So you want to go into business as a cut flower farmer?
You have worked out the why and the brand messaging you would like. Now to the nitty-gritty. What legal structure is your cut flower farm business - is it a limited company, a sole trader, a social enterprise? Is it VAT registered and why? Have you thought of your marketing strategy? Who are the customers for your cut flowers?
Roz Chandler started her flower farming business ten years ago. She will be covering strategy, marketing tactics, pricing, social media and upscaling your flower farm. No matter what point you’re at in your journey, this podcast will give you the information you need to grow your business.
Roz takes you through the foundations of setting up a business in an easy-to-follow way.
You will learn:
Connect with Roz Chandler:
Join my Facebook group: Cut Flower Farming Growth and Profit In Your Business
Thank you for listening. I’d love it if you subscribed to the podcast and left a review or rating.
So you want to go into business as a cut flower farmer?
You have worked out the why and the brand messaging you would like. Now to the nitty-gritty. What legal structure is your cut flower farm business - is it a limited company, a sole trader, a social enterprise? Is it VAT registered and why? Have you thought of your marketing strategy? Who are the customers for your cut flowers?
Roz Chandler started her flower farming business ten years ago. She will be covering strategy, marketing tactics, pricing, social media and upscaling your flower farm. No matter what point you’re at in your journey, this podcast will give you the information you need to grow your business.
Roz takes you through the foundations of setting up a business in an easy-to-follow way.
You will learn:
Connect with Roz Chandler:
Join my Facebook group: Cut Flower Farming Growth and Profit In Your Business
Thank you for listening. I’d love it if you subscribed to the podcast and left a review or rating.
Welcome to the Cut Flower Farming Growth and Profit In Your Business podcast. I'm your host, Roz Chandler, a flower farmer for over 10 years and 30 years as a business owner marketing director. This podcast is for you if you're an ambitious flower farmer, and looking for hints and tips to grow your business, we'll be covering strategy, marketing tactics, pricing, social media, and upscaling your flower farm. So much more. I'm so excited to introduce you to my amazing guest speakers along the way. All of you will be at different points in your business. Our podcasts will take this into account. We look forward to joining you on your journey.
So these are our top ten tips for setting up a business. Just looking at 2020 there were an estimated to be 6 million UK private sector businesses. 1.4 million of these had employees and 4.6 had no employees. So 4.6 million businesses in the United Kingdom have no employees. The UK private sector business population is made up of 3.5 million sole ownerships. That's 59% of the ownerships, and 2 million actively trading companies are 34% and 414 are ordinary partnerships. So a massive majority are solopreneurs really. There are people who've set their own businesses up, they don't have any employees. And that's where they start. A massive part of the UK economy.
So let's think about your motivation. Why would you start a business? You know, you have a nice stable job or you've had a career and now you decide that you're going to do something completely different. I would just say before you start a business, you be absolutely clear about why you're doing it. That may sound really obvious, but there are actually many reasons why somebody would choose to turn their back on a security of a job and a career for the uncertainty of starting a business.
So the clearer you are about what exactly you're trying to achieve, the better chance you have of achieving it. What is it that you want? Is it wealth? Is it power? Is it saving the world? You know, if you are motivated by something and it's best to write it down. Understanding what is your driver and what is your personal ambition is really important. So to understand, like I say, what drives you? What's your passion?
The main reason for this is simple. You work harder and persevere more on a business you're passionate about. This is more likely to succeed. Logic dictates that if you want a successful business, then you should begin in an area you already have a passion for. Of course, Field Gate Flowers was built out of a passion. It was born out of a hobby actually ten years ago, and just a passion for growing something from nothing. And I can honestly say that's where it came from.
Step two. Let's have a look at some market research. You really need to research your market and understand your business idea. So you need to define and analyse your target market. Is there a market for this product or this business that you're going to set up? So if you're a flower farmer in Milton Keynes, for instance, are there enough people who want to buy the product you've got? Is there a demand for your product and service? You need to understand your potential customers, you need to do a lot of research on that and be really clear on it. We do it once a year, draw our ideal customer. We name them. We do a Pinterest board. We talk about where they shop, what they are, what their name is, what they read, what newspapers they're likely to have. You need to know who is most likely to buy from you. Who your ideal target customers are. You need to know where they're based. What they like. What they don't like. So do start writing the ideal customer and have that person in your mind. Have a marketing and sales plan that meets those customer needs and we'll talk about that later.
Then you go about registering your business. The structure you do decide on for your business is up to you. In the UK, it would either be a sole trader. So it would be one person who owns it and runs the entire business. It’s the simplest form of a business structure. It’s suitable for any online business, you know, anyone who's independent. It’s suitable when you first set up a flower farm to be a sole trader. A limited company is a structure that means the business is a separate entity from you. This means the owners are only liable for any business debts to the extent of the amount of money they put into the business. Now limited companies have a place too. And it really depends on what size you want this business to be. And also, as the business grows, whether you want it to be a limited company. There are many others. There's a private limited company. In terms of being a public limited company. Sorry, in terms of being a PLC. There's a social enterprise, which is quite an interesting structure. So really look at what structures and what accounting best suits you. I run two companies. One is a limited company and one is a sole trader. So they both have benefits. And they both had disadvantages. And it's just working out which one is right for you.
Step four. Revenue, one of the most important actually. So based on your market research, work out whether your business idea is viable. How much money do you need? Write it down on a piece of paper. How much money do you want a monthly income? What will be enough for you to cover all your costs and generate enough profit to create a wage for yourself? Think about this really hard. Because when you first start a platform, the costs and investments are quite high, costly, lots of equipment. And also, as you start to scale up, there are costs at different levels. So you know, for us, the cost was initially polytunnels, and then it was going into a tractor and a rotavator and more polytunnels. And I'm not saying that happens overnight, I'm just saying you need to build that into your business and know that there's going to be some investment.
Step five. Once you've done those steps one to four, is to build a business plan. It's a really important part. And it's something that I suppose solopreneurs as I would call them, don't do. So a difference between a business being successful and one not so successful will be the business plan. Write it in a very clear way. There is a structure to follow. You can find this online. But it basically needs to include these key elements. An executive summary; so an introduction to your plan, its content, an overview of everything in it. It gives a short, concise, why you're in business. Then you have the contents page, then you talk about your business model and your products and services. You talk about your customer market, which you will have defined. You talk about your marketing and sales. Talk about financing projections. That’s probably the most important plan as a flower farmer. There are going to be certain parts of the year that you have no income. That might be January, and it might be February and some March. And you might miss Mother's Day if you're a British flower farmer, for instance, in the middle of March. So you need to determine a model that works for you. So projects and finance are really important. You need to decide on a team if you're gonna employ people. Are they freelance? Are they not? And then a summary. So keep it short. Work on the numbers. You know, put some objectives in there. Be realistic about your timescales. But do write a business plan.
Then you need to know point number six. You need to set up your finances, your accounting, and your tax. You need to do other things like opening a bank account, you need to understand your responsibilities about whether both in accounting tax and filing. And you need to start recording everything. The best thing is a simple piece of software. Talk to your accountant because some of them will want QuickBooks because that goes straight into the accountancy. I used Cash Flow for a while, which was brilliant. But you need to decide all those things. You need to talk to your accountant about when you register for VAT and VAT will come in, I think in the UK is £85,000 now. When you've got a turnover rate of £85 000, so isn't something you have to do on day one. And also VAT registration for a flower farmer is quite a difficult decision. Because obviously, you can reclaim the VAT on materials you buy. So a polytunnel or a tractor and all of those sorts of things. But going forward, there are lots of costs in your business which don't incur that. And then when you want to charge out to your customers, you don't really want to charge them 20% more. So think very long and very hard about that registration.
Point number seven is protecting your business. Now yes, you do need terms and conditions. And yes, you do need privacy policies. You know, you need people to sign up to your terms and conditions, for instance, if you're going to do wedding flowers, so it's quite important to get those documents right. You also need to think about IP. I came across somebody who sent me something this week about shooting a local contact. She had come to us to see her flower farm when she was very happy to show it. And then as a result of that what happened then was this lady then set up an enjoining, not really very far away for her flower farm, with a very similar name and a very similar customer base. So one of the most important things you can do very early on is to trademark your company name and brand. So that's really important so that nobody can take your trademark and brand. It might seem really early to do that if you're just starting out, but I would definitely look at it. Make sure you've got all the right insurances. You know, as a wedding florist, we need to have public liability to go into some of our venues. We have indemnity insurance, and so on. So look at all your insurances. Your accountant will probably point you in the right direction, but it's something you're going to need.
Number eight is obviously to create a brand and identity for your business. It is really important to get this brand right in the first instance. Having a professional brand, I believe, is critical to any business, if you want to stand out. It’s not about just creating a logo that is not your brand. Of course, that's part of it, it's about the messaging, what you stand for, and that's really important. And then you know, any photoshoot, you take part in order to view the assets for your website, and we tend to do two or three photoshoots a year to use on our web one. We set out with what our brand stands for before we even think about doing a photoshoot. And I would recommend that you do the same. Now, obviously, within that brand, you're going to build a website, and we can talk about that at another stage. When you decide on the name of your business, the most important thing to do is go and search and see if that name is available as a domain name. It’s really important that it is and that you can buy the .co.uk if you're in the UK, and the .com. You need both of those. Because what you don't want, I wouldn't want fieldgateflowers.co.uk. And I wouldn't want somebody else to go and buy fieldgateflowers.com, because they'd be competing against me. It might not even be in the same business arena as me. But I buy both of those to protect yourself. That's the first thing. Second, is you go off to your social media. Look at Instagram, look at Facebook and check that you can have those handles. It's really important that they exist because that's your brand. Before you name yourself, they're the two things I would do. And you might need to just adjust your name a little bit. You might need to put a location for instance in it, in order to be able to have those available to you.
Number nine, I would create a sales and marketing strategy. Now, this is absolutely imperative. So what marketing are you going to do? You need to understand your unique selling points, you need to set your price at the right level, you need to choose a route to market. So how are you going to sell yourself? You know, are you going to do it in a shop? Are you going to sell online? Are you going to sell wholesale? Are you going to sell retail? What products are you going to sell? And how are you going to sell them? Which channels are you going to use to sell your products? Are you going to use email? How are you going to build your email list? Are you going to use pay-per-click through Google? Are you going to do social media organic, which is posting or are you going to do social media paid? What content you're going to create and where you're going to put it? So you know you need some leaflets or some postage, you know what, what are you actually going to do as a channel?
And I just want to say, really think back to some entrepreneurs. I've studied entrepreneurs in Britain and they're really interesting. Most of them have started at the kitchen table. And they start really small and then they build their business to be worth millions. So people like Julie Dean of the Cambridge Satchel Company, brilliant idea. You know, she only started in 2008 with £600 pounds. And she only did it because she wanted her children to go to private school. So she saw a gap in the market. She saw the satchels were no longer available. And she got influencers to use them and all of a sudden her business now is worth millions. Liz Earle, 1995, her and a friend got together. They spotted a gap in the market for affordable, high-quality beauty products. Again, she got a website and she had a magazine and then as time went on, she got an MBE. Jo Malone left school with nothing, no qualifications at all. First made bath oils from her kitchen table, if you can believe that. Later on, she sold her company out to Ester Lauder and she too has an MBE. Emma Bridgewater, same thing. She couldn't find a cup and saucer for her mother's birthday present. So she created her own designs and now she specialises in beautiful ceramics. There’s more. There's Romney Fraser of Neal's Yard. There’s Justine Roberts of Mumsnet. There's Catherine Sargeant, you know, of Savile Row. She actually makes bespoke clothes. Christine Rucker of The White Company is another one. So you can see, there's lots of entrepreneurs that have started at the kitchen table. But what they did have, was a solid business plan. They started with what they wanted to achieve. They also did the why in their business. Why they're actually in business. And we can talk about the why in another episode of the podcast. Thank you.
This has been your host, Roz Chandler. If you'd like to know more about growing your cut flower farm, do join our Facebook group. It's called Cut Flower Farming, Growth and Profit In Your Business. Many thanks.