Park Florist story featured in national professional florist magazine

By Bruce Wright

With key strategies, a small shop gets a burst of growth.

Since she took over Park Florist from her aunt and uncle ten years ago, Jeanne Ha has come up with plenty of ideas that have resulted in more business for the shop. But if she had to name just one, it might be this one: “We take a picture of every single arrangement we deliver,” says Jeanne, who owns the shop with her husband Dennis.

“At the end of each day, we send the photos out in emails to all the people who ordered the flowers. ‘This is what we sent out today for you’, we say. ‘Thank you for your business. If you are happy with our service, please review us.’

“I get a lot of reviews this way,” Jeanne happily reports—“good reviews!” She makes it easy for customers to write the reviews by including links to various review sites within the email. “When I started, I was really afraid that we would get a lot of complaints or criticism—mainly because we’re not professional photographers. I don’t even have a really good backdrop. So even if the arrangement is beautiful, our pictures will never look like the ones on the Teleflora website.

“But right away, the feedback was amazing. If I send 10 emails out, I usually get, on average, three back from people saying, ‘Thank you so much, I love it!’, and one even writes a positive review. So how good is that?”

Taking the photographs isn’t really very hard, Jeanne insists. Yes, it takes a little time, which can be difficult at holiday times—but the shop keeps up the practice all the same, even at Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day. “We have a small table just outside the back door,” Jeanne explains. “On a hook next to the door I have a camera. When a design is finished, every designer knows to take a picture before bringing the flowers into the cooler. If it’s lightly raining, we still take the picture outside, because the lighting is the best there. If not, we bring the table inside. I really don’t know much about photography,” Jeanne insists; “I just bought a good camera—$500 secondhand—and we take the photo the same way every time.”

Jeanne has shared this strategy with florists at Teleflora meetings and elsewhere. But so far, she hasn’t found that it’s catching on. She wishes it would—because the reason it works is, sending a photo builds trust with customers, and that’s something retail florists could use more of.

Have a good listen

Photos, emails, and good reviews aren’t the only reason—but business has grown “incredibly,” Jeanne says, since she took over. That includes walk-in business: the shop has a good location for it, right downtown, close to the post office. At less than 1,000 square feet, and with just four employees besides Jeanne and Dennis (all “almost full-time,” working four or five days a week) Park Florist is small. But weddings, corporate clients and special events have all been growing for the shop, along with everyday orders.

The photo and email strategy is really just one aspect of a broader philosophy about taking the time to listen to customers and communicate with them. “My staff all understand this, and they are really amazing,” says Jeanne. “They ask questions and take very specific notes—like, ‘When the customer said ‘colorful’, this is what she meant.’ We’re all very detail-oriented in taking down the information. At our weekly meetings, we talk about this, case by case. Over time, this kind of attention and service builds up trust.”

For example, when a substitution has to be made, “we always call the customer right away. We make a suggestion based on what we know about that customer. And then, if you let them know in advance, the customers appreciate the care you are taking with the order. They’re always willing to be led.”

Getting re-started

Jeanne originally came to the United States from Korea to study music. Her aunt and uncle owned Park Florist, then a moderately successful but not a growing business. They enlisted help from Jeanne and Dennis when Teleflora introduced the Dove System, and they realized they needed to get the shop on computers. “We started teaching them everything about how to use computers, and in the end they said, ‘OK, you do it.’

“They were ready to retire,” Jeanne continues. “Business was slow back then, while my aunt is a great designer, but she didn’t advertise much. We had a lot of time to talk, and she taught me all about the shop and about her customers. She would say, ‘Remember, his wife only likes yellow roses.’ And I started to write everything down.

“Then, a couple years later, Teleflora started Dove POS. We bought the shop when they were still testing it out, and we were one of the beta testers. We transferred all that information from Rolodex cards into the system.”

Besides getting the shop computerized, Jeanne made some physical changes. She had the carpet torn out and a new floor installed that allows the shop staff to slide the furniture around and change the floor plan easily. That comes in handy when the shop floor is converted to a classroom with worktables for about 10 students. The week-night class is called “Flowery Yoga.” “We just call it yoga to convey the idea that it’s relaxing and good for you but also an indulgence,” Jeanne explains. “We serve light refreshments and wine and just let people have fun. This is one thing we’ve noticed—people today, at least in Takoma Park, are very interested in having fun.”

Town and country

Park Florist’s success could have a lot to do with the nature of the market. Like the shop itself, Takoma Park is small but sophisticated, in the metro D.C. area. “We have a lot of artists here, maybe some ex-hippies, and a lot of people who commute into D.C. and have business lunch at five-star hotels,” says Jeanne. “So they are demanding, and I can respect their taste.”

Far from merely a bedroom community, Takoma Park has a strong identity, expressed in a multitude of festivals—“too many, actually, in my opinion,” says Jeanne: “a jazz festival, folk music festival, porch music festival, Fourth of July parade, a home and garden tour”—even Pajama-Rama shopping days, usually right after Thanksgiving, when people come out in their pajamas to get a discount. During the annual Art Hop, the town’s main street is transformed into an arts district, with a local artist assigned to each shop. “A lot of people from other towns come for that,” says Jeanne. A farmer’s market takes over every Sunday morning—including flower vendors, of course. “I buy from them,” says Jeanne. “They have their day, and I have the rest of the week.”

Cash flow boosters

Standing orders from restaurants and other commercial accounts, mainly in D.C., help to establish a weekly baseline for Park Florist. “We fill one or more standing orders, from different business accounts, almost every day,” says Jeanne. “At least once a week I go out and meet those customers. I often go out with the delivery, checking to make sure they’re happy. And on my way I always stop by and say hello at the business next door, and next door to that. Why not? They all need flowers. I get their cards, and follow up, and send them flowers of course. I tell them, ‘I do the flowers next door, go take a look at my flowers!’ ”

Jeanne places her own standing orders with her fresh-flower suppliers—but she doesn’t tend to use those flowers for her commercial accounts, because her own standing orders are for staples, and for business clients she wants “something different and special—high-end flowers.” She also has an account at a local hospital gift shop, with a cooler that Park Florist keeps filled with arrangements. “The flowers there sell on commission,” she explains. “They tend to be more low-end, but there is lots of traffic there, so it gives me a good flow. Every day we send out truck-full of flowers. Here in the shop, we carry flowers from the bottom to the top, price wise. We have the full range.”

For about three years now, Jeanne has been building the shop’s wedding and special-event business. “At first I didn’t know how to get that business, but I think it comes down to the same principle of getting good reviews. Right now it seems to be Pinterest that is drawing in wedding customers. One day last April, we suddenly had five weddings all on one day. I didn’t want to take on that many, but sometimes when you already have a relationship with a customer you can’t say no.”

With the shop’s corporate accounts come corporate events. “They are totally different from weddings, and I am more comfortable with them, honestly,” says Jeanne. She has created portfolios of floral designs, essentially photo albums, that are particularly useful for selling to corporate clients. Even though she clearly is comfortable with digital media, she finds that a book with printed photographs is more convenient for clients than flipping through photos on an iPad. She makes copies of the portfolio and leaves one with the client, so they can talk and be literally “on the same page.”

What’s to come

One other way that Jeanne makes her shop a place that customers love to come to is by welcoming children into the shop. Under the glass counter that divides the showroom from the work area, she has a “display” that’s really a game for kids, full of toy figures, a postman surrounded by dragons (“What’s wrong with this picture?” she asks them.)

“I have three kids of my own,” says Jeanne. “They all want to be florists! I love it when kids actually drag the parents into the shop. The parents are always worried about them breaking things or getting things dirty, but I tell them it’s fine, the shop has to be kid-proof for my own kids.

“I like having a small shop,” says Jeanne. She might eventually be interested in expanding, but if she does, rather than moving to a bigger space, she would open another small retail flower shop, “perhaps even smaller than this one. I feel like that is what I know something about. I like knowing my customers and being able to pay great attention to detail. People appreciate that and then I am having fun with it.

For the immediate future, “We try to keep changing,” says Jeanne. “I respect my customers. And I think the best way to respect them is to keep changing and learning and be able always to inspire them with something new.