Mother's Day Memories from Flower Clique to You
It's the Tuesday before Mother's Day, and the original Flower Clique crew — the OGs, as Lori dubs them — are all in the virtual room: Vonda, Lori, Ellie LaFever, and Kami Martin. Lori takes the host chair and runs the gang through a round robin of what's keeping everyone busy, last-minute moves any florist can still make before Sunday, and a memory-lane session that swings from tear-jerking to hot-syrup slapstick.
What Mother's Day week looks like behind the scenes
Kami's team has been Grand Central Station — fielding member calls, cleaning up custom images, and helping shops add their own zhuzh to holiday-ready websites, with shout-outs to Leslie, Denise, and Allie for the heavy lifting. Ellie's been deep in email marketing campaigns for members and is already done with Mother's Day entirely; thanks to ever-earlier pre-holiday deadlines, she's onto product development for the fall photo shoot. Vonda's juggling that same fall shoot — flowers, containers, recipes — plus summer pricing and the post-Mother's Day merchandise changeover that hits member websites at the end of May. The lesson hiding in the small talk: good holiday operations means the next holiday's work starts before this one ends. As the plaque in a teacher friend's classroom once read: excuse me, what is this downtime of which you speak?
Four last-minute moves that can still boost Sunday
If you're a shop owner wondering whether there's anything left to do this late in the game, each of the four offered one play you can run today:
- Send an email (Ellie). If you have a list, use it. No email service? Sign up free with Mailchimp, MailerLite, or Flodesk — the templates are ready-made. Something general beats nothing.
- Perfect your homepage (Kami). It's the number-one seller on your website and the first impression every customer gets. Feature exactly what you want to sell.
- Show up on social every day (Vonda). Post on Instagram daily — or go live for a quick tour of what's happening in the shop.
- Be your own PR (Lori and Ellie). Post more than once a day, cross-promote with neighboring businesses, and don't be afraid to call the local radio station or TV network to talk about the power of flowers for moms. It's free marketing, especially in smaller towns — member Andy at Rob's Flowers in Poplar Bluff, Missouri does exactly this and gets great feedback. Vonda's shop used to pair a radio spot with a call-in giveaway bouquet, so the advertising cost nothing but flowers.
The good, the bad, and the hot syrup
Then come the memories. Kami's best Mother's Day gift is a journal her husband Matt started years ago — every birthday and Mother's Day, he and their girls write in it, and the entries have grown from tiny crayon drawings into paragraphs. Ellie's favorite is simpler: a no-agenda COVID-era Mother's Day in Florida with Vonda — breakfast, drinks by the pool, lawn games, and sitting in the grass. Lori's childhood standout is pure late-70s magic: her dad piling the kids into the car to secretly pick up the used red Honda Accord her mom dreamed of, then honking in the driveway with homemade signs until she came outside crying.
The disappointments are just as instructive for anyone who sells sentiment for a living. Kami spent her first few Mother's Days as a young triplet mom in tears because nobody had figured out that celebrating her was somebody's job. And Lori's famous breakfast-in-bed disaster — a toddler, a tray, a 100-pound lab, and a pitcher of hot syrup all colliding on the bed at once — is the stuff of sitcoms; Kami swears the show The Middle has the same episode. Vonda's takeaway is more tender: she never had a bad Mother's Day, but years of talking with florists on the road taught her that many people didn't have a good mother to model from — which is why Flower Clique's Mother's Day marketing emails are always worded to honor "whoever influenced you in your life," not just moms.
Rapid fire: getting to know the team
The episode closes with the get-to-know-us round. Dream vacations on a $20,000 budget: Hawaii with family (Kami), a sweep across Asia (Ellie), Paris and London with Ellie (Vonda), Greece with the whole family (Lori). Favorite shows range from Succession and Ted Lasso to Dateline and The Middle. And the deepest question — how do you want to be remembered — brings the room together: open-minded and always learning (Ellie), helping people get where they wanted to go (Vonda), reflecting God's love and kindness (Kami), and loving people unapologetically (Lori).
Key takeaways
- Even days before a holiday, there's still time: send one email, tighten your homepage, post daily on social, and pitch your local radio or TV station.
- Free email platforms like Mailchimp, MailerLite, and Flodesk make a last-minute campaign possible for any shop.
- Your homepage is your best salesperson — merchandise it for the holiday you're in.
- Word your Mother's Day marketing to include everyone — not every customer had a picture-perfect mom.
- Start the next holiday's prep before this one ends; early deadlines are what make holiday weeks survivable.