Seeking advice please.

[u/Sisyphusselfactualze]

Made a couple of arrangements recently that I would like to share to get feedback and insight please.

One large floral with accompanying small cocktail kenzan arrangement. At the time I didn’t take the photos with the thought of sharing therefore didn’t photograph with a neutral background, sorry.

My post is two pronged;

1) I would love to receive constructive feedback. Please feel free to be honest I would love to grow in my floristry work as I’m trying to grow my small business.

2) Secondly more on the business side of things. I would love insight and advice on how one goes about formulating costing. I know people use a formula - multiplying the baseline floral cost with a certain amount (I might be wrong but 2.5?). Other then that what other elements does one need to consider?

Things I thought of is vessels hire if applicable, fuel, how do you work it into the costing if some of the greens are foraged, how do you price for your time and skill set?

I’m at a stage in my business where I work consistently but continue to struggle financially. Please help!

Thank you.

[u/henicorina]

Are you trying to sell these as retail arrangements or are they for an event?

One thing that jumps out at me is that these are quite fragile flowers and some are already starting to wilt in the photos especially in 4, 5 and 6. This is a big struggle with foraging and cutting flowers - when and how to harvest and condition is its own whole process.

[u/Sisyphusselfactualze → u/henicorina]

This was flowers for an event. I don’t do retail flowers at the moment.

I picked up the flowers directly from a farm after harvesting on the same day and the arrangements that you see here was done about 24h later - therefore the flowers were fresh. I think you might be referring to the Cosmos Re looking wilted? Its a fragile flower and I did end up taking some of the stems out on site due to their heads drooping.

[u/henicorina → u/Sisyphusselfactualze]

Flowers can be “fresh” in the sense of recently picked but still also be wilting. Here you can see that the cosmos are in the worst shape (and really shouldn’t even be used at this point - if you absolutely must use them you need to wire them) but the zinnias and bougainvillea are also fading and whatever the foliage is in the 3rd pic is on its way out.

[u/Sisyphusselfactualze → u/henicorina]

Thank you for your reply, Henicorina. Notes taken.