 2008 by 1 Comment
Representatives from Flower Shop Network attended the Northeast Floral Expo in Hartford CT on March 1st and 2nd.
From upper left to right: Joe Hays, Loranne Atwill, Brock Atwill and Leslie Cox.
New England florists and vendors attended floral design, business and technology seminars and presentations. New business relationships were forged and products were purchased and sold. High School students competed in floral design and select florists displayed some amazing work. Congratulations to the officials of the Northeast Floral Expo for another successful show.
Renato Cruz Sogueco, Chief Information Officer with SAF visited our booth after his presentation on how to be a web savvy florist.
Renato’s seminar was attended by more than fifty florists interested in claiming their place on search engine results. It is apparent that owners are realizing the Internet is the new preferred way for customers to shop and order flowers. Renato relayed the story of a shop owner in Denver, located directly across the street from a large hi-tech company. The shop owner said that almost 30% of his revenue came from the employees of that building, although he had never had a single one of them come inside his shop. Renato expanded on the point by saying that Generation Y (kids these days) are more comfortable online, than on the phone.
Renato outlined some basic ways to improve your website’s appeal to the search engines, pointing out that content in the form of keyword rich text was really more important than “pretty pictures”or flash.
Blogging as well as exposure on social networking sites such as Myspace.com and Facebook.com and even YouTube.com are ways to gain more exposure for a flower shop’s website, according to Renato.
In the end, a shop wants to wrap up as many postions on the natural results as possible. Ways to accomplish this are through listing with online floral directories, such as FlowerShopNetwork.com. For more information on Renato and SAF visit www.safnow.org.
Joe Hays of Flower Shop Network meets member Jenny Thomas of Oak Hill Florist from Scarborough, ME.
Flower Shop Network members Dot and Paul Chenevert of The Green Oak Florist in Hyde Park, New York, talk to Leslie about their new FSN website.
Our neighbor at the show also happens to be the representative for our phone system here at work. We would highly recommend anyone looking to improve communications to contact Kelly Lumpkin of Alternate Access about their TeleVantage system.
A member of our sister site, FGmarket.com (wholesale directory for floral and gift products) , Carroll Hunt, is always good for a laugh and a positive attitude. Carroll offers a delivery product that we personally used back when we had a flower shop. We highly recommend it. Check out their website at SeminoleDeliverySystem.com.
Thank you to the officials of the 2008 Northeast Floral Expo for producing a very productive show. We look forward to seeing all of you again in 2009.
SAF Announces: Sales Tax Project Grants Two-Year Extension
June 28, 2007 by Leave a Comment
SAF announced June 28th that an extension was granted on the sales tax issue concerning the taxation of wire services orders. Below is a copy of the article issued by SAF.
Sales Tax Project Grants Two-Year Extension
The Governing Board of the Streamlined Sales Tax Project (SSTP) voted for a two-year extension of floral rules on the taxation of wire orders at its Detroit meeting last week. This extension, which lasts until Dec. 31, 2009, was granted to allow the project time to establish long-term rules concerning the taxation of wire orders. In addition, once the long-term rules are decided it will give time for the states and the industry to prepare to implement those rules. This extension means that sales taxes will continue to be collected by the sending florist and remitted to the local taxing authority — just as it has been for many decades.
The SSTP was started eight years ago as an attempt by the states to streamline the sales tax process by agreeing to uniform definitions and rules concerning the collection of sales taxes. This is done to facilitate the eventual passage of Federal legislation that will require retailers to collect sales taxes based on the destination of the product. The change will allow the states to collect billions of dollars in sales taxes that currently are not collected on Internet and catalogue sales. This change will level the competitive field between traditional “brick and mortar” retailers and Internet sellers, as well as bring significant additional revenue to the states. In the interim, by agreeing on uniform definitions and rules, many businesses are voluntarily agreeing to collect those taxes now.
Currently 15 states are full members of the SSTP that have enacted legislation in their individual states to bring their law in compliance with the SSTP agreement. Those states are Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont and West Virginia. Seven other states are associate members and are working on becoming full members. Those states are Arkansas, Nevada, Ohio, Tennessee, Utah, Wyoming and Washington.
SAF and Teleflora have been involved in the project since June 2002, working on behalf of the floral industry by attending the meetings and participating in the various committees. FTD has also participated in the effort.
For information, contact SAF’s Drew Gruenburg at dgruenburg@safnow.org.
— Paul Goodman, SAF’s representative to the SSTP issue, and president of Floral Finance Business Services Inc.
Member Florist wins Civic Award
April 26, 2007 by Leave a Comment
Oklahoma Florist Wins Civic Award
New businesses, take note: it’s not just the established florists that get local accolades.
Glenda Wise of The Bamboo Orchid recently received the Civic Improvement Award (in the Small Business — New Construction category), for Poteau, Okla., as well as citations of congratulations from her senator and congressional representative, only a year after opening her doors in January 2006.
“Her business was judged on … the overall appearance, inside and out,” says Bonnie Prigmore of the Poteau Chamber of Commerce.
Wise says of her open-plan interior: “I believe the al fresco designing lets customers see creativity at work.”
Wise, however, suspects her unique design style and excellent customer service contributed to her winning the award, which she received at the annual Chamber of Commerce dinner in February.
“I think that for people who aren’t necessarily exposed to a lot of different design styles, we offer them something else — something they wouldn’t normally get,” Wise says. “In crunch time we always make something work for the customers.”
She also hopes her award will prove to customers that she is in it for the long haul: “I feel like a lot of new things don’t stick around,” she says. “But this award shows that we are here to stay.”
–Vanessa Machir vmachir@safnow.org Reprinted courtesy of Society of American Florists E-Brief Newsletter
Flower Shop Network Goes to SAF Congressional Action Day
March 29, 2007 by Leave a Comment
In support of the Society of American Florists Congressional Action Day, Brock and Loranne Atwill, owners of FlowerShopNetwork.com, went to Washington, DC.
Many political analysts and dignitaries were there to discuss legislative issues important to the floral industry. Topics covered were: Immigration Reform, Health Care and Funding for Floriculture Research. Attendees of Congressional Action Days spent most of the day Tuesday visiting with their respective congressmen and senators concerning legislative issues and initiatives. Brock and Loranne met with Congressman Marion Berry and legislative aides from Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s and Sen. Mark Pryor’s offices.
Many retail florists, growers, wholesalers and other service providers attended on behalf of the floral industry. Pictured with Brock and Loranne is FlowerShopNetwork.com member Jo Buttram of Shirley’s Flowers and Gifts in Rogers, Arkansas.
US Congressman, 1st District Marion Berry, took a great deal of time to discuss industry and small business concerns. We thank him for his time and consideration.
