Full Bloom
owners: Maddie Owen and Lauren Walters
Six Business Activities
- Generating Ideas: Our product is flowers. We make different beautiful arrangements according to what our customer wants. Some of the events that we do are weddings and dances. We also do a lot of corsages and boutonnieres. We first came up with the idea for our company when people always complemented our flowers at each of our homes. With our creativity and love for flowers, we mutually decided this was what we wanted to do. We looked online for other business similar to ours. We also read through newspapers and magazines to view their advertisements.
- Raising Capital: It costed us $20,000 to start our floral shop. Half of the money came from each of our personal savings accounts. The other half was a loan from the bank.
- Employees and Training: Including us, we have six employees. Two of the other employees were personal friends looking for jobs. To find the other two employees we put an advertisement in the newspaper. The ad stated that we were looking for creative people who love working in a friendly environment. We interviewed about ten other people and decided on hiring only two more. To train our employees, they go through an internship and shadow us for a few weeks. Once we feel they’re ready, we let them work on their own.
- Buying Goods and Services: To get our flowers, we have a local wholesale supplier that provides with the flowers we need in small amounts. Sometimes, it can be difficult to find certain flowers depending on the season. Other supplies we need are vases, floral wire, floral foam, floral tape, preservatives, cards, and ribbon. We can get most of these supplies from local fabric and craft store.
- Marketing Goods and Services: To market our business, we run advertisements in the newspaper and have our information in the phone book. We also have a website with our different products we offer and prices. It costs us $400 dollars to run our ad in the local newspaper.
- Maintaining Business Records: To maintain our business records, we use an online program called QuickBooks. This program allows us to keep records for how much we sell each day, how much profit we make, our bills, and how much each employee sells.
Partnership
For our form of business ownership we chose a partnership. We both wanted to share the investments and profits equally, And we also wanted to be equally responsible if our company fails. Some advantages are our ability to share expertise on our products and we are also each equally responsible for the decisions that each of us make. Some disadvantages of a partnership is that we have no protection of our personal assets. Also, if one of the partners dies, the partnership is dissolved.
Goals
- Spend the next the next month looking at our competition and analyzing what our business has that they do not offer. Take the information and and advertise it to show our company is unique.
- Make questionnaires for our customers to complete to see what aspects our business needs to improve on.
- Award employee of the month awards to mark the progression of creative input in our company. Also, award employees who spend their time volunteering outside of work with extra time off or gift-cards.
- Choose one or two annual charity events to sponsor or have our arrangements featured in.
- By the end of the year, try and start planning another store opening withing the next 2 years.
Mission Statement
The mission of Full Bloom is to have a top quality staff that serves our customers' emotional and sentimental needs with top quality floral products and exceptional services which exceed our customers' expectations.