What is it like to be a florist on Valentine's Day?

Hi there!! I should really be designing more arrangements right now, but it is 5:00 pm and I only just ate for the first time today. But don’t worry! I had coffee earlier! Lol, actually, I often avoid caffeine because it sometimes makes me a little too productive and I crash hard afterward, but that is kind of what I need today. I woke up just before 5:00 this morning, rolled out of bed and straight into the city to visit my two wholesalers. On top of it being Valentine’s Day I got my first funeral order yesterday over the phone and so I needed to get plants for that as well!

I got to the first wholesaler around 6:00. It takes somewhere between 45 minutes to an hour and a half to get to the wholesaler depending on traffic. Even at 6:00 am today the wholesalers were hopping!! Usually I have most of my salespersons attention when I am there, but today he had about four customers at once! They are crazy busy this time of year, though starting about tomorrow things should start to slow down for them right as everything ramps up for us florists. But actually, I started planning for Valentine’s Day pretty seriously already in the beginning of January. Pretty much as soon as Christmas was over. I needed to put in a preorder with my wholesaler so I could guarantee I would get what I wanted the most. It also meant I had to commit to buying more than I was possibly certain I could sell. (Only time will tell on that front.) the other thing is that even though Valentine’s Day is on Friday this year it isn’t like you can start designing on Friday or even Thursday. I pregreened most of my vases on Monday, networked a bunch on Tuesday, and now it is Wednesday, my marathon designing day. At the moment I’m still a one woman show. I don’t have any employees, and I do just about everything by myself, down to my website and even making most of my deliveries.

Being a part of Sassy Girl Chalet is really helpful for me though. In that way I am not actually as alone as I make it sound. During business hours there is always someone at the shop there to help people complete their purchases and answer questions.

My business is still fairly new. It is officially two years old, but last year around this time was when I left my full time job to really work on my business. I didn’t have my ducks in enough of a row last year at this time though to even contemplate doing Valentine’s Day then. So, this is my first VDay! I still don’t know what to expect exactly. I mean, I can tell people are starting to know that Floralore exists and they are seeing my photos and I have accumulated some incredible reviews and I have a handful of preorders for the holiday, but I still don’t know what will really truly happen on Friday. Will people come to my shop excitedly and pick out their favorite designs and bring them home, or will I finish the day having sold only a small portion of what I created. I keep telling myself, only time will tell. If I build it, hopefully they will come! And this is one giant experiment in a way and at least I’ll get nice photos out of it if it doesn’t go the way I hope it does. Either way Tim and I will be able to eat, but it would be amazing to make back what I’ve invested in the holiday and maybe then some! I am so ready to give back to the community again! Just need some profit to do so! Maybe that was all a little too vulnerable for this time. But I think it is likely to be a very late night And so my filter is a bit transparent at the moment. My apologies. That’s probably how I convinced myself to go live on Facebook for the first time today and even share my workspace with all of you.

I can tell I’m rambling now, so I’ll wrap it up. Thanks for coming on this new business journey with me and for supporting me so much and for reading my rambles. Wishing you all much earlier shuteye than I will likely get tonight!!