Pricing is hands down the hardest aspect to master as an event florist. It’s not intuitive and cannot be figured out emotionally. but pricing is the foundation of a successful business- it can completely change the way you run your business, how you interact with clients, how much you love what you do and how well you do it.
A good design starts with being able to afford one!
Too often, floral designers just starting out will take any job that comes their way without stopping to think about a foundation of good pricing based on DATA instead of emotion.
Which is not why you got into this business right? You started creating with flowers because you love it- and not just love. It’s your PASSION. It’s the best thing you could do for a job because it sets your soul on fire and fulfills you. It starts with love and the joy of doing what you are obsessed with. But it can’t stop there.
The fact is, you will lose your joy for a job you LOVE now if you cannot support yourself with it. You probably won’t love flowers in 10, or even 5 years when you have no life outside of them and don’t make enough to support your family.
When we first started out- we would look at the list and guess….GUESS based on what we thought it would be and what we thought the client would pay. It was so bad, for us and for our clients.
We would price based on how much we wanted to work with a particular bride and how much push back we got when we sent her a quote. Every single time we would lose money and we wouldn’t be paid for our time.
In the end we cheated ourselves out of money, we cheated ourselves out of being sustainable, and we cheated our future brides out of getting our best talent. They needed us to be a viable, healthy, successful business in order to have our services.
We would consistently lose money (or just not make it). But we loved what we did so much that we didn’t care. We were very short sighted in this regard.
Eventually though, we felt like the time we were putting into our business wasn’t worth it anymore. We realized that this wasn’t just a hobby, this was a (very intense) job that would take a lot out of us physically and emotionally.
When we forgot (or just didn’t realize!) how much time and effort went into the production of an event it wasn’t just us who lost. Pricing too low devalued the hard work required for quality floral design and sent bad pricing signals to our future clients. So while it’s bad for brides, florists, growers and the industry as a whole, it was mostly bad for us.
So pricing…
Let’s start with how we decide how to price things. Where are you? Do you price:
- – Based on what you would pay?
- – Based on what you think the client would pay?
- – Based on what you think you are worth to that particular client?
As soon as you decide “I am going to be a florist” you need to pay yourself for the work you perform.
So why did we do it? Our thinking at the time was “we need experience.“ We honestly had no idea how to get experience without providing these services for free, or less than free. But this was very costly and destructive to our business. And didn’t give us a realistic pricing experience. We felt like we couldn’t get experience any other way. But what we found was that if you use styled shoots and freelance for other florists you will have mentors to learn from, make money and you will be able to scale your business all at the same time. A lot of people start out doing weddings for family and friends- this is such a good way to gain experience without having to charge standard prices. As long as your family and friends understand you are giving them a deal and not to go around telling everyone else your prices. Once you feel that you have a solid foundation of experience and are ready to start your business “for reals”, you need to develop a foundation for a good pricing system.
But how do you know what a good pricing system is?! That’s where we are here to help. We have taken our years of experience in the wedding industry + all the mistakes we have made and condensed that knowledge into a pricing course that has been so helpful for so many florists who have come to our workshops!
AND, we are releasing this pricing course, as well as so many other helpful courses, inside our online workshop based on our in person B + B workshops! More info coming on this soon– we are so excited!
If in person is more your style, check out our workshop offerings this year!
Love, Josie + Tay
