End of The Year Preparation for Your Shop

As we are in the last month of the year, finishing up the last of the holiday shoppers and orders, the last week of the December is usually very slow. In years past, that week is good to review your year-End Checklist.

1. Conduct the After-Christmas Sale, offering a 50% / half off price will help you in several ways. First you convert your holiday merchandise into cash, next you do not have to pack it away for another year and last you do not have to enter it on the year-end inventory report.

2. Clean-up and restock the walk-in cooler. I have found all those greens are great in arrangements but messy in the cooler, pine needles everywhere.

3. Containers, take an inventory of remaining containers, separate those containers you can use for Valentines (only 30 days away before you start production). Try to start a pile for the odd count containers and get the design staff to use those containers for “Designer” choice orders

4. Last, grab a coffee, and a note pad, find a quiet place and start writing down everything about the December Holiday. The more detailed the report, the more helpful it will be when you need to plan for next year’s holiday.

a. Summarize the Sales, Deliveries, Wire and Website Traffic by week

b. List the Codified / Specialty Container you ordered and how many you sold

c. Summarize all the things that went well and those things that did not go well. Examples, flowers that were in short supply, staff was shorthanded and needed more training, the computer system / internet was out / or down., We had a bad snow storm.

d. What do you need to do next year to make the holiday even a bigger success!

ABOUT CHARLEY HOWARD

Charley focuses on the financial aspects of being a florist in today’s environment, providing a basic understanding of sales numbers, cost of goods, labor and payroll costs, operating expenses, the cost of wire in and wire out orders, and other income such as delivery, relay fees, rebates, and commissions.

He arrived in sunny Florida from the frozen tundra of New England in 1991, to work at Kuhn Flowers in Jacksonville Florida as the controller. His prior background was construction and real estate. He also taught at the college level as Adjunct Staff for Post College and Southeastern Community College.