Speaking Roses
Speaking Roses has just been added to the Every Franchise Directory. It is a business which prints messages on freshly-cut flowers.
They have a beautiful professionally crafted web site and their product also looks very up-market and classy.
I like their catch phrase of “A business in a box”. It suggests a quick start up, with everything supplied, a bit like bringing home a piece of IKEA furniture perhaps.
Their claim of having patented technology and the warnings on their web site about others with similar but, according to them, illegal offerings, prompted me to do a quick search on this technology… and wouldn’t you know it? There are quite a few companies offering the equipment to print on flowers.
So imagine you start up a “Speaking Roses” business in your town, you work hard to get the product accepted in your market and after months of cold-calling and countless sales meetings you see the business beginning to grow. You have return customers, you have a few contracts with local companies and you just begin to feel that perhaps the venture was worthwhile afterall when you hear of a competitor.
Your planned business strategy most likely would have been to keep the technology exclusive so that you were the only one in your area able to provide this service. What do you think your new competitor’s strategy will be?
If I were him, I’d flood the market by offering my service to every florist in town, or if I was a hit-and-run kind of person, I would market the equipment plus some rudimentary training to whomever wanted it.
The very next thing you know every other florist in town is telling their customers that they too can print on flowers and some people start doing it from home. When this kind of situation occurs and the exclusivity of the product evaporates, the whole concept becomes de-valued to such an extent that it becomes just another option; like the colour of the tissue around the bouquet.
This is certainly one opportunity I wouldn’t jump into, but if you are interested you can find it here.
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Reader Comments
As someone who has owned a speaking roses franchise in the past. I overlooked alot of issues and problems when I made this investment. I really advised others out there that are also interested to seriously consider the following points before making any investments.
1)Ask for sales figures and profits of others Speaking roses franchisees. There is a reason why this information may not be freely available.
2)Before making any investment, ask to take a look at the equipment and the process of embossing roses. If its possible, have a go at the process yourself.
As a florist, you need to be aware that you will be working with industrial inks and agent and that you won’t be working around the sweet smell of roses. The set up involved in personalising one rose can take between 30-45 minutes, is this worth your time?
3)Roses tends to be seasonal flowers, that sell well at certain times of the year. Could you honestly base your business on sales at Valentines, Mothers day only.
Yes you can print on other flowers, I’ve tried tulips and lillies. But its not easy and if you smudge the ink you have to throw it away – can you afford to do this?
4)You can only print on certain roses, one wheres the petals don’t fold over otherwise you can’t obviously see the print. Find out if these roses are in supply at your wholesalers or you might have a headache aferwards when you find out you have to travel half way across the city to find the right type of roses to print on.
5)Do your market research, find out if corporate companies want logos on their flowers. Research first!
I don’t want to discourage you completely, the guys at Speaking Roses are very nice and helpful but this opportunity is not the big money making machine they make it out to be.
Please do keep in mind the points above before making any quick decisions.