How to Start a Flower Shop

Here are some suggestions on where to find a perfect location for your start-up business and what you will need in capital to begin your business.

Things You'll Need

• Common sense, persistence, cash flow or loan, building to start your business, customers

Instructions

How To Start A Flower Shop

1. Know your target market and geographical area where you would like to set up a business. Research and planning are the key to a successful business. You will need to do your homework and find out if the area where you desire to open a flower shop has a need for one. Are there already other flower shops in the area? Are they thriving or are they struggling? If you opened up a shop in the same area, will you be able to attract enough customers to hold your own? It might be helpful to talk to a few established flower shop owners and asked them how they got started.

2. 

   Ask yourself if you are going to want to purchase a building or lease a space for your flower shop. Maybe you want to run a flower shop out of your home. If you do, determine if you will have enough space to keep your inventory.

3. Check out some wholesale flower shops to determine what you can get and their prices. What type of product (various flowers, plants, etc) do you want to carry in your flower shop? Is there a need for that product in your area? What is the average life span of the flower or plant you want to sell? How often are you going to need to replenish your stock? Will you be carrying artificial plants, as well as live plants?

4. Determine what type of service you want to offer your clients. Do you want to offer catering services to weddings, birthdays, office parties? Are you going to want to offer ready-made plants or custom flower arrangements? Or maybe both? Then determine if you are going to need a staff to handle the work load. Do you want to hire outside vendors to deliver your product?

5. Determine your price points meaning determine the profit you want to make. This determination will help guide you in marking up each item after you've paid your wholesaler.

6. Decide the method of payment plan that you are going to accept. The more diversified you are, the more opportunities you will have to get additional business. Most folks these days have credit or debit cards. Make sure that you are able to accept at least one or both methods of payment. If accepting by check, make sure that you post clear notices of the repercussions for writing a bad check so that will help deter passing bad checks. It's much easier to take precautions to avoid this prior to sale than having the grueling task of tracking down the customer to recover your losses.

7. Do a lot of research on the various types of flowers and plants you want to carry. More than likely, your customers are going to want to know how to care for them and what to do if they have an insecticide problem. It is always beneficial to be knowledgeable about the product you are selling. If you don't have the money to purchase a lot of books, go to your local library or do some research on the Internet. Unlike case goods and staples, because plants are living entities, they will die if not properly cared for.

8. Determine how you're going to advertise. After you decide where your place of business will be, what product and/or services you want to offer your customers, how big your staff is going to be then you will need to determine how you want to promote your business. Depending upon your budget, you may want to place an ad in your local newspaper or magazine. If your budget permits, you can do a local spot on a popular radio station in the area, or even a local TV station. If you are involved in your local community, such as the Chamber of Commerce, this is a great way to network and get a lot of support from other local businesses. If you are involved in the school, you can network with the parents at the school functions that are held throughout the year. Also, your local church is a great way to network . The possibilites are endless! The key here is to network, network, network!

Tips & Warnings

• Remember to start off small and build up. This helps you to have a balanced cashflow. You won't have more going out, than what you have coming in.