> THE BIG RETHINK “The routines we had before the


pandemic were routines for a reason,” he explained. “Human beings take an awfully long time to change.” He added that history could provide some lessons. “If we look back to the 1918 pandemic, that was a pretty devastating time. People were dealing with World War I and they were also social distancing. But by 1922 — only four years later — the country was pretty much ‘back to normal’ in terms of consumer behavior and economic activity.” That’s not to say that florists


shouldn’t be bolstering their online pres- ence right now as more consumers shop online, Dion clarified. Instead, he said the challenge is to decipher which behaviors are temporary responses and which are more permanent adaptations. “A lot of the new tools and [online] services con- sumers are experiencing now are novel and cool, but we as humans have this


muscle memory for the way we used to do things,” including shopping in person and dining out with friends, he said. “Those memories are burned in deep.” The big unknown: When will a


vaccine or other virus-mitigating technol- ogies be available? Americans’ sense of safety and well-being will continue to be a challenge to retailers until those advances are developed and widely available. (And with cases rising in hotspots across the country at press time: Will scaled-back reopening plans throw more industry members into additional chaos?) This month, Floral Management


editors talked with leaders from four brick-and-mortar retail shops in different parts of the country and asked them to highlight one area they’ve reinvented in response to the pandemic. We also detail some of the challenges they’re facing and some of the opportunities they’re finding.


THE LESSON: Right now, efficiency rules


THE REINVENTION STRATEGY: Cross-train


Many hands make light work, but that’s not an option right now for most florists, including Wendy Rockcastle. In the early days of the pandemic,


Rockcastle, co-owner of Rockcastle Florist in Rochester and Canandaigua, New York, laid off her entire 30-person staff, and attempted to run the business alone with the help of her husband and co-owner, Keith, and daughter, Mary. The plan: Close their two retail locations and continue to fill website and phone orders from their centralized design center, which is in a large warehouse. “We told our team to file for unem-


“We told our team to file for unemployment, that the three of us would be the heartbeat of the business until things calmed


down and everyone could come back. We thought, with a plummeting economy, we wouldn’t be that busy and could manage the load alone. We were wrong.”


—Wendy Rockcastle, Rockcastle Florist


ployment, that the three of us would be the heartbeat of the business until things calmed down and everyone could come back,” said Rockcastle. “We thought, with a plummeting economy, we wouldn’t be that busy and could manage the load alone. We were wrong.” After a few days, the Rockcastle


family decided they couldn’t continue without support. But they couldn’t just bring everyone back — they had to be strategic. “Our decisions became about effi-


ciency,” Rockcastle said. “Who has the best skills to help us right now — and who is comfortable returning?” For instance, in late spring and early summer, they faced a backlog of wedding-related emails as couples anxiously tried to shift wedding dates. “Our wedding stylist/ designer, an experienced sales asso- ciate, a driver and one junior designer were all willing to come back right away,” Rockcastle said, making the deci- sion-making path about whom to bring back first clearer. “We were so grateful for their skills, personalities and willing- ness to go beyond our expectations daily. Together we solidified as a small but effective team quickly,” working from the design center, which they good-naturedly called “the bunker.” Which is not to say the roles the


team members stepped back into were anything like the jobs they’d been doing in January 2020. Instead, the focus


24 FLORAL MANAGEMENT | July/August 2020 | WWW.SAFNOW.ORG


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