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Wish Fulfillment |
E-Brief Editors Play Santa Claus
We have been asking readers to write in with their ultimate business wishes, offering those that do a free copy of SAF's The Marketing Edge. As the responses rolled in, we couldn't resist the urge to at least attempt to deliver on some of the wishes. We hope our answers help you, too. Here's a recap of just some of the wishes that came our way:
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Excellent Employees
Wow! Are you Santa Claus? If you are, please send me an employee who doesn't pout when corrected for any reason small or large. Also, if it isn't asking too much, Santa may I please have a color laser printer?
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Hardy Plants
What I would like for Christmas is an indoor blooming plant that blooms all the time, grows in low light and will tolerate desert to rain forest level water conditions.
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Useful Web Sites
What do I wish for? I wish for floral vendors and wholesalers to have very useful and functioning Web sites. Ever try searching for a stem cutter or stem stripper? What will you find? If you finally find a vendor, its Web site is usually less than desirable. Why can't companies realize that their customers need Web sites that are user friendly and list their products with pictures and descriptions?
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Local Loyalty
All I want for Christmas ... is:
• For all LOCAL retail florists to have more and more business come DIRECTLY their way.
•To have all deceptive order gatherers mysteriously have “server issues” in the next day or so, thereby preventing fraud and displeasing the ever-unsuspecting consumer.
•To have clear weather, that is — right up ‘till December 24th, say — 4 pm, when it can snow all it wants (you need snow for the roof tops, right Santa?).
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Marketing Help
We have two wishes in mind for 2008, money and sanity permitting...
We wish for a part-time person to help us with our direct contact marketing efforts and visits to businesses in our city. We also wish for the time and the materials to once again do some minor renovations to our store front to make for more appealing public appearance and better use of our space for the staff.
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Event Templates
Dream wish: another one of me to do all the things I want to do, but don’t have time for.
Realistic: someone to come up with some spreadsheet templates for pricing parties and events, flower inventory, etc … similar to the template for flower pricing that SAF has now.
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Booming Business
I wish for enough business to maintain the shop and keep my one and only designer employed. We are a small shop with one owner and one part time employee who does wonderful flower arrangements. I would like for her to be able to continue working for me. That would be my dream.
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Mark Your Calendar |
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Regular Features |
Reader Feedback
Roy Sabo, AAF, MCF of Sunnyslope Floral in Grandville, Mich., alerted us to the FOX 17 story that aired incorrect facts about poinsettia toxicity and pet poisoning —which we covered in the previous week's E-Brief. Here are his thoughts on the matter.
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Marvelous Marketing
Heading into the New Year often puts one in a good mood to reflect on all of the good things that happened during the year. With that in mind, tell us: What were your BEST marketing ideas of 2007? E-mail vmachir@safnow.org with your tips.
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Product Spotlight: FloraTrac
Want to know how you measure up to the competition? Try FloraTrac, SAF's market share reporting system. This powerful tool will allow you to get month-to-month and year-to-year comparisons of your business against operations with similar revenues or geographic locations, as well as against all program participants. Enrollment is currently free for members.
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Top Ten Items Sold for Christmas
Top Ten items that sold during Christmas 2006 were seasonal floral offerings (88 percent), fruit and gourmet baskets (85 percent) and wreaths (84 percent) — followed by home decorations and accent pieces (78 percent), candles (73 percent), ornaments (67 percent), balloons (65 percent), candy (65 percent) greeting cards (61 percent) and tabletop decorations/novelty ceramics (61 percent).
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