Ideas

3 “Tricks” to Spooky Easy All-Flower Pumpkins

How can you offer floral customers a fall and Halloween party décor "treat" that’s quick and easy to make? Magic? Potions? Possibly helpful, but not necessary. Instead, simply skip the pum...

What You Need to Know to Make and Sell Texas Mums Anywhere

All photos: Rio Creative Studio What’s bigger in Texas? Homecoming corsages, known in the Lone Star State as Texas Mums. You could hide a teenager behind one. Could you also introduce Texas-siz...

Six Sympathy Designs for Three Cremation and Life Celebration Trends

If your business includes sympathy flowers, then you know: Cremations have surpassed burials. More families are choosing life celebrations and other non-traditional ceremonies. And memorial serv...

Raise prices? Lower prices? Tips for Homecoming Flowers

Fewer schools have homecoming dances. Where they still exist, some students opt out of flowers altogether. In other schools, it’s become a mini-prom. How can florists adapt to keep homecomin...

The Key to Attracting Millennials and 6 Ways to Do It

The retail challenges seem to just keep coming: the Internet, e-commerce, social media, training and retaining today’s workers, smartphones, big-box retailers and Amazon. And now a generation th...

7 Ways to Save, Maintain or Grow Your Sympathy Flower Sales

Photo: Shonda Cunningham AIFD Funeral spending is trending down. Funeral home profit margins are down 43 percent since 1999. The floral industry is feeling the pinch with increases in memorials...

How an Open Mind Created an Artistic (and Practical) Cake Runner

When the wedding’s in a museum, your designs should be artistic. When the bride is your daughter and an artist, expectations can escalate. And when the most visible arrangement in the weddin...

Want Drama? Elevate Floral Designs These 4 Ways

Why are elevated designs the rage for event flowers? “It’s all about the drama,” answers Chris Norwood AIFD, PFCI and vice president of Tipton & Hurst in Little Rock, Arkansas. “I’d rath...

How a "Chopped" Floral Design Can Help You Win Too

She was on stage in front of a large audience earlier this month at the AIFD National Symposium in Washington DC. With the clock running. In one of the most important floral competitions of her lif...

16 Tips from Exploring New Floral Places

Want to add new dimensions to your designs? Travel. Teach. Connect. Understanding the flower possibilities and needs of another region or culture’s celebrations of life can help you develop new ...