|
|
Feature Story
The Wedding
EXPERTS
by Cynthia L. McGowan
No detail goes overlooked in Clemens Family Markets’ nuptial
business.
Wedding flowers are an important part of Clemens Family Markets’
floral business. The upscale, 20-store chain can provide
flowers, cakes and catering services.
Weddings can be profitable, rewarding and add cachet to your
floral business. According to The Wedding Report, a wedding
industry Web site, a couple today spends, on average, $2,640 on
wedding flowers.
To help you get your share of that market, we spoke with
representatives from Clemens Family Markets, a 20-store,
family-owned, upscale chain that excels at wedding business,
with some stores handling 25 to 30 weddings a year. Clemens’
floral departments, which are called “Gatherings,” serve all
types of weddings, from simple affairs in which the couples pick
up the flowers at the store to elaborate events that require
delivery and set-up. The cost of Clemens’ wedding services has
ranged from $100 to $8,000.
A PLAN FOR SUCCESS
The key to success for weddings, says Floral Director Rose
Clayton, is planning. Most Gatherings have two floral employees:
the full-time floral manager and a part-time clerk. “We do
[weddings] on a pretty slim staff,” she says, which keeps labor
costs down but requires careful organization, especially for the
large ones.
 “The largest ones are usually quite involved,” Ms. Clayton says.
The company is based in Kulpsville, Pa., near Philadelphia, and
has handled flowers for weddings in Philadelphia’s most
prestigious venues, including The Franklin Institute Science
Museum, named for statesman and inventor Benjamin Franklin; The
Union League of Philadelphia, a private club whose French
Renaissance-style head quarters was built in 1865; the Four
Seasons Hotel; and the Morris Arboretum of the University of
Pennsylvania.
Danielle Lepore, floral manager of the Center Square, Pa.,
Clemens store, says coordinating flowers for weddings at a venue
like The Franklin Institute, with its breathtaking marble
rotunda and huge main hall, can be a challenge because of the
size and scale of the event, but “it’s so exciting because of
its grandeur. It’s something we like to do.”
It’s also prestigious to be asked to provide the flowers for
such weddings, Ms. Lepore acknowledges, and she is gratified
“that a bride would be comfortable enough to come to a
supermarket to have a wedding where they have pulled all the
stops and whistles.”
To make sure the weddings are successful, Ms. Clayton advises
the floral managers to map out their production days, hour by
hour, and to plan backward. For example, if a wedding starts at
6 p.m. and the setup needs to be finished by 5 p.m., Ms. Clayton
urges designers to ask themselves, “Where do we need to be at
4:30 or 3:30 or 1:30 that day, and what work needs to be
completed by that time?
“When the managers plan backwards, they begin to understand the
importance of timing,” she continues. “They are then able to
schedule their labor more effectively to accomplish the goals of
prepping the product, producing the designs, packing up the
completed creations and making the delivery, all with time to
spare.”
The wedding florists also schedule emergency time into that
planning. “If they finish and deliver on the mark, wonderful,”
Ms. Clayton says. “But what if an unforeseen accident happens?
The van won’t start? Lost three boutonnieres? The wrong color
bow on the mother’s corsage? So that emergency time is a very
important inclusion.”
Another crucial part of the planning is a wedding file that is
created for every nuptial that Clemens handles. The extremely
detailed files contain all the information needed to ensure each
wedding is successful—including the types and quantities of
flowers, the supplies to be used, a calendar with dates that
products will arrive, notes, correspondence, color swatches, and
phone calls made and received.
 “It’s a total documentary file,” Ms. Clayton says. “Everything
is in there so that if I have to go in and assist, or, say,
someone gets sick, or there’s some type of emergency,
anybody—the store director—anybody can go into that file and
find the information that they need about that specific
wedding.”
GETTING THE WORD OUT
Most of the company’s wedding business comes from word of mouth.
The rest comes from in-store displays showcasing wedding
designs such as bouquets, corsages and the company’s wedding
cake styles.
The meeting places for consultations depend on the size of the
weddings. For small, simple ones, brides may meet right in the
floral departments.
For the more-involved weddings, Ms. Lepore says, “We have this
charming little cafe within the supermarket that is close enough
to the floral department that everything is in view.” If she
wants to show a bride a particular flower, she just walks over
and picks one up to give the bride a “hands-on” feel for the
flowers she might have in her wedding.
Brides are asked to bring photos, magazines or any other
materials that will give the floral managers an idea of what
they want. They also look at wedding books in the stores. The
floral managers get a good feel for the brides’ tastes that way,
Ms. Clayton notes.
SETTING PRICES
At the consultations, the floral managers will give price
ranges. “We’ll say, ‘We can do this bouquet for $40, $50 or $60;
the difference is the number of roses that are in it,’” Ms.
Clayton says, or perhaps the type of ribbon. Bridal bouquets
range from $30 to $250, with the average going for $125. After
the consultations, the floral managers take the brides’ ideas
and formulate plans for the weddings. “Sometimes they’ll
call either me or each other and say, ‘This is what she wants;
what do you think?’” Ms. Clayton says. “They bounce ideas off
each other, and then they’ll come back to the brides and say,
‘Here’s what we’ve come up with, and here’s the pricing
structure,’ or ‘This is what we can offer you.’” Brides who
choose Clemens’ wedding services are asked to sign off on their
orders and put down deposits. “We tell them if there are any
cancellations—it depends on how far into the wedding week we
are—if we can cancel the fresh orders, we can give them some of
their deposit back,” Ms. Clayton says. “The closer it gets, the
more work you do. And that work has to be paid for.”
Clemens has established relationships with several local flower
wholesalers that give the company excellent service. If an order
is incorrect—for example, if flowers aren’t the color that the
stores wanted—the wholesalers quickly make a switch. “That
turnaround time for errors—you cannot replace that,” Ms. Clayton
says. The floral
 managers do their own ordering, and deliveries
are made two or three times a week.
The stores own most of the equipment couples want for their
weddings, such as arches, garden urns and pillars. “We find that
we do not get a lot of other requests for aisle candelabra,” Ms.
Clayton relates. “That type of business seems to have shied away
a little bit” as people are putting their money into the
personal and reception flowers more.
PROFITABLE BUSINESS
And those wedding flowers are a profitable and important aspect
of the Clemens floral business. Not only do weddings provide a
valuable source of revenue but they also bring in new customers.
“We find that weddings are an excellent source to expand our
customer base,” Ms. Clayton confides. “If Jane Doe is getting
married, and her three girlfriends are all going to get married,
and they see the quality work that comes from Gatherings,
suddenly you have three other girls that want to book weddings
with you,” she says. “Maybe they have brothers and sisters who
are still in high school, and they say, ‘Oh! Let’s get our prom
flowers there.’ So it’s a domino effect.”
For Ms. Lepore, who has more than 30 years in the floral
industry, weddings offer more than a boost to her store’s bottom
line: “They are all memorable because they’re so much fun, and
it’s always challenging, and personally, I’m a challenge kind of
person. I like that part of the whole thing.”
To enjoy the rest of this issue, please go to the
Subscriptions page and get your
copy of Super Floral Retailing today!!!
|
|
|
 |
|
Super Floral Retailing •• Copyright 2006
Florists' Review Enterprises, Inc.
Site management by
Tier One Media | |
