These three floral arrangements were made by our students under the directions of our instructors during real lessons in the classroom of California Flower Art Academy. (Two designs shown below were made by our graduates at their home).
No matter what kind of business, most founders of start up business needs to wear many hats. Frankly speaking they are obliged to wear many hats. Namely a business founder is required to follow multi job descriptions. Take florist for instance, a founder needs to do various kinds of jobs in addition to cash flower management that MAY be most important to run a business. However In addition to this main job, there are so many things to do such as taking phone calls from customers, delivery of flower arrangements, making quotation to customers, making floral designs according to the needs of customers, inventory control, and procurement of fresh flowers at a flower market whatsoever.
If you are interested in running a floral shop, you should earn at least basic skills of flower arranging before starting a floral shop business. Suppose you have bought a floral shop that was for sale but quite unfortunately you do not have floral design skills. In this case you have no choice but to employ a floral designer, full time or part time. And every time you get a order from a customer, you have to have your designer make a flower arrangement to satisfy a customer's requirement.
If your floral shop is well established and have already grown to a reasonable size of business making profit, it makes sense to have employees among whom there should be a floral designer. However in case of operating a start up floral shop, having an employee means that you have to spend a fixed amount of money for paying his/her salary, which will give you a heavy financial burden.
You MIGHT say that in order to implement smooth operation of your floral shop, it is mandatory to hire full time or part time employees. In a sense this is right. However some people MIGHT say that during a business ramp up stage, they should not hire employees. Instead of depending on employees, a founder should take care of everything or should do as many jobs as possible without increasing number of employees. Only after they have reached a certain stage where they can afford to hire employees, they should do so.
They can easily operate a floral shop by hiring employees. They can enjoy a reasonable amount of revenue but they cannot make profit. This is a kind of relationship between chicken and egg. Which comes first ? Judging from the failure rate of start up business, most of businesses that start with many employees are apt to fail. On the other hand start up business that minimizes number of employees and have their employees take care of multi jobs has a higher percentage of possibilities of being successful. Needless to say, when running a floral shop, during a ramp up stage, the number of employees should be strictly minimized and ideally a founder should take care of many jobs by himself/herself. In case he/she cannot take care of a very wide range of jobs by any means, they should depend on a part timer (not a long hour) or OUTSOURCING whereby he/she can minimize the cost of fixed expenses.
Our school specializes in teaching floral designs. And we usually do not get involved (should not be involved) in the business operation of floral shop. However students who join our school to learn floral designs with a future dream of having their own floral shop SHOULD UNDERSTAND that running a floral shop and making profit is not an easy job. In this sense people who learn floral designs strictly for hobby can be almost 100% successful. If you are interested in learning floral arrangement, please contact info@california-academy.com
Here is YouTube video introducing Drake Algar Flowers | Business Florist | How To Start A Florist Business | Flowers. Presenter is
Drake Algar, florist. Also visit
His Facebook.
