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Ital Florist Is Up to the Challenge
Ital Florist Is Up to the Challenge |
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Written by Heather Chwastiak
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Walk into Ital Florist and you feel like you’re walking
into a warehouse or a call-centre more than a flower shop. Eligio
Paris, (shown) father of the family-run business, incorporated
Ital Florist Limited in 1976 when they were operating out of a strip
mall location.
In the late 1980s Ital closed its two storefront locations and moved operations to the current 6000-sq.-ft. warehouse on Westmore Drive where large coolers were already housing the bulk of their product. They now have a multilingual staff of 20 managed by a dynamic brother/sister team: Italo Paris and Ester Mauro, under the watchful eye of their father.
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| Photo by Erin Riley |
Ask Italo why his family-run business is such a success and he says, “It’s possible to do everything well.” “There is no average wedding,” says Italo. “ A wedding can range from as little as $200 upwards of $20,000 – we do it all,” he says, waving his hand around a warehouse and mezzanine piled high with boxes of inventory. In addition to flowers, Ital Florist offers gourmet foods and high-end gift baskets. Whatever customers asks for, they can have. Italo reports he had to dash out to a local store the first time a customer requested a “junk basket” – a basket filled with junk food, growing in popularity among gal pals.
Eligio is quick to add, “Never say no to a customer.” They’ve grown their business order-by-order and customer-by-customer to the point of being able to handle over 1,000 deliveries this past Valentine’s Day. This feat was managed by using their own 20 trucks exclusively that day, not relying on the outside delivery services they sometimes use. When the weather turned bad, they could count on their drivers not to leave them hanging.
Ital Florist addresses challenges head-on and is continually adapting to the changing marketplace. Italo recalls his first attempts to use the Internet in the early 1990s and the excitement he felt when the first order rolled out of his printer. A light bulb went off for the University of Toronto commerce and economics graduate. “We have something here!” he thought.
Internet orders now make up approximately one third of total sales and are growing every day. Italo continued adding computers to the operation and has become quite the technical troubleshooter. He’s constantly tweaking and improving the electronics and taking the fullest advantage of new technologies. Ital Florist sends printed postcards and e-mail notices to its customers to remind them of birthdays, anniversaries, and other important dates. Ester goes as far as to say they’ve created a dependency on this feature in their customers who now rely on the service. Italo also developed an e-mail network of florists with whom he exchanges ideas and support. He doesn’t view other florist shops as direct competition and is willing to share such perks as his big volume discounts.
“If I’m sending a truck down for 20,000 callas then why not split that cost?”
Being innovative comes naturally to Italo and Ester, who grew up watching their father think outside the box. Customers in the local Italian neighbourhood often ask for help getting flowers to funerals in Italy. This is an urgent matter because bodies are not embalmed in Europe and services happen quickly – usually within 24 to 36 hours. Eligio used to tell them that they should contact the funeral home and ask for the phone number of the nearest florist. Eventually, he realized that there was a need, so he started contacting the funeral home himself, making the arrangements on the family’s behalf. Ital Florist has built up their own network of florists in Italy and Eligio brags that he can get flowers very quickly to even the smallest town in Italy. It is interesting to note, however, that this same plan did not succeed when they attempted to extend it beyond the borders of Italy.
“Things got complicated in the rest of Europe,” explains Italo. Never missing an opportunity to do business, Italo approaches local funeral homes to not only recommend Ital Florist but to put their flowers directly on their own website. A mourner visiting www.wardfuneralhome.com can click on “Order Flowers” and be taken to a web page that is framed by the funeral home’s logo and header but where the floral inventory comes directly from www.italflorist.com. Customers can make their arrangements in one convenient location, the funeral home makes a commission, and Ital Florist fills another order – it’s a win-win-win.
Italo struck a similar winning business arrangement by delivering the bulk of Toronto’s orders for the Ontario Lung Association’s annual March 1st “Tulip Day” fundraiser. Ital Florist was a logical choice because they deliver to such a large geographical area. In addition to downtown Toronto, they also deliver to most of the GTA: From Oakville on the west to the east end of Scarborough, and north to Vaughn, Richmond Hill, and Thornhill.
Ester credits her close-knit family’s open lines of communication with enabling them to come to consensus on major decisions. Last year they boldly dropped their Yellow Pages advertising in five books, saving a whopping $75,000. Italo says he noticed a small drop in calls since the printing of the June 2006 phone book but not enough to warrant those kinds of funds, which are now being diverted towards Google keywords to drive traffic to the website.
Ester believes the schooling she and her brother received help them see changes in the marketplace, allowing them to adapt and grow as required. She sets concrete deadlines for goals and insists that’s the only way to meet your targets. A significant contribution to their success has to be Ester’s conviction that no sale is a one-time sale.
“If a young gentleman comes in to buy his first bouquet of flowers, I have to see the engagement, the wedding, the Bar Mitzvah, and the possible account he could bring with his first job at a large corporation,” she states.
Ester and Italo have the same attitude when it comes to business. Ask her the same question – Why is Ital Florist such a success? – and she responds without hesitating, “Failure is not an option.”
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