My day job

Before I go into what I was going to talk about I thought there needed to be a brief explanation of the flower industry for the people who may read this that do not know how you really get flowers delivered. Most of the time you want flowers you swing by a local shop on your way to where you need the flowers but when you are not going to the place that the flowers are then you must use another method and this is where the wire service come in most often. If you choose to call, go online, email, or what ever method you choose to send flowers if it is going to a town other then the one you are ordering from it will go through some type of wire service. The wire service is the mechanism that allows a flower shop to have your flowers delivered for you by someone out of town. The wire service guaranties that all parties involved are happy with the transaction and that the consumer gets what was ordered, or at least this is how it is supposed to work.

Now that I have poorly and more importantly briefly described a wire service (you can look at ftd.com or Teleflora.comm to see a wire service). Lets talk about OG’s. I can no longer hear someone refer to someone being an “OG” the same once I started working here. In to non-flower world “OG” is some sort of ghettoism that refers to something I am a little to pale to fully grasp but in the flower world “OG” is something completely different. One way they are the same is that in the flower world as in the non-flower world an “OG” is the most vial label that could ever be bestowed upon someone. In the flower world “OG” stands for Order Gatherer which is someone that just acts as a type of order funnel or hose sucking up all the flower orders out there and then pushing them to different shops around the nation along the way charging a fee of some type. Many florists think this is the most vial practice ever because if they had gotten the order in the first place they would have made more money. This is where I have to ask, because I do not understand, how is it wrong for someone to do something to get more customer’s isn’t that part of business? I have meet many florists that are very talented at flowers, and everything associated with flower arranging but I have yet to meet more then a handful of florists that have any idea how to build, market, and maintain a good SEO optimized web site. I would never think of asking dave (the nice guy who fixes my car) to work on a web site for me. This isn’t to imply that dave would not be able to do this in fact I have seen some of his coding and he has some mad skilz (another ghettoism for flavor) but it isnt his main focus much as I can change my oil and I understand how my engine works but I would never dream of touching it again dave is better, faster, and more experienced at it then I will ever be. In that same light I would never expect a florist to be a good web developer or SEM (new term it stands for search engine marketer). If some of these order gathers did not gather these orders they would go to big players like FTD or PROFlowers (and maybe soon Teleflora also if you listen to some of the florist rumors out there) that drop ship flowers straight from the growers the consumer dose not know or care how they get the order as long as its nice, quick, convenient, and cheap. The problem is that if the order from a place like FTD or PROFlowers they are not getting anything but quick, and cheap. Other big players in the industry are still pumping there orders straight to the flower shops so they are still capturing the order and more importantly the flower customer. I would say to any flower shop that is upset about a “OG” gathering there local business instead of posting on some obscure web site dedicated to florists where you only get seen by a few people go hire a SEM firm and become a “OG” for yourself. You don’t have to target the nation if you only want to do local marketing more power to you that will give you an upper hand over the national order gathers in places like google local and other such local sites. The first rule in SEO and most of business is be as good as your competition and then be better. So now I am done with my rant and I am off to order a few flowers from a florist I know. Fenny will love them.