Are you communicating consciousness about your flowers?

Photo by Mathias Reding on Unsplash

Simplicity is a conscious choice for us when it comes to presenting our flowers. But when we don't say why, price alone can make us look like the cheap option.

A bride-to-be left us a voicemail recently. She'd found florists too expensive and wondered if we could help. She already knew our flowers - she'd seen them at the market and on our stand at Plenty Foods.

Her email arrived soon after. She wanted flowers as cheap as possible. She wasn't fussed which flowers and was relaxed about it, she just wanted flowers for the day. She asked us to be as creative as we liked and do what we thought best, though she did go on to give colours for the bridesmaids' bouquets, the bridal bouquet and the groom's buttonhole.

She didn't give me a budget - she asked me for one. So I sent her our wedding flowers guide and offered to come up with other options to suit her budget.

This kind of enquiry is coming in more often as we head into the wedding season. It's got me thinking about how florists are seen as the expensive option, and we're seen as the cheap one.

What does our pricing say about us?

Our wedding flowers are affordable compared with higher-end florists because we offer simple florals, based on whatever is best in season and arranged in our relaxed, garden-gathered style. We work with a colour palette, not specific varieties.

The only thing we promise is that our flowers are always seasonal, naturally scented and full of personality. They especially suit couples who love the surprise - seeing what's in bloom on the day, knowing their flowers have been picked just for them.

A simple wedding with us might cost $1,500, compared with $3,000 with a specialist wedding florist. That's less expensive, but still not cheap enough for some people. Ultimately it's about finding the right fit for customers, and not every customer will be ours.

What made me stop and think was what our simple bunches at the market and grocery store are telling customers about us. Are our flowers saying we're a budget brand, when our aim is to make flowers accessible for conscious consumers?

My worry is that our pricing, no-frills packaging and point of sale are giving out completely the wrong message. People are reading us as cheap rather than conscious.

The truth is that simplicity is a choice. Less packaging is better for the environment, and fewer options and frills mean our flowers don't cost the customer, or the planet, more than they need to.

The more I thought about it, the more I realised price is the easiest story going. It doesn't explain our choices, so customers fill in the missing details for themselves.

How a shoebox with a handle tells its own story

Earlier this year I was in Melbourne for the FBA Australian Meetup. Naturally, I wasn't going to miss the chance of a spot of big-city shopping.

I remember standing in the Bared shop, waiting to try on a pair of their secret support sneakers on the recommendation of the podiatrist treating my foot injury. A video was playing about what Bared cares about as a brand.

I expected the part about the foot health built into their fashionable designs. What surprised me was that their shoeboxes have handles, so you can carry your shoes out without needing a bag.

Leaving out the bag is one of a plethora of seemingly no-frills decisions that reflect Bared's commitment, as a B Corp, to minimising environmental impact and maximising social benefit. All while building a premium shoe brand.

Their strapline is "More than just great looking shoes". The shoes come first, but not at any cost. What impressed me most was that Bared tells you about the small details and decisions that reflect their values, right down to the little brown sachet of clay tucked inside the box to keep the shoes in good condition.

For some people, those are crucial reasons for choosing Bared. For me, it was the sneakers that truly hugged my sore foot that won the day. But that notion of "more than" has stuck with me.

What's your "more than"?

Local flowers are more than great-looking flowers too. The "more than" might be how you grow them, how long they last in the vase, or the packaging they don't come in. For a lot of us it's already true - we just haven't said it.

If Bared think a clay sachet deserves a mention, our choices deserve one too. That might be a line on your point-of-sale signage, a note tucked in with the bunch, or a sentence in your wedding guide about why your bouquets are designed to order. It doesn't need to be a sustainability statement, only the reason, said plainly.

I've realised the "more than" is what's been missing, and it's what led to those cheap-flowers wedding enquiries. I need to make sure our flowers come across as a conscious choice, because price alone can make us look like the cheap one.

So, what do your flowers say to your customers? Which of your choices aren't showing up in your pricing and packaging?

Finish this sentence in the comments: "Ours are more than just great-looking flowers..." I'd love to hear what your "more than" is.

Written by: Julie Treanor - Owner of The Pickery and co-creator of The Floral Business Activator, who's now looking hard at what her own market signage says. Follow along on Instagram at @thepickery.