NEW RULES THE
FOR SELLING FLOWERS Floral industry members share insight
from an unexpectedly strong — and anything
but ordinary — Mother’s Day and how those lessons could translate to a longer-term strategy.
BY AMANDA LONG AND MARY WESTBROOK F or years, the run-up to Mother’s Da Day has proceeded li d like clockwork
at Radebaugh Florist & Greenhouses in Towson, Maryland. Kaitlin Radebaugh, AAF, is a planner — so determining how much product to buy, how many people to staff, what to promote and when, etc.,
was a straightforward process: review previous years’ sales, make plans for this year, repeat. This year, that playbook was out the window. “The biggest challenge was
uncertainty,” Radebaugh said. “We had no idea what demand would look like. We weren’t sure what product we’d have to sell.” With their retail areas closed to the public and a reduced team practicing social distancing on site or working re- motely, Radebaugh streamlined just about everything — production lines, website offerings, phone call routing — and charged forward into an anything but routine holiday. “I really had no idea what to expect, which was terrifying,” she said. The holiday week that followed was “excruciating” — 16-hour days, stress
and anxiety about new COVID-related processes such as high-volume curbside pickup — but it ended with a big dose of (welcome) good news: Sales were “significantly higher” than 2019 returns. “If we had more staff and more product, we could have done even more,” Radebaugh said. Around the country, retail florists have been sharing similar stories. According
to a post-holiday survey of Society of American Florists members, 70 percent of retail florists who could operate on Mother’s Day reported an increase in
The magazine of the Society of American Florists (SAF)
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SHUTTERSTOCK/LIRYNA INSHYNA
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