Floral Industry Issues

Finding the Sunrise (Florists)

2007-12-28T13:58:00Z

It's long been my belief that local florists should stick to and promote one e-commerce domain for their companies and avoid spreading similar information across multiple sites. This post from SEOmoz.com pretty much sums up why it's better to be big and popular than small and niche.

But when it comes to Google Local/Maps, it seems multiple sites from a single company can be a highly effective way to crowd out the competition in the Local One Box - at least for now.

I was following up on an issue where Google Maps had misplaced Sunrise FL and was displaying results of a suburb of Sarasota instead of the Fort Lauderdale area community. The good news is that Maps finally found Sunrise. The bad news for local florists is that a single company dominates all three spots in the One Box for the query 'florist sunrise fl'.

It appear there's no filter to suppress multiple results from the same address in the same business category if the phone numbers don't match.

A closer look at the listings in Local shows that the owner claimed 001Florist ('C' on the map) and appears to have moved the map pointer while leaving his other two results, Sunrise Florist and 1StopFlorist.com 'as is'. (Odd too that the address on the 001Florist site actually says the company is located at an entirely different place in Fort Lauderdale.)

I can think of examples of business categories where the same address should display multiple listings - like individual realtors working in the same office or individual doctors in the same medical center - but 'local florists' isn't one of them.

One of our fellow FloristBloggers is a florist in Sunrise, Fl. Her LBC listing does appear in the #2 spot if a user clicks through to view the "Local business results," but right now she's probably wishing she'd built a whole lot more sites and used different phone numbers on each of them.

On balance, Google Local/Maps has been a good resource for users and for local businesses like florists. Florist issues in Local/Maps have been the topic of discussion on several SEO blogs of late, including Mike Blumenthal's coverage of the Authoritative One Box and Convert Offline's Is Google Filtering Reviews or Reviewers.

Let's hope one of those guys has some thoughts on dealing with single companies dominating the Local One Box. Should local companies adopt the approach and build out more domains or should they put more effort into one great site? Maybe it's time I re-adjust my thinking.

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Florists Urge FTC to Investigate 1800Flowers.com "Free Shipping"

2007-11-21T11:21:00Z

Just in time for the holidays, 1-800-Flowers.com is offering free delivery on all orders. From the consumer's end, this looks like a great deal. But hold on--there's no such thing a free shipping.

What 1-800-Flowers.com is billing as "shipping" for florist delivered items is actually a service charge they keep. According to their contract with florists, the price a consumer pays for a florist-delivered arrangement includes s $7.99 delivery fee. That means, for a $39.99 arrangement, $7.99 goes toward delivery, and $32 is for the flowers.

Let's review that--the prices shown on 1-800-Flowers.com's website include a delivery fee, in addition to the $12 "Shipping" fee they are discounting. Hiding a delivery fee does not make it free, and many, many florists take issue with this practice of adding and discounting a false "Shipping" charge as providing free delivery.

A request, signed by over 100 local florists (signed by most bloggers here at FloristBlogs.com) has been sent to the FTC. You can read the full complaint, and see the signatories, at Florists Urge FTC to Investigate 1800Flowers.com "Free Shipping". 1-800-Flowers.com is not the only online order broker to try the free delivery deception. Visit Florist Detective for more background on the Free Delivery Ruse.

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Schwarzenneger Vetoes Phony Local Florist Bill

2007-10-15T11:30:00Z

Just before October 15 midnight deadline, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed AB 1282, a bill that would have prevented out-of-area order gatherers from deceiving consumers about their locations by purchasing local phone numbers under local-sounding names, forwarding the calls to distant call centers, flipping the orders after extracting fees and commissions and sending them back to real California flower shops. Twenty-three states have passed similar legislation at the urging of ripped off consumers and frustrated florists.

With the veto, Schwarzenegger said:

"This bill would make it illegal for a floral business to list or
advertise a local telephone number if the phone calls are routinely
routed to a location that is different than the geographical location
of the number advertised. It would also make it illegal to list or
advertise a business name if the name misrepresents the business'
geographical location.

In today's global economy, it is unreasonable to limit out-of-area
businesses from using local names and telephone numbers. In
virtually every aspect of the economy, consumers are accustomed to
purchasing products from around the world via many methods."

I can only shake my head and wonder how any customer calling a local number for 'Los Angeles Florist', 'Sacramento Florist' or 'San Francisco Florist' would be 'accustomed' to purchasing from a third-party agent in New Jersey, Wisconsin or Washington state or anywhere other than the city stated in the name, pay hidden service charges and have more than 30% of their value removed as the order is flipped back to a real local flower shop.

Out-of-state order gatherers do not collect or remit California sales tax, pay California property taxes or pay wages to Californians. They add nothing to a consumer's value and only skim the profits through the ruse of appearing local.

Ironic that the governor signed a bill outlawing deceptive and misleading practices of phony live musical performers which makes it "unlawful for any person in California to advertise or conduct a live musical performance through the use of “false, deceptive, or misleading affiliation, connection, or association” between a live performance group and the actual recording group."

So you can't impersonate a singing group but it's open season on impersonating hard working local California businesses.

Who makes money off these phony local florist listings?

Phone companies that sell local numbers and collect fees for call forwarding services
Advertisers (Yellow Pages, Online Publishers like Google and Yahoo) who publish the ads of these phony locals
National florist wire services who earn a piece of nearly every order relayed back to California and pay rebates (performance incentives) of up to $9 per order for each fooled consumer.

There's no way this practice benefits consumers - so with this veto, it's clear that efforts of flower shops and the California State Floral Association couldn't overcome the opposition of large national corporations who profit from the deception.

It's a sad day for California florists.

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The Mediocre Middle and Florists

2007-10-14T14:34:00Z

Seth Godin nailed it today with Radiohead and the mediocre middle.

For the record, Radiohead is a popular band that has decided to take the gutsy move of allowing fans to choose how much to pay for downloading their latest album.

Godin mentions how the latest deals by both Prince and Madonna also shun the traditional record labels, industry hierarchy and middlemen.

Here's where his post hits home in the floral industry:

Most industries innovate from both ends:

The outsiders go first because they have nothing to lose.
The winners go next because they can afford to and they want to stay winners.
It's the mediocre middle that sits and waits and watches.

The mediocre record companies, mediocre A&R guys and the mediocre acts are struggling to stay in place. They're nervous that it all might fall apart. So they wait. They wait for 'proof' that this new idea is going to work, or at least won't prove fatal. (It's the impulse to wait that made them mediocre in the first place, of course).

So, in every industry, the middle waits. And watches. And then, once they realize they can survive the switch (or once they're persuaded that their current model is truly fading away), they jump in.

The irony, of course, is that by jumping in last, they're condemning themselves to more mediocrity.

In the retail florist business, the 'outsiders' (outside the traditional wire service cookie-cutter flower shop mold) are mostly the smaller companies who've established themselves by promoting their own brands and offering unique, quality consumer experiences at the local level. They earn loyal customers and great word-of-mouth buzz for being remarkable. Florists like the Bonny Doon Garden Company (featured in Amy Stewart's Flower Confidential), Eddie Zaratsian of Los Angeles' Tic-Tock and Altanta's Foxgloves and Ivy are delivering sumptuous, original creations that don't get dumbed down or diluted in value by the sameness created with national order gatherers.

On the larger 'winner' scale, take a look at the offerings from Dayton, Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio-based Oberer's Flowers. Gorgeous and original with exceptional values for local customers, Oberer's continues to be a leading US florist by innovating and evolving outside the cookie cutter mold. While other top-volume floral companies, closely branded with national wire services, are seeing decreases in local volume and closing stores, Oberer's is expanding and staying a winner.

Like the recording industry, many in the middle of the flower business are waiting and watching, fearful of leaving a wire service focused model and unsure they can break out their own brands on a local level. But the waiting comes at at very high price and the later the jump, the more likely the cost will become insurmountable.

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