How to Run a Home-Based Wedding Floral Design Business

Designing floral bouquets can be a good home business.

If you are creative, good with people and have some creativity, running a home-based wedding floral design business could be an ideal career path. While most floral designers work from a storefront, many also work from home. There are a few additional challenges inherent in running a floral design business from home, but many of the same requirements for getting the business going exist. You need inventory, word-of-mouth recommendations and persistence.

Instructions

How to run a home-based wedding floral design business

1. Get floral design training or take some classes in creative pursuits in general. It's not necessary right out of the gate to have specific floral training, but having a creative background is essential. When you have time or can afford it, you can take floral design training. You might also study horticulture to further your understanding of gardening and flowers.

2. Consider either renting space or dedicating space in your home to your business since you won't be operating from a retail storefront. You might need to rent a space that has refrigeration for the flowers, or you might be able to purchase a commercial refrigerator to store flowers at your home. Keep in mind that you'll also need space to design the floral arrangements and an office from which you'll maintain your books, phone your customers and maintain your website.

3. Invest in some basic floral design supplies like picks, ribbons, vases and floral wire. Once you have the basics, visit a floral wholesaler and make up several floral design samples. Take pictures of these to show potential clients.

4. Dedicate a space in your home to meeting clients, or pick several spots around town at which you can arrange meetings with potential clients. Since you won't have a storefront to work out of and your clients can't come in and see other floral arrangements you've done, make sure you provide photos of sample arrangements that you can show clients.

   Develop relationships with popular wedding sites in your town. If convenient, you can meet potential clients at these sites and help them to visualize how the flowers will look on their wedding day.

5. Be prepared to market yourself. You will acquire many clients through word of mouth, but when you first begin, you'll have to market to find new clients. Since you won't be delivering funeral arrangements or new baby bouquets, you'll have to focus on finding wedding clientele right out of the gate. Use those relationships you've developed at wedding ceremony locations and ask to leave business cards there. You might sign up to be a vendor at a wedding fair or offer to provide free flowers to the winner of a contest. Start and maintain a wedding blog that links back to your floral design website.

Tips & Warnings

• Stay abreast of trends not just in the wedding world but in fashion and home design. These trends often seep into wedding bouquet designs.

• Develop a payment plan and enforce it. Your home business depends on timely and responsible payments.

References

• Entrepreneur
• Bureau of Labor Statistics

Resources

• Entrepreneur