A Secret Garden Floral Design Florist Tammy Brandt.
Tammy Brandt, Avon
Do people give you
flowers? What’s your favorite kind of arrangement to receive?
Rarely, if ever. Because I am surrounded by
flowers everyday people tend to bring treats like candy, cookies,
cupcakes-mostly baked goods, and I am OK with that.
It’s hard to say what my favorite
flower/arrangement to receive is, it changes with the seasons. Right now I am
thrilled to see the tulips and daffodils arriving. They give me hope and let me
know that no matter how bad winter is, that somewhere out there, spring is on
the way Easter brings all the soft, creamy, pastel colors and by May the lilacs
and peonies start to bloom. August brings bright, giant, happy sunflowers, and
fall brings all the beautiful harvest reds, oranges, rusts and golds. Come
December I love the scent of the pine cones and evergreen boughs. They are all
my favorites, I guess that’s why I am in this business.
How often do men come
in with no clue of what they are looking for, other than a generic request for
flowers? How do you guide them to the best choice?
I would say that between 55-60 percent of our
business is the traditional red rose. Although, many people who still love
roses prefer different colors such as pink, lavender, white or yellow. Some
people avoid roses altogether and lean towards non-traditional flowers such as
carnations, lilies, orchids or tulips. To accommodate all these varied tastes,
and a wide range of budgets, we carry as broad an inventory as possible.
What percentage of
your Valentine’s Day sales are the traditional dozen red roses?
I wouldn’t exactly say men are clueless, some are
quite knowledgeable when it comes to floral selection and design. It’s been my
experience that men and women have very different styles and approaches to
shopping. A lot of the men who come to our store are more invested in the
person they are buying for, than the actual stem by stem assembly of their
flowers. My entire staff is knowledgeable, capable of asking the right
questions, and thereby helping guide our client to a mutually satisfying end
result.
What’s the most
exotic request you’ve faced, and what lengths did you have to go through to
fulfill it?
One particularly unusual request was from a young
bride who asked if we could provide fully mature dandelions, on stems, for the wedding
guests to blow towards the bride and groom as they left the church. I was
pretty sure I would not be able to fulfill her request. However, we did our
absolute best to contact every wholesale resource available to us.
Unfortunately for this bride, we learned that there is no professional,
wholesale cultivator of dandelion flowers in today’s marketplace.
How do you compete with web sites like
1-800-FLOWERS?
We
don’t, we can’t. We do not have access to their national marketing and
advertising capacity; and we are not a factory style, assembly line production
of cookie cutter arrangements or boxed flowers with a vase inside. (Which, incidentally
leaves the recipient to do the job of the designer.) We are an
independent, locally owned, small business which is staffed by an owner and
designers who love what we do. The greatest difference between us and them, is
that we are a caring, giving part of our community. We offer excellent customer
service, with a no questions asked guarantee of our work. We will quite
literally do everything within our power to help our customers. From forgotten anniversaries, to last
minute funeral arrangements or the “Uh-Oh, I just remembered their
birthday.” We do everything we can to get the job done for our clients.
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