Tariff Talk (BONUS EPISODE)

In this special impromptu episode, Lori sits down with Ellie and Abby Chick, retail florist & advisor from Blakemore Flowers, to unpack the “T-word” that’s on everyone’s lips: tariffs. With pricing pressures mounting and Mother’s Day around the corner, this candid conversation explores what florists can actually control in the face of supply chain unpredictability.

From wholesaler confusion to confident pricing strategies, Abby shares how she’s navigating rising costs, team communication, and creative product offerings. Expect laughter, real talk, and practical ways to stay grounded and proactive—even when everything’s changing daily.

💡 You’ll hear:

• What to do before raising prices
• How to communicate with customers without panic
• Creative gift ideas beyond flowers
• Why now’s the time to empower your team

Whether you’re a seasoned shop owner or new to retail floral, this episode will leave you informed, encouraged, and ready to take action.

Sponsored by:
Flower Clique
Flower Clique Prep School
Real Life Retail Florist

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:08

Hi, Ellie. We have a special guest here with us, one of our Flower Click advisors and members, Miss Abby Chick from Blake More Flowers. Hello, hello, Abby. Hello, hello, hello. We didn't know if Abby was going to make it today because she had a little quick detour yesterday to the ER, but she's here. So that was good. She's here and she's still pregnant. Yeah, she's here. She's here, she's still pregnant.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

But we were not sure.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

We thought we did. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

We're coming to you with an impromptu podcast outside of your Tuesday scheduling to chat about the T-word. I'm so over it.

SPEAKER_01 0:49

Code word for it.

SPEAKER_02 0:51

Code word. I don't know. We'll have to ask. We'll have to ask Ellie's chat. Nova. Yeah. What could be a code word for the tariff? Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

So the big word is tariffs. It's it's the name on everybody's lips. And we brought in Abby because she has a great perspective as a retailer who is super smart and optimistic and positive and all the good things. So we just want to offer a little bit of insight and clarity and just kind of have a candid conversation.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

Right? Yeah. I was kind of mentioning to you guys it this is what I love about Flower Click too, is that we do keep it very real. We like to have these candid conversations. And that, you know, this is not just going to be like a lot of platitudes of, you know, you've got this. We can't know what to do. We did this in Coke. Yeah. Like right. This is uncharted territory for a lot of us, you know, for some of us who have been in the retail industry for 40, 50 years, you know, we've maybe, you know, been here before some time. But I think that everybody, because of social media, especially, I think there's a lot of chatter, there's a lot of pressure. And so I think in general, a lot of us are feeling pretty insecure right now regarding our businesses and you know what's actually going on.

SPEAKER_02 2:24

Yeah. Absolutely. Well, and I think one thing you just said is social media and not everything's true, believe it or not. I don't know if you guys knew that.

SPEAKER_01 2:35

Really?

SPEAKER_02 2:36

I know. I know. And so I'm here. Yeah, I'm pretty sure on social media, it's true. Yeah. Yeah. So fact agree on that, but I'm pretty sure not everything on social media is true. And that's part of the problem, right? Yeah. So we what is true? And everything changes every day. Something I feel like, wait, where are we today? What was the deadline? And with what country? And what's, you know, so we're navigating something day this daily. Right. And so, you know, we have we do have resources like Society of American Florists, which we can trust because we know they have their feet on the ground and they are out there. And we have lobbyists that fight for our industry, and and we have they send out emails when they can, but it does change it and it and it is kind of scary when we don't know where to turn. And so that's why we wanted to pop on here and do a quick little conversation with you, Abby, and just say, as an everyday florist, how are you navigating what's true, what's not, what can you control?

SPEAKER_01 3:47

Yeah, I mean, I've been sending you guys screenshots of like, oh, got another one, you know, right every vendor right now, and if you compare vendor to vendor, it's pretty rare to even find the exact same information and how they're handling it. I mean, it's like me versus the florist down the street, you know, everybody's gonna have their own policy. You know, we are all coming from different areas on the political spectrum. So that's going to affect, you know, business owners' attitudes about things, you know, whether you're positive or where you feel, you know, more negative towards the situation. So you have to remember your wholesalers are operating with just about as much information as we have. You know, they're talking to farms, farms, you know, they're not economists, they're not in those trade deals. No, they don't have, I would venture to guess, even as much insight as to what's actually happening as we do or our wholesalers. And so everybody's just kind of coming from their perspective with their best case scenario of like, okay, how do we weather this if this harmful? Or what we're being told is this today. So we don't know, you know, if tomorrow a deal is gonna be struck. So I think that that's it's it's impossible to get a real answer. You know what I mean? Like, I don't think that we're going to get anything in the next week or two, or even possibly before Mother's Day that's going to give us a real look at what the next six months to the year is going to be in, you know, floral buying. But we've obviously been chatting about, you know, like, okay, so we don't have any control over this. What can we do?

SPEAKER_00 5:52

The one thing I'll say before we get into the specifics is I was on a call earlier at like wholesaler grower level, and all of them, right, smart business people like yourselves, listeners, are operating on percentages. They're seeing, okay, my vendors from the farm are now charging this percentage increase. And then wholesalers going, okay, based on our formula for our profit margins, this is what we have to charge. This is what we should charge, but this is what we have to charge in order to keep our profit margin and keep us in the green. So ding ding ding, that's what you have to do, right? Yeah. That it comes down to that. We have to charge accordingly. You have to.

SPEAKER_01 6:41

And I mean, I think that something that I appreciate about Flower Click and how much you guys help your members with pricing strategies and and keeping us, you know, really accounting for, you know, labor and markups and all that goes into, you know, running a business. I think this is one of those times where you you have to look and you say, okay, 10 to 20% tariff. Let even if we said every single flower, you know, worst case scenario that comes in your door in the next six months is gonna have a 20% tariff. If you've been fudging the numbers a little bit, like, oh, I'm I don't really charge labor because I don't know that my area can support that, you're gonna build this so much worse than florists who have been really confident in their pricing structures and who are, you know, kind of using, and I again I hate that industry standard markup, but there is a pretty common markup range for flowers across the board. And if you haven't been doing that, you know, this could feel a lot scarier to you, you know, because some of us are charging 20% labor. So let's say if if you didn't do anything, you just lost all of your labor on every design that you did by paying 20% more. So I think first and foremost, the biggest piece of advice to florists is to stop being scared to charge what the neighboring florist down the street is. Or don't be afraid to charge more just because every other florist in your area is afraid to kind of come up to those industry standards, you know? Right.

SPEAKER_02 8:31

You know, that is so interesting to me because going back to that meeting that Ellie was talking about, that the call we were on earlier, somebody said something in there, and it made a lot of sense to me that now this they were actually talking about florists because it was at a wholesale level that florists right now, because of how the world is, and you know, that anytime you draw on TV, you hear about the terrorists and you hear about the cost, everything like they're expecting the price to go up a little bit right now. I'm will go out on a limb and say we customers are expecting costs to go up a little bit too. So let that ease your mind, florists. That everything Abby just said, if you don't have that already in your cost, now is the time, especially before Mother's Day, anyway. Like it really is the perfect time.

SPEAKER_01 9:36

It's not like you're gonna bring this up to your customers, you know. No, I think there's it, there you're nobody's gonna walk through your door and be like, what is a terrorist? Like right. Right. But we we've overheard it.

SPEAKER_02 9:49

We don't know that you know prices are bad, you know. It's very self-explanatory as to why you're doing it. Yeah. So so it's it's I and it's essential.

SPEAKER_00 10:03

You have to if you want to if you want to survive, you have to. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 10:07

You're not taking advantage of your customer, no, and you have to do this is not be dismissive of how hard that is sometimes because some of us do live in markets, and I I live in one of those markets. Yeah. You have people, yes, I love it. What when we get a day when there's like four people who have spent, you know, $150 or $200 on an FA order, like not a funeral, we're like, we're in it today. We still have people who when we tell them kind of where our prices start out at $75, they're like, what? You know, they're still $35. So right, right. You know, I do understand that if you do live in a smaller market, you know, $35. Well, I think you can probably massage your customers up a little bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Prices, it can be scary. You might you might get people who can't afford to purchase your arrangements anymore. And that is a reality.

SPEAKER_02 11:13

You know, it is a reality, but the other reality of that is you can't afford to give them away.

SPEAKER_01 11:19

That's it. That's it. You're actually losing more money to pay someone to make that arrangement. And you know, so you also have to kind of get comfortable with sticking to your guns of knowing what you need to be profitable. And if that means maybe one person says, you know what, that's too much, as hard of a pill as that is to swallow, you're still protecting your business by, you know, letting that customer, you know, potentially go somewhere else. And you know, that's that's definitely something that I think first and foremost needs to be addressed because we do hear this from florists all the time. You know, there's there's such a lack of confidence in pricing. And, you know, again, whether or not all this is somehow miraculously resolved tomorrow, you know, let this be your last red flag that you've gotta get this right. You have to start accounting for the stems that are in your vases and and putting a proper markup on them.

SPEAKER_00 12:27

Right. And all of our flower click products, 3.5 time markup and 30% labor. Do you think that I guess every wholesaler is different? This is a loaded question. But based on that, if they're using 3.5 markup and 30%, is there wiggle room in there? I think so.

SPEAKER_01 12:48

Or and I mean, and I say this totally from, you know, and I actually kind of live in a city that's even though it's a smaller market, we're all like our rent and everything is kind of expensive here. We've heard that that it doesn't quite match. But, you know, obviously everyone's overhead is going to be different. But if I've been profitable at 20%, you know what I mean, and you guys have given 30%. Anytime I do and I source from lots of different people, I buy flower click bundles, I have wonderful wholesalers here, I work with local people, local farmers. I pretty much always have a little bit more money. If I just recipe out flowers it from the flower click price, I always have a little bit more to add, you know, another two or three flowers into it. So I do think that most of us who are predominantly using the flower click images and recipes will be okay.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

Or even people who just have that kind of formula, right? Not necessarily Exactly. Yeah. But can we speak about which things are changing constantly? But yesterday, was it just yesterday? It feels like a week ago, that we were talking about the cost of Snapdragons and Gerber daisies. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 14:09

So I have it's my, you know, primary wholesaler, and they source from all over the place. This is not a small wholesaler, they're in a a larger market. It's it was Canadian Snapdragons and Gerber daisies. And I was looking at the Mother's Day price list, and they had kind of a price which is higher anyway, sometimes for the nice Canadian Snapdragons, but they it said tariff price, $22.95 a pack. And I'm like, $8 for a Snapdragon? Like, it's not that $8 for a stem of something is unheard of. For a Snapdragon, it doesn't have the perceived value, right? Right? People are not coming into my shop and looking at a $4 rose and an $8 Snapdragon, right? Because we have this, you know, perceived value thing here. People are, they don't get it, right? I was kind of feeling like, okay, I'm not buying Snapdragons for Mother's Day. That's that's how I'm gonna solve that issue. It's not that I'm, you know, going to just be like, well, my customers will just have to get used to it. No, I had decided, like, well, nope snaps, no, you know, arrangements that have any snapdragons in them. And then we see today, you know, I'm looking at more things online, and there's I'm gonna botch this. So I'm going to actually look. Yes, it's under the USMCA, which is the United States, Mexico, Canada agreement, that wide range of goods are covered from automobiles, textiles, apparel, and agricultural products, so that these would be exempt. So then, you know, Ellie and I are chatting and we're like, so does that mean the Canada price? So what about your Snapdragons? And I don't know. You know, I looked at the wholesaler's list, they haven't changed anything. And honestly, why should they? They don't know, you know, they're not gonna be like, oh, well, something on the internet says this is fine. We'll just take it off. No, they're going to be covering their bases because we are speculating, you know, for flowers that we're purchasing essentially a month from now. You know, this this really is a precarious time when you think about it, for all of this to be starting. Yeah. We have weddings. We have brides who booked a year ago, right? Who have been promised for and their weddings are getting ready to come up. So I guarantee you, it's actually one of the reasons why I'm glad I'm having a baby in May, is because we can book any weddings in May. And thank God I don't have to worry about this because I assume a lot of wedding florists right now are really panicking because they have been marked in and have maybe already been paid, you know, for a wedding or a service. And you can say, Oh, you just need to go to your brides with confidence and say it's gonna be war. Okay. Like we'll see if you'll respond to that. Yeah. We have been here before, right? Yeah. So that's not an easy thing to navigate. So I do think that the timing right now, wholesalers don't want to lose money, so they're maybe even less inclined to even say, like, okay, we're taking this tariff price away. Or I think you've just seen a lot of like wishy-washy maybe will they won't they pricing.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

So, Abby, with this wholesaler talk, what is the number one thing that people can do to stay in control of their own numbers?

SPEAKER_01 17:57

You have to stay in communication with your providers, with your wholesalers. You can't just say, oh, tarix are gone, it's gonna be fine. Everybody's gonna handle it differently. You know, some people are going to honor price lists that you locked in, and some people aren't. And the only way that you're going to know that is if you continue to communicate with them. And remember, your rep has no control over this. Right. You know, yeah. So as frustrating and, you know, scary as that can be, and I think this is, you know, definitely tensions are going to be running high, you know, staying in communication and really remembering that you and your rep from your wholesaler are a team and really have to, you know, be honest and have, you know, ask questions like, have you been told of any contingencies? Like, you know, do you think that this they would honor this or that? Or, you know, and every single wholesaler is probably gonna have a very different answer. So you're going to have to put in more time. This is a a little bit where we're gonna have to just step up and make sure that not only we know, but you know, I have staff members. If I'm not here, they know they can order flowers if we need them. But now I'm gonna have to talk to my entire team about making sure to be in communication. So it's, you know, it's this whole trickle-down effect the whole way through when you look at that through line.

SPEAKER_02 19:35

Educating them. Mm-hmm. And you were talking yesterday too, and this probably leads you to your next thing about designing, right? Speaking of your staff. Yeah. Rethinking how you design.

SPEAKER_01 19:50

Yes. And and we've been working on that for years now, anyway. You know, how to make things look like more with less, right? Like instead of using three pieces of pit in a vase, could I get it done with two? You know, how do I make something look bigger or have larger proportions by using a smaller vase, you know, which is going to be less expensive? Like our vases we're gonna have to look at. And yeah, this is something that I know with Flower Click, a lot of things, you know, that are designed in a four-inch and are five inch. There are members who prefer to use a five-inch because they want it to be bigger for their, you know, customers. Right. A five-inch ceramic costs a lot more than a four-inch, you know, right now. So you can't rest on your laurels when it comes to design of just being able to fill something until it's pretty, you know, and also really taking the time with your staff to make sure everybody's kind of, you know, on the same page. So if you're not having weekly powwows with your staff, now's the time to start putting that in routine. My staff and I have a morning powwow. We all know, you know, we arrive, you know, 10 minutes before we need to get started, and we look at what's going on that day. And we make notes of, you know, we're getting flowers from this person because there might be something that I've learned overnight regarding anything that I need to tell them before they get on the phone with even one customer. You know what I mean? Like randomly when there's a light blue delphinium shortage. If I was up ordering flowers from three or four different wholesalers trying to find light blue delphinium, and I don't communicate that with my staff, like, hey guys, I think there might be a shortage, or say same thing like, hey, Snapdragons have really gone up in price. And I don't communicate that with them first thing in the morning. The next thing I know. is I have four funeral orders to go out later in the day that want, you know, light blue and light and it's like so if you're not, I know a lot of a lot of business owners don't feel comfortable talking about money, you know, or that business side of things with their employees, but I would actually challenge them to start becoming a little bit more transparent with some of that kind of stuff because I think when your staff understands those markups and the costs of things, it helps them make better decisions when they're selling to the customers.

SPEAKER_00 22:42

It's a great point. So Abby, my other point that I I'm kind of psycho in the fact like this challenge I'm seeing is like where are their holes to be filled and how where's the improvement? And one thing that keeps popping up is like people still need gifts. People are still wanting to celebrate occasions. That's not going away, right? Absolutely. And so just thinking of and this is different for everybody, but thinking of how you can get creative with your unique selling proposition on your shop. What kind of gifts do you want to offer? What kind of bundles do you want to offer so that it's not just a hundred percent focused on flowers, but flowers and which it's not a new we talk about this every holiday. We talk about it all the time in marketing initiatives. But I think now more than ever is also that opportunity is there to be that you know luxury gifting experience or everyday gifting experience. Do you have anything to add on that?

SPEAKER_01 23:46

I do and I think you know one of the things that sets us apart from you know even two-day shipping you know online. Yes but we are same day custom you know like whatever you want like whether you want to you know go in hard on balloons or you find a local artist who makes you know like we have a a person here who makes these beautiful you know botanist coloring books. It's like I'm a flower shop what am I doing specializing in coloring books or even funky socks the young kids love them. I mean if we're like uh uh this is something that if if you find something that's a good price point and you can find a good angle like for us who are the college students we find that you know the parents of the college students they just want something to get to their kid that day. So whether it's a box of cookies that I can deliver to their door or I can be like you know what young women are really loving our funky socks and our cute jewelry. How about we make her like a cute little accessories for going out tonight. She's selling her to celebrating her 21st birthday like let's give her some cute stuff that her and her friends can wear like you really just using your you know brain power of like what do we have who would like that you know the just the fact that you deliver yeah you by a real human who is reliable yes you know you're not yeah you're not DoorDash or not that DoorDash is always unreliable but many times it is no I mean you know something I thought about like okay a a plant lover's this just came to me earlier because I was like oh wouldn't it be so cool if you know you had like the plant lovers experience and it's not just your little gift basket with the plant and the pot and the little clippers and the fertilizer and all the little things you can buy right you know that's a service like we'll take it and find the perfect place in your home where it would survive we'll show you how to do like a little thing like it's almost like a little mini you know that is a specialty service. Somebody might pay $200 for the plant lover's experience you know 100%. Let's say all of your flower sales go away well you've got five designers back there they're taking plants all around the town giving little impromptu workshops in people's homes you know like we I really don't like overly positive like I said like platitudes and it's gonna be fine but we are creative people right and if you know I'm as much as I like to give in to anxiety and worry it's not helpful you know we can complain we can we you know it's fine to let that in a little bit but at the end of the day it's not productive and our time is better used going out you know in your shop and and looking around at what you have to sell even not flowers and saying okay right how can I you know put this on my website gift and experience I mean that's a thing too sometimes we'll have stuff that we buy and it doesn't move I will put it up on my website and I'm like these are selling like hotcakes you know because then you open yourself up to not your own little local market but everybody.

SPEAKER_02 27:26

So that's that is exactly the key to it is reminding yourself hey people need to know I have this. Right? And speaking of plants because with this this could go down the marketing rabbit hole which Ellie and I love because it involves brainstorming what my daughter is obsessed with and what I love too more than anything are they there are the cutest planters little planters all over like Etsy even Amazon which I don't always love buying stuff on Amazon but all of the places that if you got but I don't know what to put in them yeah but I would totally order these from a florist and have them delivered to my daughter in the cute planters the ones that have like the faces or that they swing or there's a planter holding a baby planter like the character yes it just gives it all character and then put it on the website right like market that's if people going back to what Ellie said people still want to gift people especially in dark times. Exactly and in my weird brain for some reason I can justify spending money on that so it's okay to spend a hundred and seventy five dollars on that even though it's probably not but it is you know so I'm gonna justify it. So try things like that again because you just you never know and what better person to do it than a flower shop 100%.

SPEAKER_00 29:11

Yeah I was thinking you know if there's cute planters right that are gonna sell like hotcakes do like just a designer's choice tile with the plant and do one or with the with the container and then either say like bright light or low light have a couple of options and then pick the plant but they're picking the planter which is what they care about the most right that's that'd be a cute super cute new product to add. You know especially your flower click website but put it down right such a great idea and things like that when you are taking things off of your website say right you have I'm taking my three Gerber daisy flowers off I'm taking this off I'm taking this off now I'm panicking because I don't know what to put on you got to get creative on what to put on to offer for gifting that people love that you know exactly and spinning it right you know nobody right nobody wants to come into their flower shop like and it's okay I was joking with a person yesterday about tariffs because I'm like okay I got to start peppering this into conversations but nobody wants to walk in and have someone be doom and gloom about the whole situation.

SPEAKER_01 30:31

You can be that way about it. But sure they're they're experiencing the same thing in their world right so you know when they come in you need to be as you've always been which is solution oriented and you know and not have well we can't get those anymore we can't get Gerber days because they're too expensive.

SPEAKER_02 30:54

Like that's not the attitude you know about no you are you're a florist everybody thinks you just sprinkle sunshine and play with flowers all day don't ruin the illusion for them right right right figure out a positive way to spin that yeah you know or make it about the customer like it would they were they were gonna be with these tears they were going to be too high and I knew my customers would meet so so I chose these instead they're just as big like there's ways kind of to make you the customer feel like oh you were putting me first you were thinking of me thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 31:30

Like I mean use the restaurant analogy a lot but if I went to a restaurant I ordered the birata and it's imported from Italy and they're like oh no it's too expensive. No you're they're gonna offer me something better.

SPEAKER_01 31:45

Yeah right we don't have the girl if that's what you were thinking of let me this exactly this dish is amazing.

SPEAKER_00 31:54

Yes you have to have that mentality know differently with flowers.

SPEAKER_01 31:59

Yeah fake it till you make it if you can't I mean that's your your livelihood is depending on it. Right I mean right that's really like we have to double down on our professionalism as business people and get right with our math and our pricing. We need to really get into the fact that we are creatives and that means using our design skills and not resting on our laws of just we'll just shove a bunch of stuff in a vase and send it out and it'll be fine. Right. And also our creativity of knowing that we can come up with something that is worth gifting and sharing with the world.

SPEAKER_00 32:45

So even if you know flowers become prohibitive for you and your clients we do have the ability to ride this out rise above it you know my greatest hope is that all of this will be a pointless conversation in six months to be like oh it'll be like Y2K in yeah but yeah we still all prepared for why you know yeah yeah and you got you were better on the other side of it you made some changes just like we're gonna do you make changes and you adjust and the other the other reminder and you already mentioned it is making sure that you are and constantly educating your staff.

SPEAKER_02 33:31

Yes you know updating them and there's no right now is not the time to hide things from them. No. It's not you have to open your books and show them all your numbers. Open your books but also no but transparency is important when it comes to this the the tariffs or you know percentages things you don't have to show them your bottom line. Right. But be open with them because that it makes them feel like they're going to be part of the solution in your business.

SPEAKER_01 34:01

Well on all your attitude and the way that you speak about all of this to your staff yes like you don't want to go back there and be like sign guides. You don't need to work transparency is good, but you don't need to be back there and be like well I hope I don't have to lay all of you off next you know this your team you know and I'm not everybody thinks of them as their family but I think of my team as my family and I to support them and make them feel safe and secure. And so also kind of checking in with yourself before come in to relay whatever information it is, you know, but you're their employer. They could be worried about their jobs, you know, they're facing the same uncertainty that you are and so knowing that as a good leader, you know, the way that you speak about this and how you kind of pull everyone together is really important to your survival and your success too because if you scare everybody and they think oh God I better start looking for something else. Yeah exactly that's a really good point.

SPEAKER_02 35:15

So I would say the last thing at least in my opinion something Von and I talk about all the time on here this is out of your control you know the what the what gets implemented by the powers that be that is not something you can control. So to go back to what you're saying Abby to sit and stew on it and worry and that does nothing to help your business so sit and write down what are things in my control what can I control about my business and go back to that piece of paper.

SPEAKER_01 35:54

Which you guys you guys did you were in that same position. This is your company and you started brainstorming about like okay like you you guys sort of treat flower click members as your family like okay we need to support them in this type of uncertainty this is what right what can we control right now to help it you know right here's what we can do and I think when you do those things I think we were all created to do acts of service it makes us feel good and that's what you we start doing right you start okay I'm gonna start talking to my employees I'm gonna start create redoing this I'm gonna start coming up with marketing ideas when we start working we start feeling better it's just psychology right it truly is control that you're not exactly we're not just sitting around worrying so yeah I just want to touch very briefly on local locally grown your favorite word locally grown naked and American grown flowers because we obviously want to support American grown as much as possible right always you know I think and I've definitely encouraged people for a long time to get familiar with your local flower farmers one of the platitudes that I have been slightly missed with is that well we'll all just buy American grown and it'll be fine. Well we all know it's not that simple. You know American 80% of our supply comes from imports. So even if we wanted to we know that our current infrastructure in American flower farms is not there to support the current demand. However we have people like Deborah Prinzing who you know runs slow flowers and she has a directory you can go and look it up she has a directory of farmer florists all across the country you can kind of look and see you know if if you're not familiar if there are any in your area that's a great first place to start and see if you can make some of those local connections. You know you can also the floral source is another really great resource. She specifically and I think they ship but they ship all flower farms from America I have a place in my own area that actually does nationwide shipping because you know I'm lucky to be in Virginia where we have a beautiful climate you know that we get the best of the best in all of the possible seasons you know but some people live in Arizona we're locally grown flower. It's just not a thing. It's not a thing. So you know we don't want to just say oh buy locally grown and you'll be fine because we know that it's a little bit more complicated than that. But certainly you know if this is not something that you have been doing just know that when I panicked about my Canadian Snapdragons and my local grower showed up on Monday, I said, hey we need to talk how many of these Snapdragons can I get and can I you know secure so the other thing is buying from a wholesaler is very different from buying from a local grower. Their supply is not going to be the same. Even their infrastructure and their systematizing is not typically on that same level where I can say I'm gonna need 30 of these and 50 of those and you know it's very rare to find a local grower who can service 20 to 50 clients and give you STEM counts of availability. A lot of them are not growing in controlled environments. Most of the time you might get an answer of like we should probably be able to cover that. So know that there's a bit of a learning curve. If you haven't worked with farmer florists you cannot have the same expectations as calling your wholesaler and securing 250 white anemone for your event it just doesn't work like that. You might have to call several and still have a backup plan of well, Kathy says she might be able to get me 20 and Mary Joe says she possibly get me 30. Like when I have to do an all locally grown wedding or event for a client I'm not working with one person to get it done. And even then I still know in the back of my mind worst case scenario I could probably you know call my wholesalers. But I think like you know good points it's it's a bit more complicated than just saying we'll be fine because of that. But I think that it is a time where I hope farmer florists and retail and wedding florists really start to bridge a gap and working together more to solve some of the the tariff issues.

SPEAKER_00 41:06

I'm trying so hard not to say the word. The last thing I wanted to kind of mention as ideas as an idea generator is we sent out an email to our members about ways that we can help. And so I thought I would share that in case there are certain things, you know, if you're not a Far Click member these might spark some ideas for you and your own business. So the first thing is the website skinny. So the skinny is what we do at the holidays to skinny down the website to offer a lot of crossover between categories with a limited number of products. So we're actually moving the skinny up a couple weeks ahead of schedule so that our shops can better control their inventory so that's one thing that you could do make sure you have a million products on your site right the other thing is and this is a little bit more specific but for instance we're we're just gonna keep using the Snapdragon example but say you shot a Mother's Day collection we shot a Mother's Day collection that had Snapdragons in them. Well if your Snapdragons are coming in at too high of a cost that makes it unrealistic because your customer is not going to know that that's a premium luxury bloom I have photoshopped them out with the help of AI. So just analyze you know what's in your products making sure that if you don't want to photoshop them out you can also add a caveat to the delivery and substitution policy on each product page on your website something similar to this we're committed to designing all orders as shown on our website however due to import tariffs some flowers and containers may not be available at reasonable prices and substitutions may be necessary. We're doing our best to manage costs and we'll create your design with the same colors and value as you paid for thank you for understanding. So something like that you can finesse it but just offering those little caveats you can also do like a little pop-up or a little announcement bar something kind of educational not too specific not you know 10% on everything or so just having that messaging support. The other thing is and this was full credit to Miss Abby Chick more designer's choice tiles but a little bit more specific so maybe it's the sunny citrus where it's you know an inspiration photo of that color palette and it's more specific but it still allows you to choose the blooms that work best for the price that the customer has paid for. Email marketing Lori is sending out some Lori and Cherry sending out some shop updates if you need some sort of a tariff related message to your customer if you need that communication make sure you are communicating with your customers if there are things you know you don't want to shock them right uh and then the same goes for social media if you need to if you need to say something is your little PR team like you know maybe my customers need to hear something from me in this time of uncertainty.

SPEAKER_01 44:27

Yeah yeah exactly think of us as your PR team exactly anything else before we wrap up ladies no I you know I was telling the girls earlier when I received that member update last night I was reading it and I was like I took a deep breath and I was like I feel in control like I've my girls have got me I I really felt like that and I appreciate just your willingness to get into the weeds of this a little bit you know because it is something that we're all tired of hearing about it you know everybody is tired of divisiveness. It's like well we we still gotta talk about it we still we still gotta talk about it right it's not yeah we can't and it's not there.

SPEAKER_02 45:18

Yeah and so that you know when Ellie and I were talking about it was like we can't act like I mean it is the elephant in the United States right now. It's right it it's all anytime you turn on the radio or the news or anything it's right there and or scroll on your phone and so we need to let our clickers know hey as Vonda would say we have your back. Thanks Abby for joining for helping yeah and thanks for not having your baby yesterday but uh truly