Spring Forward: Mother’s Day Strategies from the Directors
The whole gang is here: Vonda and Lori are joined by Flower Clique's other two directors, Kami Martin and Ellie LaFever, for a round-robin on what each of them is hearing from florists right now — and what they'd tell shops to do about it heading into Easter, prom, Administrative Professionals Week, Mother's Day, and graduation. (But first, condolences to Lori and the 37,000 other subscribers of the Big Bear eagle cam, where nature has been writing its own drama series. As the team gently reminds her: you can't control the eagles. Which turns out to be the theme of the whole episode.)
Tariff anxiety: control what you can control
Vonda's tip tackles the anxiety she's hearing everywhere: tariffs. You can't control what happens with them — but you can control how you react, and you can control the experience you give your customers. Keep offering quality product and service above everyone around you, and your customers will keep buying flowers from you; they're not walking away because of a headline. Lori adds that this is actually a good moment to hunt for inefficiencies: do you really need a fully stocked cooler at all times, three deliveries a day, or 25 categories on your website? Restrategize where it makes sense. Kami's counterpoint is just as important — don't panic-cut things that are working. She ran the numbers for one worried shop and found a website converting at over 12% with a $125-plus average order value: the last thing to touch. And Vonda's closer: assign rising costs to what actually causes them. Trimming the phone bill won't fix flower costs — if you need to raise prices, raise prices.
Before you forecast doom about a slow week, Vonda's first assignment is to pull last year's numbers — for prom, Easter, admin week, and Mother's Day. You may find you weren't busy this same week last year either, and that's comfort backed by data. Look beyond the top-line: break out fresh flowers, plants, gift lines, sympathy, and weddings by category so you know what to actually expect and order.
Prom is going digital (and so should your order form)
The word of Kami's week was prom. The trend she's seeing among members who sell a lot of it: an open-ended online form — the digital version of the prom bar — where the prom-goer or mom enters dress color, style preferences, and favorite flowers instead of phoning it in. Many website platforms have built-in forms, and shops are also using inexpensive third-party tools like Jotform, customized with the shop's logo and submitted straight to email. With some schools running proms several weekends in a row, getting organized now pays off.
Look human online — and make your photos worth $100
Ellie brought two social-media observations. First: she can spot a caption pasted straight from ChatGPT while scrolling — stray quotation marks, the sentence-two-emojis-sentence rhythm, and Title Case Hashtags. Use AI as a tool, not a crutch: delete the telltale emojis, rough up a sentence, sound like a person. Otherwise "we're all just talking as robots to each other," and that doesn't cut through the noise. Second: product photography. Your custom designs are $100-plus purchases — a luxury good — and nobody pays luxury prices for a dark, pixelated, fuzzy photo. Shoot in good light at proper resolution and keep that quality all the way to upload, the way any online store you splurge at does. Lori adds the flip side she sees on shop websites: over-Photoshopped flowers that nature can't replicate are worse than an honest dark photo, because they set up a negative review on delivery day. And know the difference in venues — Kami told one member her adorable dog-holding-a-flower shot was perfect for social, but not website-worthy. As Ellie puts it, your website is valuable real estate; every spot has to earn its return.
Beat the grocery bouquet with bundles and names
Nobody's pretending the Trader Joe's DIY bouquet isn't happening. The answer is to rise above it and become the luxury gifting destination — one-stop shopping. Flower Clique members are knocking it out of the park with bundles and vignettes that go beyond plush-and-a-balloon: a premium candle plus specialty chocolates crafted into a gift for mom, plus year-round birthday and anniversary bundles that also move your giftware. Kami's second tip is the sneaky-powerful one: people buy based on the name. Take an existing design — same photo, new description — and give it a Mother's Day twist: "Vibrant Vibe" becomes "Vibrant as Mom's Love," "Ethereal Dream" becomes "Endless Love for Mom." When the team pulled numbers across the country, the holiday-renamed designs were the top three Mother's Day sellers. Yes, your staff needs a heads-up that the same design appears twice on the site — that's a training conversation, not a reason to skip it. Have fun with it, let your younger employees (or AI) pitch names — Lori's daughter would absolutely buy "Mom's a Vibe."
Train for real, and market like you mean it
Lori's been pulling progress reports for shops whose employees are in Flower Clique's prep schools — and the heat maps tell a story. Around 70% of the accounts she's checked lately show "100% complete" with zero videos actually watched: click-and-continue all the way down. Her message to owners is blunt: don't set your employee up to fail. Tell new hires up front that training is monitored, use the end-of-day challenges to check comprehension in a five-minute conversation, and accept that even done-for-you training still requires the owner to follow up. Joining the program without doing the work is like joining Weight Watchers and never following the plan.
The final charge comes from Vonda: market yourself, starting now. You're in control — don't sit back and let people decide to buy something other than flowers. When a member posted that his admin day numbers were low last year, fellow members flooded the thread with bundles, calls, emails, and reels — all free. Everything old is new again: if you want a holiday to come back in your town, make it happen.
Key takeaways
- Don't panic over tariffs — control your quality and service, cut real inefficiencies, and never chop what the numbers say is working.
- Pull last year's holiday sales by category (fresh, plants, gifts, sympathy) before you forecast — data beats fear.
- Set up an online prom preference form (built-in or Jotform) to capture dress colors and styles without tying up the phone.
- Humanize AI-written captions and invest in bright, honest product photos — $100 products deserve $100 images, not Photoshop fantasies.
- Rename existing designs with Mother's Day twists and build gift bundles — named holiday products were last year's top sellers.
- If employees are in training, monitor the challenges and talk them through — click-and-continue isn't learning.