Pricing for profit: How to confidently convey a luxury floral design experience in your pricing and marketing. — EveryStem (2024)

One of the most challenging aspects of floral design is pricing for profit.

Every sale you make must result in a profit. That’s the only way to cover your expenses and have money left in the bank to pay yourself. The opportunity to decide how much you will be paid out of each sale happens when you price your floral designs. So, it’s important to make sure you are calculating all your costs, expenses, and profit margins correctly. Without the dedication to pricing for profit, you may find yourself working for little to nothing.

Let’s lay the foundation for you to be able to take a portion of every sale and deposit it in your bank account.

Your customers want a personalized experience. If you’ve been reading my blog, you already know that. What you need to know now is that personalized experiences come at a price. The good news is that you are the person who gets to decide that price. Your talent, experience, and dedication to the craft of floral design all have value. Those are the characteristics that you must convey to your potential customers. You need to price your designs and market them in-line with the luxury experience they seek. The transaction between you and your customer is more than just a flower purchase. It is an emotional and psychological experience.

Your continual task is to convey positive emotions through your marketing on every level.

This is how you’ll demonstrate perceived value to your customer. When you clearly communicate your value and the emotional experience your product and service will bring to her life, she will happily pay the premium you charge for your time and talents. I hope you can see how pricing for a profit aligns well with the exceptional service and dedication you want to offer your clients.

Do you pay yourself? Be honest. If the answer is no, today is the day to move in that direction.

The floral design industry is based on luxury so you need to jump into that mindset, price your work accordingly, and convey it to your customers. This effort needs to stay consistent through all your communications and across all your channels.

The fact is that if you aren’t making enough money to pay yourself you need to adapt.

There is a growing gap between the no-fills, grocery store, DIY flower sellers, and bespoke floral design studios. It's up to you to define yourself and find your niche in the floral world. If you are a high-end floral designer than you need to ensure that every one of your hand-crafted designs fetches the right price.

The main way to increase your revenue to cover costs and pay yourself is, you guessed it, raise your prices! So, I’m here to talk you through the basics of pricing for a profit.

And, I’m also going to give you some insights into how you can sell your floral designs by conveying a luxury experience to your customers.

I know that you know this, but just in case you don’t, here are the 6 things you need to charge for in every floral arrangement. No exceptions.

1. Flowers

2. Vase/Container

3. Other Supplies- this covers any non-floral non-vase materials including, but not limited to, wire, tape, chicken wire, flower-frog or kenzan, ribbon, etc.

4. Labor/ Design Fee

5. Overhead- this covers all your business costs like rent, marketing, water, internet, clippers, and knives…you get my drift.

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6. Profit…the money you use to pay yourself and re-invest in your business.

A key factor in pricing floral designs for profit is incuding all your costs in the retail price formula.

Let me tell you this off the bat. Hopefully, I'll be saving you from frustration down the road. You are offering a customized experience to your clients.

This is worth every penny of the markup on wholesale flowers and hard-goods plus your design fee. This is not for everyone. Let me repeat. Not everyone will decide to buy from you. Not everyone can afford to buy from you. That is okay. You must accept that not everyone who inquiries about your product and services will become a customer. It’s normal and it needs to be something you expect. It should not come as a shock to you when you have a few potential clients that do not buy from you. It’s part of the sales process and it is normal.

I love this saying... Some will, some won’t. So, what? Someone’s waiting.

This simply means don’t get hung up on those that don’t book your services or buy from you. Put your effort towards those that do. Concentrate on the some that will and the someone that is waiting. Your business will be better for it. Powerful stuff, right?

Just think, SW-SW-SW-SW anytime you encounter someone who tells you that your prices are too high. Why? It’s because now you know someone’s waiting. Doesn’t that just make you feel good? Just the simple reminder that you don’t have to dwell on those that say no can be very refreshing for your mental health.

So, now that we’ve covered that some potential customers will not be a fit for your price, let’s talk about what formula that price needs to follow.

You are creating works of art that enhance the human experience. Potential clients that want to express emotions through flowers see value in that art form. This means in exchange for that value they pay you for your time and a markup on your materials.

I hit upon this a few weeks ago in my profit pitfalls blog post, but it is worth repeating here.

First off, I want you to know that a margin goal for each sale is an efficient way to ensure that you price every floral design for profit.

The goal of a 70% profit margin on the cost of your flowers and hard-goods is the industry standard.

Margin is the percentage of your sales price that is profit. From this profit, you'll pay your overhead and expenses. The remainder is yours to take home or reinvest in your business.

The mark-up on your flowers is typically 3 to 4x your wholesale cost. The mark-up on your hard-goods is usually 2 to 2.5x your cost. The design fee is based on your flower wholesale costs and is calculated as a percentage. This percentage typically starts at 30% and goes up from there depending on the complexity of the design.

I'll lay out a basic floral design price formula for you here.

If you you need more clarity around Flower Math , you can learn more from Alison Ellis of Real Flower Business . She offers online courses for florists interested in pricing for profit.

Use a floral design retail price formula that helps you price for profit in your business.

Of course, floral design price formulas do vary slightly. You may feel 3x markup is not enough because you are in an area with a higher cost of doing business. Your business may need to use a 4x or 5x markup on wholesale flowers to cover your costs and ensure a profit on every order. So, you’ll need to find the formula that works best for your business. This can be a bit of trial and error, but if you stick to the minimum of 3x wholesale flowers, 2x hard-goods, and a 30% design fee, you’ll be at the industry standard which is a great starting point.

Now, I know there are lots of ways to price products, but custom floral designs are a luxury.

They are different than essential needs. They are custom-creations, unique works of art, each one-of-a-kind. Custom floral designs are typically purchased when there is an occasion, celebration, or emotional want in someone’s life. You must not only sell the product, the flowers themselves, but also the value they bring. It’s the experience, the service, and the emotional high that comes along with the flowers that drive the customer to pay a premium price. What do I mean by a premium price? Let me give you an example. A simple dozen roses at the grocery store retails for $25. A skilled designer who creates a custom arrangement with a dozen roses and other seasonal flowers should be charging somewhere around $125.

Now, your ideal customer is not looking for a quick bunch of flowers to toss in a vase.

She wants an experience either for herself or for someone she cares about. She is interested in conveying an emotion or celebrating an occasion. You must promote that through the language you use, and the images you share with her.

So, the way to sell flowers is not by price alone, but by conveying the value, skill, and experience you put into your floral design.

The emotional nature built into the reasons why people buy flowers is what drives the industry. Use that to ensure you are expressing value through your prices and make sure your customers experience a level of service above their typical purchase experience. That's how you give her an experience she’ll feel confident is worth the price!

You’ll want to look at your offerings and start to use language that sells the experience of sending and receiving flowers.

So, you must use descriptive words that expose your floral design skill and level of commitment to the craft. This descriptive language grabs the customer’s attention and heightens her purchasing experience. Photos alone cannot tell the story of a $125 dozen rose arrangement. Yes, it’s beautiful. Why should she spend $125 when she can get that $25 grocery store arrangement? Tell her. it’s because each bloom is hand-selected for quality and freshness. Explain that the design is composed of locally grown blooms and set into a hand crafted ceramic vase. Enlighten her. That is how you can sell your floral designs at prices that will allow you to pay yourself and reinvest in your business.

Here are a few examples of floral designers offering their take on luxury floral design pricing language.

Solabee Flowers:

The farm-fresh designer's choice option on their website is filled with expressive phrases like “supporting the local farms that grow the fantastic blooms that make a Solabee arrangement so special” and “allow our floral designers to create something previously unimagined, especially for you”.

How can Solabee’s customer not feel attended to after reading this? The $150 price point for the large size seems so very reasonable. They are using the concept of pricing for profit and selling their customers on the premium features of their bespoke floral designs!

Solabee Flowers & Botanicals

Amy McLaughlin Flowers:

This busniness’s order page draws the customer in with a promise that “each arrangement is custom designed by the owner and crafted to tell its own special story”.

Amy continues to sell her price point by describing her containers as being unique hand-crafted pieces. Then, she wraps it up neatly by assuring her customer that the “florals will exude feelings of joy and gratitude” and “will take the recipient’s breath away”. The epic sized arrangement at $129 is clearly worthy of this enticing description.

Amy McLaughlin Flowers

Now go find your voice and share with your customer the reasons why she needs your floral designs in her life.

Along with these tactics, you must also show your work in progress. There are many ways to share videos and photos, but your website is the best place to share with your potential customers!

You can share on social media too of course. Just remember that you own your website so that is the first place you should share your content.

Also, your customers are purchasing from your website. Or they are looking at your website before they call to place an order. Either way, you want them to get to know you, the depths you go to source, process, design, and deliver the flowers that convey their emotions. Finally, show her just how much of your blood, sweat, and tears goes into each custom-creation and she will happily pay your price.

Over the years, many customers walked into my shop, watched as one of my designers created an arrangement, and said, “wow, I can’t believe how she just turned those buckets of flowers into something so gorgeous!” That is the magic, right there. Harness that wonderment in your communication with customers.

So, consider pricing your floral designs for profit and paying yourself will fall right into place.

If you’d like to learn more about how I handled pricing and ordering my flowers, please check out my affordable florist software EveryStem!

Until next time,

LuAnn