The Business & Pleasure of Flowers
Join Vonda LaFever and Lori Wilson as they share expert advice, insider tips, and a whole lot of fun on all things floral. While everyone loves flowers, running a floral business can come with its fair share of challenges that might make you lose sight of the joy it brings. In this engaging and informative podcast, Vonda’s wealth of floral expertise pairs perfectly with Lori’s background in teaching, sales training, and life coaching to deliver valuable insights you can use right away.
From industry trends and the flower shop of the future to overcoming obstacles like boosting sales and building a stellar customer service team, they’ve got you covered. Discover how small shifts in your mindset and approach can create big transformations in your business and life.
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The Business & Pleasure of Flowers
Remember When...in the Floral Industry with Katy Miller and Tim Farrell AIFD, AAF, PFCI
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Episode 123: With Mother's Day coming right up, we thought it would be a good time for an episode to reflect on the early days of our careers in the floral industry. Vonda is joined by Katy Miller, who now works for Flower Clique and Tim Farrell AIFD, AAF, PFCI owner of Farrell's Florist and Teleflora Education Team Senior Advisor and Industry Ambassador, to remember when...Join us for laugh or two!
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And we didn't even know they were challenges at the time.
SPEAKER_01Okay, now I have this huge fear that we're starting to sound like our parents.
SPEAKER_04I'm sure we do, Katie. I'm sure we do.
SPEAKER_05Welcome to the Business and Pleasure of Flowers. We're your hosts, Vonda LaFever.
SPEAKER_03And Lori Wilson. And we believe that business and fun are a perfect combination. Kind of like us, Vonda.
SPEAKER_05Hey clickers, it's good to be back with you today. And I have some special guests because we're going to do a really interesting session today called Remember When. And it's not that we're all old, it's just that we're seasoned in the floral industry. Don't you think that's the best way to put it? I'm here with Katie Miller and Tim Farrell. So I'd like them to share with you just a minute about how long they've been in the business and what segment and you know their involvement. So, Katie, why don't we just start with you?
SPEAKER_01Great. Thank you, Vonda. So I retired from Dillon Floral Corporation after a 40-year career as a wholesaler. And I started out in the greenhouse part of the business, and then I worked in supplies and fresh flowers, and I retired in 2018 as the vice president. So I was mainly in charge of sales and marketing and advertising and customer relations. And some of the most fun I had was, you know, going out and visiting customers, but also educational opportunities for our customers. We had a lot of design shows. The Dylan Floral Corporation had a rich history in educational design shows, which is how I got to meet Vonda and Tim because they designed at our shows. Yeah, so after 40 years, I took a little bit of time off and then Vonda got a hold of me and uh encouraged me and convinced me that I needed to come out of retirement part-time. And now I'm working in sales at Flower Click. So I get to call customers, call on customers just like I was as a wholesaler. And it's a lot of things. That's great.
SPEAKER_05And we are so yeah, we're blessed to have you, that's for sure. That's for sure. And so you can see that Katie's gonna bring us a lot of remember when's in her time. And Tim, tell us a little bit about you.
SPEAKER_00Well, hi, everybody. So I have uh been in the flour industry for 40 years now and have owned my own shop for the last 38 years, and I'm still in the retail segment. I also work um with Teleflora, and I've worked with them for uh over 25 years now in their education departments, and I really enjoy that as well. I think the education is a real important part of the business. Um, but I'm happy to be here today with with Katie and Vonda. You two are two of the nicest and smartest women in the industry, so it's a pleasure to be here with you today, and I'm I'm looking forward to this conversation.
SPEAKER_05Oh, you're so sweet, Tim. Well, we just thought it would be so cool um to talk about things that used to be in the floral industry. And I guess what sparked this when was when the three of us were in Albany, New York, not too many weeks ago, and somebody came up with the new OASIS product, and she said, Oh my gosh, I remember before Oasis was around, right? And how people had a problem, you know, embracing that, which I don't ever remember having a problem embracing that. But I just thought we should again, here we go with a remember when, since it's right before Mother's Day. Tim, do you remember when cursages were done for Mother's Day? Everybody wore a crousage for Mother's Day.
SPEAKER_00I absolutely do. And if I remember correctly, you wore a crousage with a pink carnation if your mother was still alive, and with a white carnation if your mother was deceased. And it was, you know, in a different era when everybody went to church and everybody got dressed up to do that. Um, but it was just kind of a nice tribute to moms at that time. And um, I know we don't do that as much anymore, but I I think you know, all of us do remember our moms in a in a very nice way. And that was a real nice tribute to moms that were both alive and dead at the time.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, and we did that not even just in the pink or the red or the um white flower, but mixed color flower crousages. I mean, we would probably do in Dixon, Illinois, where my flower shop was. I mean, we would probably do 50 croissages just random, you know, and just mixed colors, and it was like whatever you had, a broken flower here or there, you were making those mixed croissages, and that was when you had to wire and tape everything. And it was before the gluing days, too. So that was a lot.
SPEAKER_00That's a discussion in and of itself. The I mean, it's amazing we all didn't have corporal tunnel by the time we were 30 years old because the amount of time spent wiring taping flowers was just incredible, and it's amazing to think of how little we charged for corsaves back in those days and how much more labor they actually were. That that to me is the fascinating part.
SPEAKER_05Right, right. But Tim, when you're out teaching, sometimes don't you run across people who are like, I still can't glue a cursage.
SPEAKER_00I do. Um, and I also run across people that have no idea what wire and taping is either, depending on what generation they're from. So it's yeah, you get you get both. And and actually knowing both techniques is really the best for a retail florist and a floral designer to know best both techniques and sometimes use one, sometimes use the other, and even sometimes using a hybrid version of both is the best way to accomplish some beautiful designs.
SPEAKER_05Totally agree. And it's interesting that you just said people who don't know how to wire and tape, because those are the ones that last year, when we couldn't get floral adhesive, we're having a problem, right? Because they're they didn't even have anything to fall back on. And we're like, oh yeah, we'll just wire and tape them, you know, it's we can get that done.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Remember when it was kind of a social faux pas if you arrived at church without a corsage on? No, really, the majority of the people wore corsages at church.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_05You're right, they did. They did, and and I've had this conversation before. It's just like you go now to church on Easter Sunday or Mother's Day, and nobody has a flower on, and you just kind of go, Oh man, where did we lose that completely? I don't know.
SPEAKER_00It's true.
SPEAKER_05Is this yours, Katie? On here, that you wouldn't dare go to church without one.
SPEAKER_01No, and I can remember my grandmother saying in the generation before, you didn't go dare you didn't dare go to church without a hat on. You know, then there was the corsage issue at holidays. Yeah, I I agree with you, Vonda. No one wears flowers in a church.
SPEAKER_05No hats, no corsages. No. Okay, give me another one.
SPEAKER_01Well, I the one that I remember most clearly about Mother's Day and the whole month of May, including Memorial Day, were the white potted mums. So for those uninitiated, we grew greenhouses full of white cushion potted mums, and people bought them to spray paint them. I know, don't go crazy. And we sold truckloads of them, and we had one customer in particular that was very well known in the coal region area in Pennsylvania, and um he spray painted them. And I mean they could have been spray painted pink or blue or fluorescent colors or red, white, and blue, depending on who was buying them. And I I think he kept Design Master in busy in business. Um, but yeah, so they were all spray painted, and that is still a thing around the coal region of Pennsylvania, but not quite to the degree that it was then. I mean truckloads full of potted mumps.
SPEAKER_05Did they plant them outside? They leave them in their house. What do they do with these white spray?
SPEAKER_01A lot of them went to gravesides, and some you just gifted um your mother or your grandmother or wife or whatever. Yeah, so they were gifts, they were a graveside, they were put out in front of the house. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Hey Katie, that brings up another bygone skill. How many florists today know how to actually take a piece of foil and wrap a potted plant with it and do it nicely? Um, there's so many of those pre-form pot covers now made out of mylar, but that was a skill that everybody learned when you first worked in a flower shop at the holidays because hundreds of plants that needed to be done and it needed to look beautiful at the same time.
SPEAKER_05Right. Oh my gosh, Tim, I forgot about that. You know, and then then you had to take the masking tape and turn it on the back side and make sure it was on the pot. We did, and then it would stick to the sides. Oh my gosh. Yeah, yep. Now with the speed covers or baskets, people are just like using those right.
SPEAKER_00I know, and when polyfoil came out, that was another big one that oh my gosh, you don't have to worry about it getting a tiny little pinch that had a hole in it that lost the water. The polyfoil held the water better, and yeah, it was a whole different, whole different game then.
SPEAKER_01Right, because you sure didn't want those leaking water at a house or a church or at the funeral home.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_05It's interesting to go back to the white mums, though. You think of not potted mums, but how we've come up with the sprayed daisies, right? The sprayed mums that you know they're selling all over the place in the fluorescent colors. And and so that trend back there that they were spray painting now are being produced in the farm, right? You see that, and the younger generation really do like those really sometimes I would call them god-awful sprayed mums, you know. Now they're buying them.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, they're popular, very popular.
SPEAKER_00They are, yeah. What comes around goes around, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it does. I know.
SPEAKER_00As long as it's not a leisure suit, I'll be okay with anything in the floral business coming around again.
SPEAKER_05Oh, those polyester laser suits, huh, Tim?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but they would match the potted mumps.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And the colors, you're right.
SPEAKER_05So do you remember the days before glue guns, Tim?
SPEAKER_00I do. I mean, I think I was probably in business a couple of years, maybe two or three years before I actually even purchased a glue gun. Um, and and I can really remember using them for the most part for making artificial wreaths for doors on grapevine wreaths and using that glue gun to glue into that grapevine with all the artificial stems and and uh floral materials that we have. We use it constantly for that. How about you?
SPEAKER_05Yep, exactly. Same. I remember when it came out, and I'm like, oh my gosh, this is amazing to try to get it on an artificial wreath, and that's exactly right. The grapevine wreath. But I also remember the burn on my hand when the glue dripped all over. Don't you remember that the first time you're like, oh my god. Then you learned you had to put your hand in hot or cold water, and anyway, yeah, those days. Woo! And then, of course, floral adhesive, which we just kind of covered instead of doing wired and taped cursages.
SPEAKER_00And then the pan glue, when that came in, that was that was good to have because it wasn't quite as hot, it seemed, as the glue sticks that came out of the glue gun. Um much faster to kind of dip in that glue and and insert pieces after that instead of having the glue gun and having to kind of run that glue strip or that glue bead down every stem. Right. And then there's that spider web of glue it left on your work table when you were done. Everybody had those, right?
SPEAKER_01Yep, yep.
SPEAKER_05And and then people would bring out their hairdryers, right, to try to melt the glue strings.
SPEAKER_01And then somebody decided that the glue strings look like a uh spider web, so that became popular at Halloween in design shows. Remember?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. Create your own spider webs that way.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, remember dipping two pieces of styrofoam in the glue pan and then rubbing them together, and when you stretched it, it would make just like a real thin, fine spider web. Yeah, I remember that. Exactly. Oh my, we're going back some years now.
SPEAKER_05You know, it's interesting when you do that sometimes at a program. If you're doing a fall program, you do it, people are like, wow, and you're like, oh my gosh, are you kidding me? Well, I'd like this one. I don't know. Was this yours, Tim, to talk about um double entry orders and writing things on piece of paper?
SPEAKER_00Um just you know, we just did it then because we didn't have the tools to do anything differently. But you think of the amount of work that you know, somebody called the flower shop and you wrote everything down on one little order form by hand, and then you had to go and rewrite the card and rewrite the envelope and type in maybe the credit card number into the machine or before that, write it out again on one of those slips, and then batch them all in and mail them away to get your credit card money back, and it the delivery tags you have to write. It's just amazing how technology has I I would think my dates are only about four hours long now compared to what it used to be, but somehow it's not because we spent so much time doing all those tasks that now are really automated with good um point of sale systems.
SPEAKER_05I remember trying to figure out, you know, you'd write out your order ticket, and then it's like, did we do this one already? Because somebody didn't initial it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Was it not done? And then we'd say, Well, it if it had two holes in the side of the paper, you knew there was a pin, uh a card pinned on it. So you knew that probably was finished. I mean, so it was all those investigations things like, oh, you know, did it get done? Did it get not get done? Right.
SPEAKER_00Oh my gosh. And remember that little booklet that came from the credit card people that you had to look for the number. If you had a credit card number, you have to look in that. It was almost like a phone book of credit card numbers and make sure that number wasn't in there as a bad number. Like it's amazing. That's right, the fraud fraudulent numbers. That's right. But the book was like 40 pages long anyway. We oh my gosh, that that's a bad memory.
SPEAKER_05Oh my gosh, I forgot about that. That was just that was insane. And then you got to where, you know, sometimes as an employee, this is when I was an employee in Ames, and I would like, oh, what are the chances, right? So you just didn't look, and of course, that's the one that was fraudulent.
SPEAKER_01Well, we were doing the same thing in the wholesale house. We didn't have computers either. So we were handwriting all the customers' orders out, and then I can remember the orders had to go to somebody who typed them up for the invoice, and then we got computers, and then they were entered from handwriting into the computers. And I can, you know, some people don't have very good handwriting, so there'd be all kinds of fights, you know, what is this? What does it say? Yeah, that was a long day because that person had to wait until the end till all the orders were handwritten and then entered them into the computer. Oh my word. And then I wrote on here the one that just made me laugh out loud was all of our inventories were kept on blackboards. Can you imagine what could possibly go wrong with counting, with counting in a wholesale house and putting the numbers up on a blackboard? And you know, then you have uh uh six or eight salespeople erasing, oh, what was that number before I erased it?
SPEAKER_05I can't remember I can't imagine, right?
SPEAKER_01Wow, yeah, thank goodness for computers.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_05Well, I remember too, Tim, when you mentioned point of sale, before we got our first point of sale, they the whole deal was, you know, you can get rid of your bookkeeper or you can save X amount of hours per week, you know, one employee you can get rid of. And and you know, you just kind of scratch your head and go, yeah, right, you know, and it was so true. I mean, you just didn't realize how much of a game changer it was. And, you know, like you, Katie, you're saying, you know, numb not double entry, you're putting it in yourself so you don't have to worry about them not spelling it right. And now computers even have a spell check on the card, so it's like hard to mess it up. I love it.
SPEAKER_00And also back in those days, remember in holidays that um it was a real game changer as far as wire out orders went. I mean, almost all orders that were going to a different place were florist to florist orders through one of the teleflora or um other networks. And we had somebody in every holiday that they we had a different office that was upstairs. They sat upstairs with that directory and looked up, wrote down the information and called out every single order one at a time and hundreds of orders in a holiday week, and then had to do the you know, if they keep calling another shop till they finally got somebody who could do the order, maybe, and then record that information of who took the order. Oh, it was just I I think it'd be enough to make me quit if I had to do that right now.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, right.
SPEAKER_05Oh, that's right, Tim. And then they had to write those down, like you said, and record them. And then when the statement came, let's go on the other side of that. The statement comes, and then you had to reconcile the statement to see, oh, did we get charged for that? Oh no, they charge us too much, or this one, you know, we're charged us twice. Oh gosh.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So you young folks out there listening, be grateful for the time you live in because it was a whole different ballgame back then.
SPEAKER_05You might have challenges now, but they're not well and we didn't even know they were challenges at the time.
SPEAKER_01Okay, now I have this huge fear that we're starting to sound like our parents. I'm sure we do, King. I'm sure we do. I was telling Lori the other day, Tim, and you you can relate to this, many wholesalers were growers first before they were whole um wholesalers. And a lot of people don't realize that the locally grown product, it was just normal to have your roses from Dylan's or your carnations from so-and-so, because we grew all that stuff. And people say, You grew carnations? Yeah, we grew carnations. So did everybody else. Yeah, and and they smelled wonderful. They smelled like cloves back then, you know, and and yeah, and the roses were local and they smelled beautiful. But yeah, if you say that to people now, they say, you know, you couldn't possibly have grown that. Yeah, we did. A lot of things.
SPEAKER_05Isn't that interesting? Because there's so much of that buy local, grow local, grown local, and you were doing it that many years ago, and people didn't realize that. I mean, right.
SPEAKER_01But you know, when we stopped growing carnations and roses and all the other things, I mean, it was tough for our customer base because they were used to that, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with imported roses and carnations, but just weaning people off of what they had, it's very hard.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Yeah, they had the best of the best because they were growing there and and all the, like you said, the fragrance and all that went with that, and then to move away from it and go, wow, no, you have to have these, they're they're gonna look like nothing until they open up, right?
SPEAKER_01We had limonium that smelled sweet, you know. When did you have limonium that smelled sweet?
SPEAKER_00Never.
SPEAKER_01Never, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But did that all change when like the Dutch market started to really like infiltrate into the United States? Is that like the mid-80s, do you think? When because I remember like the very beginning of my career, like really being limited with product as far as seasonability, like you really thought about like what you can get at a certain time of year. And then it seemed like when it wanted to be available off the Dutch market, those rules changed totally. Like you could get you know, Lily the Valley at any time, you can get tulips at almost any time. That before you wouldn't think of selling a wedding with tulips in October, you just didn't think about it because that would be a baby June thing, you know.
SPEAKER_05So interesting.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_05That is interesting. Did they stop growing them because of cost?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so there were certain things happened along the way at our greenhouses um between the cost. Um, to heat a greenhouse in northeastern Pennsylvania is just astronomically, you know, undoable. Yeah, first it was the cost, and then the quality of South American product became so much higher as they learned how to grow good products and they could bring it in cheaper than we could grow it. That's when you know things started to change dramatically.
SPEAKER_05That makes sense. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_05But with the pandemic and all the shortage of hard goods that were going on in the last couple of years, it was very interesting to watch social media, and people are like, I've got to create this and I don't have any floral foam. I want to create this and I don't have this. And how the experienced designers would be like, no, you just have to try this. And and it was like a step-by-step on how to do things like we did in the old days, like our parents, Katie. But it it it really was, it gave us something to fall back on as far as mechanics of things that could be done. I mean, before Oasis, and we did the shredded styrofoam, and then you crimp the chicken wire on top of it. Remember that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah. There are ways to do it. Yeah, absolutely. And now chicken wire's back.
SPEAKER_00It is.
SPEAKER_05And Tim, did you? Ever pull all nighters like for Valentine's Day and Mother's Day?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. I think it was the the second year I was actually that I had my own business in the shop. It was a Mother's Day and I was here for literally two days straight. It was, you know, just I remember laying on the floor at like 7 30 in the morning thinking I'm going to get just a half hour, just close my eyes for a half hour. And of course the phone starts ringing at that time anyway. So yeah, but yeah, somehow we survived.
SPEAKER_05We did, yeah. And I lived probably about 20 miles from the flower shop that I worked at. And I remember Brian, who is now owns the shop I used to work in, and he and I were just we were at 6 a.m. And he's like, just come back over to my apartment, we'll shower and come back. So we did an hour later, we were back at it. But you know, how do we survive those days? You know, and it's interesting because now with the shortage of employees, then some people are finding themselves working longer hours and working harder. And it's you know, it's almost okay, returning back to that again. It's like, gosh, we hope we don't have to pull those all-nighters, but some people are having to because of um the loss of enough staff.
SPEAKER_00But I think also in those years, we've learned a whole lot about flowers. And I mean, we never would have made an arrangement three days ahead of time, 30 seconds. You're right. Um, we just thought, oh, it wouldn't last, it's taking three days off. But I think that that whole chain of life cycle that came into really a strong um influence in the industry, probably back in like the late 90s, where the flowers were really cared for and kept at the right temperatures from the time they left the farm until the time they got in the flower shop. And then us understanding how flowers kept at the right temperatures and under the right conditions will last much longer. I mean, we we know that we don't have to make those 150 orders on a Saturday on Friday anymore. They could be started on Tuesday and kept at the right temperatures and it really do last long. So we've learned a whole lot along the way. We were kind of the fortunate ones to be in that generation that learned as opposed to the ones that came before us that really just they did those all nighters every single holiday that they had to, you know. Right.
SPEAKER_05Mm-hmm. That's right, Tim. It's work working smarter, not harder, right? Because of the knowledge we've acquired, we can really you know take advantage of that. And like you said, there's no reason you can't do it on Tuesday for something about on Friday. Whether it's sitting in a bucket or it's sitting in the vase that is going out the door, it doesn't make any difference.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, especially like with the corsage work we talked about. I have I have floors that really, even today, like if I'm out teaching, are shocked that you can make a corsage more than a day or two ahead of time because they think that you know the water source is gone. And I said, No, I mean, honestly, you know, we have to think about those experiences where we've had that corsage that wasn't picked up, and two weeks later it's still perfectly fine in the cooler. And we can find ways to to learn from others' mistakes and and figure out how to do this better. And I think that the world we live in now with social media being what it is and with the opportunities we have to get education, the more we take advantage of that, the better all of us can be as florists.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, totally agree. This one somebody has up here yellow ribbon shortage during the Gulf War.
SPEAKER_01That was a real thing. Wow. So in the wholesale house, um, we had um McGinley Mills and several other very large ribbon suppliers, and we literally ran out of remember, it was a big thing, you know, everybody wanted yellow ribbon. Um, people were just asking for it for everything, not just to tie around the old oak tree, but you know, everywhere. They put it everywhere. And we literally ran out. And when we would get small orders in, they had to be rationed. We had salespeople and florists fighting over yellow ribbon. And you know, for a week, maybe you uh each salesperson might get three rolls or six rolls, and they had to ration them out to their customers. That was a real thing. Yeah, I know.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, speaking of history repeating itself, then that happened with Design Master Paint just last year, right? I mean, you couldn't get hydrangea blue, you couldn't get certain things, so it's this different product, different time, but like the yellow ribbon. I remember that. Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we actually had a guy that worked here um delivering and processing flowers that was in the marine reserves, and he got called up. He was actually only sent to Okinawa at the time. He didn't have to go to the war itself, but he had to relieve troops going there. We actually wrapped the entire shop, the building, with a chicken wire based ribbon. We put we got fabric that was 54 inches wide and put a chicken wire base underneath it, wrapped the building, put a big bow in the front, and it was like a tribute for him because of the service he was doing, but I'll tell you what, like it was a great just a great statement in the community, and people still years later were talking about that. And we're oh, I remember when you did that, and you know. Oh wow. It's funny how we really are so connected to our communities with current events because of flowers, and and we can really make those connections even stronger when we think about giving out yellow ribbons to people or giving out even now, like with Ukraine, like you know, just posting a flag in your window, or it's amazing how we we really do have the opportunity to connect with our customers in so many ways if we just pay attention to what's on the news and think of how to make a statement with that.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, exactly. That's that's one thing that's never changed, right? In our industry is the connection with our community and one another. We're all so far apart from each other, but the connections that we have in with others in the industry is amazing. And and the networking, which we remember when there wasn't as much of that. But when you bring in community as far as florists together, and like you're saying, Tim, with our local communities, I mean it all makes a difference. Flowers do speak so many words that we can't say all the time. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01Any last-minute ideas on remembering when speaking of May, I can remember when most florists spent a lot of time in May planting geraniums in graveyards for their customers. That was a huge thing.
SPEAKER_05Right? That's right. No, we we used to do that too, Katie. I remember that too. And then also we'd make big arrangements, big fresh flower arrangements and deliver them to set on the gravestones. I mean, Tim, do they do that anymore?
SPEAKER_00We don't have much of that business here at all in the Delaware County area. I know in central Pennsylvania and around state college, it is still a huge tradition there. And in certain areas that I've been to, like Kentucky, Tennessee, when you go down there, there's florists that have a very significant part of their business that's dedicated to permanent grave markers and gravestones with permanent flowers. And you drive past the cemeteries and you see it everywhere, which is it is a more regional thing, I guess, but in in some parts of the country, it's it's definitely a significant part of business.
SPEAKER_05It was so much fun. I actually really enjoyed going to the graves on usually the Saturday before Memorial Day, and we would spend almost a full day, you know, because then you'd have to, and we bring the kids with, right? Say her and Tyler would go and they would be running around trying to find the name on the stone, you know. You have this map you're looking up. It was actually like an adventure, almost a scavenger hunt, right? You're looking for these. My poor children.
SPEAKER_01And how about grave blankets? How many people know what a grave blanket is?
SPEAKER_05That's probably not too many any of it. I mean, there's still, I think that that's probably regional too, Katie.
SPEAKER_01Yep. So a grave blanket actually, you know, it could be any size, but it covered the grave and acted as a blanket for your loved one. And it was made out of uh, Tim and Vonda, you can speak to this more, but it was made out of like chicken wire and other things, and then flowers inserted into it. So it could be a blanket of flowers, it could be greens and flowers, it could be all kinds of things.
SPEAKER_05We bought ours probably from our local wholesaler, and it was evergreen, and then we would decorate them with usually a red bow and pine cones and sometimes some poinsettas, artificial poinsettas or something. But usually that was like winter time, um, but it was big. The great blankets.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we still do them, and it's at Christmas, same as what you do, Vonda. You know, the evergreen base with silk poinsettias and you know, the red velvet ribbon and pine cones. But I do find that to be a very generational thing. It's that amount of business decreases every year, and the customer base is definitely um in that, probably that 65 plus age range right now that that actually purchased them.
SPEAKER_05Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And I love somebody put on the list free delivery.
SPEAKER_05Yes, yes, we did. We had free delivery at the flower shop. I worked it, and then we did that when we started it was like free local delivery. And now you just are like, wow, you can't, one, you can't afford to do it. I mean, at the time you could build in an extra three or four dollars into your designs and sell them to include delivery, so it you could advertise it as free local delivery, but you can't even do that anymore.
SPEAKER_01No, but back in the day it was a thing, you know. You we never really looked at delivery as we do now, right? Delivery is a line item.
SPEAKER_00It is, it has to be, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_05So just to conclude this, we just hope that everybody has enjoyed a little bit of laugh, or you know, looking back going, wow, I'm glad I don't didn't live back there in the floral industry. Or, gosh, I remember that and I can relate to it. Any other last-minute thoughts, guys?
SPEAKER_00No, thank you so much. It was a great trip down memory lane. And uh that was. Hopefully, let's do this again in another 40 years, right?
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