Now is the Time to Prepare for Mother's Day (Yes, Now!)

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With Lori and Ellie on a whirlwind trek through NextGen SAF in San Diego and the Great Lakes Floral Association, Vonda welcomes her friend and co-worker Kami Martin for a true behind-the-curtain episode: exactly how the Flower Clique team prepares for Mother's Day. And here's the kicker — this preparation didn't start in March. It started in January. If Mother's Day still feels far away, this episode is your wake-up call, and your roadmap.

Start with the end goal, then work backwards

The team's process begins with a simple question: what do we want to feature? Kami's steady refrain is that your website should match your in-store specials — you tell the customer what to buy by showing your menu online. So before a single stem is ordered, Vonda and Kami review last year's Mother's Day look, factor in member feedback and current trends, and decide on the end goal. Only then do they work backwards to the tools: the inventory ordering, the containers, the flowers.

Why so early? Because florists' wholesalers are already hounding them for pre-orders. As Kami put it, members start asking for Mother's Day materials the week after Valentine's Day — so the team commits to getting everything to members a minimum of seven weeks before the holiday.

Recipe first, then design, then photo shoot

Here's the step most shops get backwards: you have to create the recipe before you make the design. Many designers make something pretty first and price it afterward — which works fine until you realize you're missing entire price points. Vonda builds roughly 80% of each recipe before she and Ellie ever start designing for the photo shoot, then fine-tunes after seeing the images.

Kami admits they learned this the hard way: in years past they'd finish a photo shoot and suddenly ask, "Where's our $79 design? Where's our $59?" Now hitting every price point is down to a science, so every customer — from the $59 buyer to the $200 buyer — finds something made for them.

Photograph through the eyes of a consumer

Once the shoot is done, the real detail work begins: clipping images, color correcting, and sizing. A compact $59 cylinder can look enormous next to a $200 arrangement in those little website squares — and an arrangement with willow or foliage shooting out the top reads as tiny online, even if it's generous in person. Vonda's rule: look at every image through the eyes of a consumer, not a designer.

Two more photo-shoot tips from the episode: if you design all-the-way-around arrangements, count (and price) the flowers in the back — customers and designers alike love spotting that little sunflower peeking out. But if you're selling 12 roses, show all 12; six roses in the photo reads as something not being right.

Names, descriptions, and the art of the layout

Then comes naming and describing every design — harder than it sounds when your library is huge. Names sell: an arrangement called "My First Love, My Mom" or "Blooming with Gratitude" moves in a way a generic name never will. Descriptions matter too, both to tell the customer what they're getting and to work in keywords that help someone searching "florist in [your city]" land on your site.

Laying out the category is its own orchestration: balancing colors so the page looks pretty, covering price options and styles for every kind of mom, and avoiding the paradox of choice. The team also builds the layout to be florist-friendly — spacing standard, deluxe, and premium versions of the same design across the page so shops can mass-produce from a manageable inventory without customers noticing the overlap.

And one warning from Vonda: don't only feature designs you like. She confesses there's one design on this year's Mother's Day page she's not a fan of — Kami rooted for it, it stayed, and it turned out to be a bestseller last year. The trendy totes the team introduced got the same skeptical reception from some florists, then flew out of coolers.

The final mile: spreadsheets, sales sheets, and add-ons

Once the website is set, Vonda builds what Kami calls her "labor of love": a projection spreadsheet where members enter how many of each design they expect to sell, and the sheet outputs exactly how many of each flower and container to order. Then come the sales sheets for the phone team — so staff sell what's actually in the cooler instead of taking random orders — and the designer's resource guide with recipes for the design room. Don't forget the unglamorous step: assigning add-ons like chocolates, balloons, and plush to every new product you upload.

Key takeaways

• Start Mother's Day prep now — you have a two-to-three-week window before Easter, prom, and Admin Professionals Day swallow your calendar.
• Build the recipe before the design so every price point is covered, and price with Mother's Day flower costs, not today's.
• Photograph and size images for the consumer's eye: clear, clipped photos that read true-to-size in a website grid.
• Names and keyword-rich descriptions sell — invest real thought in them.
• Arm your team with sales sheets and recipe guides so the shop sells what it planned to make.