Who is the Next Generation of Flower Buyers?
Who's going to buy flowers from your shop in ten or twenty years? As Flower Clique works on its 2022 strategic plan, Vonda and Lori want to plant a seed: most shop owners plan for next year, but not for the next generation or two of flower buyers. To make the point, they bring on what Lori declares (with apologies to all previous guests) the cutest guests the podcast has ever had — Leighton and Campbell Martin, Vonda's granddaughters. What follows is equal parts delightful and genuinely instructive for anyone who wants their brick-and-mortar shop to still matter in twenty years.
"A gift that we put love into"
The girls' flower memories say everything about how flower lovers are made. They remember a cold winter day making arrangements with Grandma in the garage — learning which flowers were primary and secondary colors — and a trip to Doran's wholesale to build arrangements they then delivered around the neighborhood. One neighbor was so thrilled she ran up, kissed Campbell, and chased her around. Asked why flowers made people so happy, Leighton delivers the line of the episode: "Because we were giving them like a gift that we put love into." An unexpected gift, created with your own hands — that's the whole industry in one sentence, from a kid.
What kids already know about flowers
The girls have favorites (snapdragons, because they snap at you; sunflowers, because they're yellow), flowers in the house all the time thanks to their mom, and a surprisingly complete mental map of where flowers show up: churches, funerals, birthdays, baptisms, weddings, graduations, Trader Joe's and Hy-Vee, and a friend's mom's flower shop. They help pick out flowers for their parents' birthdays, watch their mom cut stems at the sink, and help arrange the vase and fill the water. Their theory of how to get other people to love flowers is basically an exposure-marketing strategy: deliver flowers to people — new neighbors, say — and once the flowers are in their house, "they'll like the colors and stuff... and they'll start to like them." More exposure, more love. Florists pay consultants for that insight.
Never too young to work in the shop
Leighton has already helped Aunt Ellie run photo shoots — clicking the camera at the computer during a session at Doran's — and it sparks a real idea from Lori for every owner battling employee-retention problems: don't discount your granddaughters, nieces, and nephews who genuinely love flowers. A kid who knows how to take a picture for social media is a kid who can help your shop today, and the girls' friend Brielle already appears in her mom's shop's Facebook Lives. The hosts also float bringing back the corsage tradition — every woman at church used to wear one at Easter and Mother's Day — and the girls confirm they'd happily make corsages for their mom and Grammy, and bring friends along to do it.
Classes create customers — Vonda's proof
This isn't theory. When Vonda had her flower shop in Dixon, Illinois, she ran low-cost Mother's Day and Christmas classes for kids roughly eight to twelve to make something special for their moms. Over the years she watched exactly those young people come back to order homecoming and prom flowers, then Mother's Day flowers. Lori's local shop does the same with mother-daughter classes the week before Mother's Day — three sessions, and they fill up fast. And the demand is there: the girls were headed to a resin-ring craft class at Michael's that very afternoon, and said yes, they and their friends would absolutely go to a flower-arranging class at a local florist. If kids are already paying to craft, why isn't the crafting happening in your shop?
Key takeaways
- The next generation of flower buyers is created by exposure — classes, deliveries, and hands-on time with flowers now become orders later.
- Host kids' or mother-daughter arranging classes around Mother's Day and Christmas; Vonda watched class kids grow into prom and holiday customers.
- Put young family members with real interest to work — social media photos and posts are a perfect first job in the shop.
- Consider marketing that revives traditions like Easter and Mother's Day corsages, and aim some of it at younger audiences.
- Flowers win people over because they're a surprise gift made with love — teach that, and the product sells itself.