Hello emerging florist!
Owning a floristry business is a mammoth task with plenty of constant moving parts to juggle, especially when you’re starting out. As part of my Bloom in Business Course, I like to ask students to analyse their position as a business in the industry, gaining better self-awareness. A good way to gain this awareness is to complete a SWOT analysis. This is an integral part of your business plan and it can help you figure out your strengths and what you need to work on.
You might have heard the acronym before, but let’s break it down further. Your SWOT analysis covers four areas:
- Strengths
- Weaknesses
- Opportunities
- Threats
Let’s get into each area and which parts of your life fit where.
Strengths
There’s no room for being humble here. When listing our strengths we want to consider our skills. What can you bring to the table? When you’re looking at your own personal strengths, it’s important not to get tunnel vision and just focus on the strengths required for a floristry business. What might seem irrelevant might actually translate well, so we want to think broadly.
Look at your previous jobs or careers. Perhaps you’ve come from advertising, a job that requires innovation and creativity, or healthcare, where resilience is an important attribute for facing the ups and downs of working in a hospital. Maybe you’ve managed a home full of kids with mess and chaos, and you’ve handled it well. A busy wedding weekend at a floristry studio will feel like a chaotic household too, so being able to thrive in situations of stress is important.
With our strengths, we want to make sure we are spending more time on those, because whatever brings us joy will bring greater energy to ourselves and our business, which will help us attract clients, customers and success. The happier you are as a person, the more joyous you are and the better your art will be because it exudes through that. Just by creating that positive, happy energy, people will be attracted to it and it will pay off in a multitude of ways.
Weaknesses
This one can be a little more confronting, so it might be easier to just brainstorm quickly without thinking too much. We often want to gloss over our weaknesses because we think they might inhibit our ability to run a business. But if we don’t take time to identify these potential weak points, we open up our business to issues down the line. So it’s worth investigating why there are weaknesses, what you can do to strengthen these skills and where you need to ask for help.
Once we have our weaknesses listed, we are then able to figure out what will help us rectify this issue. If numbers aren’t your thing, perhaps you need to engage a bookkeeper, take a short online course or even just buy a book that covers the basics. While you don’t have to be a fully-fledged accountant, being literate in this area and understanding the simple concepts is important.
Opportunities
Opportunities can come in a lot of different shapes. Let’s say that you’re looking for your own shop or studio, then a space becomes available. That’s an opportunity. New customers can be an opportunity for different customer bases or target markets that emerge through word of mouth or networking opportunities. You can be your own PR consultant, and so can your customers, friends and family. Another opportunity can be finding the right team members that complement your strengths and help you with your weaknesses.
We know that one wedding usually leads to many, as there are often prospective brides at weddings, so their first question is: who did the flowers? So again, one opportunity can lead to many. Other types of opportunities could be business owners that want flowers for their space, or they just really want to support you. It might be that the opportunity is there for you to start doing flowers for friends’ and family’s homes.
Maybe you can see a gap in the market, there isn’t a local florist in the area, or perhaps the florist that is in your area is of a different style, a different price point or there is more demand in the area than they can meet alone. Opportunity!
On a personal level, opportunity could be time. Maybe you’ve changed jobs and have more time to commit to your creative endeavours, or maybe the kids have flown the nest and you’ve got time on your hands and are eager to start something new. Opportunities are everywhere so it’s good to keep your eyes open for them.
Threats
What circumstances or events could be a threat to the success of your business?
What the pandemic brought to our attention is that there are various threats out there that we could never expect to have and are entirely out of our control. And while we can’t plan for every single possible thing that could go wrong, we can take action against the threats that can be controlled to a degree.
For example, let’s say that there’s a space for lease in a good location, but you don’t check to see that the local roads are about to be repaved, or that it’s near major construction and foot traffic will be limited. These are potential threats that need to be considered.
What also has to come into play here is our own internal strengths. This is why personal development is just so important – the stronger we are in ourselves, in what we know and what we want to achieve, the quicker we bounce back. Negative beliefs or ideas are a threat to your growth, and the success of your business will be a direct reflection of your own personal development.
After reading through what a SWOT analysis consists of, I’d really encourage you to grab a notebook and jot down your thoughts for each section. I promise it will only help you as your business kicks off and starts to grow.
To go into more detail and learn everything there is to know about setting up your floristry business to succeed, check out my Bloom in Business 90-Day Course – you’ll be all set up and ready to make your dream a reality in just 3 months.
Still not sure if Floristry is the right business for you? Watch our free video class on what is required to get started, tap on the image below. See you over there!
