Floral Summit 2008 was held at Golden Rose in Mississauga at the end of May. The event attracted over 50 florists and featured a host of seminars as well as a design show. Many of the seminars focused on how florists can embrace new technologies like blogs and social networking and tackled topics like building a successful website, search engine optimization and POS systems. There were also sessions on core business practices like in-store selling, customer service, attracting customers, direct mail marketing and employee relations.
The day ended with a design show with floral expert J Schwanke, AAF, AIFD, PFCI, entitled ‘Designing for Survival.’ Schwanke offered florists tips on how to increase profitability and create more value with designs. He suggested that when florists help a customer pick out flowers for a design, they should keep the flowers spaced out in their hands so there’s always room for more flowers! Schwanke also advises florists to interact with their customer when designing to let them know the story behind the flowers and to offer them inside tips on how to care for the blooms.
Here are some pictures of designs that Schwanke put together for the show.
|
