The Art of Selling Flowers
As a flower farmer, we are always thinking about how to sell our flowers. It’s not enough to just grow beautiful flowers, because beautiful flowers that remain unsold are a very expensive hobby - you have to be able to sell your flowers.
This can of course take many forms - directly to the consumer, sold via consignment or a middle party that markets and sells your flowers, or in the form of design work or services. But as a business owner, you need to be able to sell your flowers in order to sustain your business.
And although some people might think of profit or sales as scary or unfamiliar words, they should not be. You should be making a profit off your flowers when you are selling the because that’s the only way you’ll be able to continue to run your business and provide flowers for the world (if you’re just selling flowers to give away for free or you don’t need to make an actual profit off your flowers, that is a whole other matter altogether that we won’t cover here).
You probably have some success selling flowers already - maybe it’s even just to friends and family right now, but you have goals and ambitions to grow your business and it is important that you’re able to sell more flowers.
That’s what we’ll talk about here. In fact, I have ten principles that have guided me throughout the years of selling thousands and thousands of stems of flowers successfully - some advice which I wish had been available to me as a newbie or beginning flower farmer.
Even if you don’t have any sales experience or have any floral experience, you can become more successful selling flowers with understanding a few principles in how your customers see your flowers and be interested in purchasing them. There are also some principles that are focused on you as the business owner in either changing or enhancing your mindset to ensure that you are able to sell more flowers.
These principles are as follow:
Color sells - but it’s specific to your customer
Either be where your customers are - or bring them to you
Find your niche and fill it
People don’t buy flowers - they buy emotions
Diversify - then narrow it down to what works
Take care of your customers and they will take care of you
Quality matters - but so does quantity
It’s OK to focus on the short term AND the long term
It’s okay to change your business model as often as you need
Always be learning and growing as a business owner
1
Color Sells
Flowers are a visual medium by which we communicate to each other. Certain types and colors of flowers can mean different things to different people, but the color is the biggest one that most people go by.
Even if you have somebody that knows nothing about flowers, they will either appreciate or dislike certain colors. As humans, color is a very important part of our day-to-day functioning and as a result we are very responsive to color.
Think of the color of a room. A warm-colored room may seem inviting and cozy and incite feelings of comfort, while the same room with a cooler-color may seem more chill and tranquil and clean. And of course that depends entirely on your history with that color - if you lived in a ratty run-down peach-colored apartment you will probably forever hate the color peach in your home going forward!
Flowers come in a wide variety of colors and as a result we have come to associate them with certain occasions and meanings. Think of the white roses and lilies found in a bridal bouquet, or the red roses commonly associated with Valentine’s day, or even the happy yellow sunflowers that you might send to someone for starting a new job.
Color is one of the most important parts of selling flowers. Customers have purchased flowers just based on color alone (they don't care about the type and variety of the flower) and entire weddings are based entirely on color of course, and flower farmers go crazy for new color varieties that are introduced by breeders (the Apricotta cosmos, the Queen Red LIme zinnia, the White Swan marigold to name a few)
But how does this play out when it comes to the flowers that you're growing?
The old adage is that bright, colorful, saturated flowers sell well for farmer's markets and retail bunches, while more muted neutral colors sell well for wedding work and to florists - and for the most part we’ve found this to be true.
I would argue that this is a little more fluid now - plenty of retail bunches are taking on more blushes and peaches and light pinks while more weddings are calling for more bright and saturated yellows and oranges, but as a general rule this still applies.
When we are doing farmer's markets and retail bunches for example, the colors that went first were the bright and bold ones - bright red, orange, school bus yellow, hot pink, deep purple and chartreuse greens were great for catching the attention of customers walking past.
These colors incidentally have been really popular since the pandemic - back when studying floral design it was mentioned that bright colors tend to sell during a recession (or times of stress) because people want to have bright pops of color to bring them a lot of happiness.
I think this is true - colors have the power of bringing joy and happiness and positive emotions to people's lives, so we tend to grow a lot of flowers that are bright and punchy. Yellow and orange sunflowers (Procuts are excellent) all the Benary Giant zinnias, brightly colored gladiolas and neon-colored dahlias, giant big fluffy marigolds, gigantic brain and cockscomb celosia are all excellent flowers to grow.
When doing wedding work (or selling to florists who do wedding work) you are more likely to sell materials that are a bit less loud as far as colors go. Although there are plenty of florists who want bright orange marigolds and pink cactus dahlias, wedding colors still tend towards the more neutral colors - white, ivory, mint-green, blush, peach, burgundy and shades of brown.
We still find the majority of our wedding requests are generally the white/blush/green color combinations, so it's easy to select flowers for those colors. Cafe au lait dahlias are always a go, but so are Benary Giant Salmon and Giant White zinnias, White Swan marigolds, lisianthus, White Lite/White Nite sunflowers, white cosmos such as 'Psyche', 'Snowpuff', 'Fizzy', white gomphrena, white and silvery rose and apricot-peach strawflowers and foliage like mountain mint, eucalyptus, apple mint, frosted explosion grass and basil.
As a floral designer, it starts becoming less about the individual flower itself and more about the fulfillment of colors in the arrangements for the client. If I have a client who is wanting a lot of peach-colored flowers, the actual flower doesn’t matter - wWhether it's a peach colored lisianthus, dahlia, zinnia or strawflower matters less so long as I have the correct color to fulfill in the arrangements.
That's why I've started thinking less about specific varieties and more about planting in colors. For example, the peach strawflowers were a total dud this year, but I have plenty of peach-colored zinnias as a substitute, so there's less of an issue as far as fulfilling numbers for centerpieces and bouquets.
When we were selling to florists, they usually would look at our sale list but more usually would ask in regards to color - "I have a white and green wedding this week, what do you have?" Being able to fulfill these orders helps to get you on the map with florists as being a great source for flowers that they can use.
However, not every circumstance falls neatly into these two categories. And especially if you're doing your own thing such as having a farmstand or doing a subscription service, you can mix any colors you like so long as they look good! (My new favorite combination is actually orange and white, which totally doesn't fall into any category whatsoever but it makes me happy and it does well with designs and customers alike)
Can you grow every color under the sun? Of course. And some growers do this because it is a way of ensuring that they’ll have colors for whatever comes their way. Many growers will have flowers in both the bright and bold colors as well as the soft and muted wedding colors, especially if they’re growing for both retail sales as well as design work, because this allows them to grow for both.
If they happen to have a wedding that wants bold and bright colors, they have flowers that they can supply for that event. If they happen to have excess soft and muted colored flowers, then they can either be mixed in with the bold and bright colored flowers for retail sales or can even be sold on their own.
That being said, if you’re just growing one or the other because that’s the only thing that you have time or energy for, then that’s totally fine as well! It’s all about knowing what works for you and your business and what your customers will buy.
* * *
EXERCISE
Here’s a little exercise you can do to determine what to grow
____ Percentage of retail (farmer’s market, retail bunches, farm stand)
____ Percentage of wedding work
A = % of bold and bright colored flowers to grow
B = % of soft and muted colored flowers to grow
You can also see which colors below fall into which category. See which colors speak to you, or the colors that would work best for you. Do not also be afraid to mix and match - remember my comment about true orange and white? I’ve also seen a fabulous combination of orange, peach, apricot and school bus yellow used quite effectively, so don’t be afraid to experiment!
BOLD AND BRIGHT
____ Fire engine red
____ True orange
____ School bus yellow
____ Chartreuse
____ Royal blue
____ Fuchsia or hot pink
____ Deep purple
SOFT AND MUTED
____ White
____ Ivory or Cream
____ Burgundy
____ Peach
____ Apricot
____ Salmon
____ Blush
____ Light Pink
____ Mint Green
____ Soft sky blue
____ Lavender or Lilac
____ Silver-green
____ Blonde or Straw
____ Beige or Fawn
____ Antique Brown
____ Buttercream yellow
(End of Chapter 1)
I hope you found that information useful!
If you’re interested in how we’ve used these principles to guide us to not only gain more sales but in essence create new markets for us to sell flowers, then I have a little surprise for you - a little book called The Art of Selling Flowers!
It’s a little book that has close to a decade of flower and floral design sale experience including working with clients and growing your customer base and how to manage what seems like a set of ever-changing circumstance in the general flower business these days. While it doesn’t contain anything specifically that guarantees to help you gain $100K in sales (and I wouldn’t trust anyone who would market their book like that) it contains the foundations and principles that will help you build a solid and sustainable business for the future.
