Understanding our prices
Dear customers, we think it is important to explain our prices to you so we can be fully transparent with you. Our aim is to build a lasting, positive relationship with every one of you. Price is often a source of frustration, so we wanted to be open about ours.
So what do our costs look like?
Flowers and raw materials are our single biggest area of spending. Contrary to what you might expect, dried and preserved flowers cost more than fresh ones. Preserved flowers are dearer still than dried, so any piece that includes them costs more to make — and that shows in the price of some of our products.
There is another factor at play: seasonality. Dried flowers have their seasons too. As a rule they are dried over the summer and reach the market in September.
This explains two things:
- Our prices vary over the course of the year.
- Some products are not always available.
To keep prices as low as we can, we buy directly from growers. Wherever possible, we buy locally.
For dried flowers, raw materials are our largest cost of all, at around 25% of the selling price.
#2: Our people
Labour is a cost that is not easy to put a figure on but remains a very significant expense, particularly in France. A flower crown, for example, takes about 45 minutes to make. It is painstaking work, done by a skilled artisan. You have to sort through the dried flowers and keep only the finest, then build the crown or the bouquet stem by stem, patiently and delicately. It is far and away the most rewarding part of what we do.
Then there are the other stages, every bit as important and just as time-consuming:
- Shipping orders. It takes far longer than you would think, and juggling Colissimo and Chronopost is rarely straightforward.
- Running the website, which was our job in a previous life. Updating the site, running marketing, managing the catalogue: plenty of work customers never see, but which takes up precious time.
- Customer service. Elodie, co-founder of Flowrette, and Christelle make a point of answering every message personally.
Today the team has grown, and there are now plenty of us making your orders. They are Theo, Christelle, Poppée, Lolly, Sabrina, Mayra, Pauline, Charlotte, Joanne and Sabrina. A real dream team we count ourselves lucky to work with every day :)
Labour accounts for around 20% of the costs of the business.
#3: Our premises
For the first few months, Elodie made every Flowrette product at home in our small flat — some of you even came round to collect your order in person. Before long the flat had stopped being somewhere we lived and become a dried flower store that was far too small. We had to find a solution.
In February 2019, we moved to our first shop at 80 bis rue de l'Ouest in the 14th arrondissement. It quickly proved too small, and became a space dedicated to weddings instead.
In January 2021 we opened a second shop at 55 rue Boursault, 75017 Paris. This is where you will find everything new at Flowrette, in a concept-store setting.
We now have a very large workshop in Ivry-sur-Seine. It is the heart of Flowrette: the place where we can give our imagination free rein and make everything you order.
These spaces come at a cost, of course — roughly 15% of our overheads. They are essential all the same: they let us serve you properly, create freely and, best of all, meet you in person.
#4: Packaging and shipping
We wanted to raise our standard of service, so we now ship with Colissimo and Chronopost, which lets us deliver reliably andimprove the quality of the service. They are the two most dependable optionsavailable. It is not always perfect, but it is the best there is. Both are expensive, though: you pay part of the delivery cost and we cover the rest on every parcel. A Chronopost home delivery costs us around €14 on average, and Colissimo around €8.50.
The other significant cost is packaging and our boxes. As you will have noticed, we take real care to protect what you order — and we care just as much about how it looks, which is why we use custom-made boxes. They should keep your order safe and be a pleasure to open.
Together, these two costs come to around 10% of the order value.
#5: Marketing and the website
To get ourselves known, we use marketing channels to bring people to the site: Google, Facebook and the rest. They are essential to our visibility and our growth. We would rather do without them, but that simply is not possible. The other notable cost is the website itself. We worked with specialists and put in countless hours to make it as clear and as well built as we could. We hope you like it :)
Marketing and the website account for 8% of our annual budget.
#6: Our other costs
As you would expect, there are plenty of other costs involved in running a business. The main ones are:
- Payment providers
- Our equipment
- Taxes
- Our accountant, and more besides
As you can see, we work hard to keep every cost down. We still need to be profitable, though, and we are counting on you to help us get there by sticking with our prices.
We hope to keep growing alongside you.