It’s Black Friday! Last night, after pie and coffee, I took one last turn through my Inbox replying to friends and family who couldn’t be with us for food and gratitude. I had a clean Inbox at 11pm. This morning, I have 240 emails, all begging for attention. What could possibly cause such a ruckus? Sales!!! Best prices of the season, from 7-9am only, doorbusters, hurry hurry hurry! And it hit me, I have something to sell. I’d love to sell out my calendar for next year on Black Friday. But I won’t, because our event flowers are not On Sale, and in fact, never can go On Sale. Why? We’ll get to that answer shortly, let’s look at why and how products and services go on sale.
If you make widgets, and by widget I mean any mass produced product, it’s easy to see how you might have a sale. You negotiated a better price on the raw materials, you were able to take advantage of economies of scale and make more for less, you have a surplus of widgets that are taking up space and you need to move them fast. Any number of reasons could cause you to offer a better price, including that you were asking too much in the first place (hello Apple, I’m talking to you!).
If you offer a service: you create, repair, monitor, clean, what evs, you generally can offer a sale price if you expect to earn a repeat customer. You expect to sell another design, tires and oil change, contract for monthly security monitoring or house cleaning...you’re expecting a repeat customer to over time cover the gap in cost for the Sale Price you extended to get the customer. It’s a marketing cost.
Why can’t I offer a Sale on event flowers? My number one reason is: I will always give you my absolute best price the first time. I’m not going to inflate my prices to offer you a discount, I’m not going to offer ‘free delivery and setup’ and secretly add the cost back into the flowers, I’m not going to be less than 100% honest and above board when it comes to your, or my, pocketbook. The absolute best I can do at the best price I can offer, that’s my promise to you.
***This post will probably hit on Small Business Saturday - don’t forget most Independent Florists are small business owners, buy local and support your community.***