Since March 2020 when the lock down began everyone in the floral industry has experienced a unique set of problems to deal with. We created this survey to get a feel for how you were all coping and if there were areas where you specifically needed help. There was a great response with over 500 of you joining in to provide us with the information we needed to assist you. Overall we can safely say you are a very optimistic lot! Below we have listed the questions and results so you can see for yourself.
We can see from Question 1 that the majority of you own your own business or freelance. It would be wonderful to see more employees become members of the Institute of Professional Florists and build up our fantastic network.
Question 2 reveals that over half of you work in retail with a healthy number of studios and warehouse based florists coming in second. It’s pleasing to see that we have people from every category, and more filling in the survey!
Question 3 tells us the vast majority have been in a position to work in some form or have been furloughed. We are sorry to see that a fifth of you have had no work at all and whilst we hope you are all receiving some sort of financial support during this time we are currently working on our new jobs page for the website to support everyone in getting back into work. We hope to have that up and running very soon.
With Question 4 we see that nearly 36% of you planned to carry on as before and open up with as much normality as possible and many of you using your initiative to create new ways of working. For the 12 % who were struggling to decide we hope that our regular updates outlining the rules as they change have aided you in making those decisions. It’s certainly been tough as everyone has had different business and personal circumstances to take into consideration.
Question 5 was a relief to see that a very high percentage of you received the government grants for rateable spaces. Worrying to see that 1% had a rateable space and were denied the grant. If this was you we would love to hear from you to find out the reasons behind that! Please email kate@britishfloristassociation.org The vast majority of us have received some form of financial support which is great but if would also be interesting to hear from the 18% of people who didn’t apply for anything to find out why that was?
Question 6 shows us that around 87% of you are really optimistic about the future and are confident going forwards. Our Jobs page will be operational soon so keep your eye out if you have been affected and our virtual chat ‘Bloom Room’ on 28th July 2020 (watch out for the email and social media posts) will be an open forum. It will be for any members who want to join us and discuss worries, problems and indeed solutions they have found. We hope this will support those of you who may be struggling and provide another great chat to share ideas. You can also email us privately if you wish to discuss anything Kate@britishflorsitassociation.org or info@brititshfloristassociation.org
Question 7 shows that 50% of you felt that consumers would either return to normal spending or buy more often and smaller gift options. From what we hear and you are all very much on the plant bandwagon and selling those has been a great diversion for you if you were not doing it already. With 34% of you understandably uncertain going forwards we would like to assure you that we will keep you up to date as and when we have more info on regulation changes, continue with our Bi weekly Bloom Rooms to support you and we are keeping connected with the Flower Council of Holland on their campaign ideas which will promote flowers and plant sales to the consumer.
Question 8 was: Please comment with anything you would like us to know or that you feel the BFA can do to help florists at this time. Your ideas and thoughts are welcome.
To see all the comments made please CLICK HERE to view them in PDF format
Your comments are all very valuable to us and we can assure you that they have all been read. We will continue to refer to the comments and indeed any insights from you to make sure we are focusing on the things which affect you most.
Finally in Question 9 we can see that we have a great spread of Florists from all over the UK which is really pleasing and we hope you will continue to support us as we strive to make sure the whole industry has access to our amazing network.
We know the wedding side of our industry is still in limbo right now but we are keeping our ears and eyes open for you all. We will let you know the moment anything changes. Keep safe! and thank you for taking part.
