bernardosflowers.blogspot.com
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
SBA Tips for Choosing Your Business Location
Choosing a business location is perhaps the most important decision a small
business owner or startup will make, so it requires precise planning and
research. It involves looking at demographics, assessing your supply chain,
scoping the competition, staying on budget, understanding state laws and taxes,
and much more.
Here are some tips to help you choose the right business location.
Determine Your Needs
Most businesses choose a location that provides exposure to customers.
Additionally, there are less obvious factors and needs to consider, for
example:
- Brand Image – Is the location consistent with the image you want to maintain?
- Competition – Are the businesses around you complementary or competing?
- Local Labor Market – Does the area have potential employees? What will their commute be like?
- Plan for Future Growth – If you anticipate further growth, look for a building that has extra space should you need it.
- Proximity to Suppliers – They need to be able to find you easily as well.
- Safety – Consider the crime rate. Will employees feel safe alone in the building or walking to their vehicles?
- Zoning Regulations – These determine whether you can conduct your type of business in certain properties or locations. You can find out how property is zoned by contacting your local planning agency.
Besides determining what you can afford, you will need to be aware of other
financial considerations:
- Hidden Costs – Very few spaces are business ready. Include costs like renovation, decorating, IT system upgrades, and so on.
- Taxes – What are the income and sales tax rates for your state? What about property taxes? Could you pay less in taxes by locating your business across a nearby state line?
- Minimum Wage – While the federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, many states have a higher minimum. View the Department of Labor’s list of minimum wage rates by state.
- Government Economic Incentives – Your business location can determine whether you qualify for government economic business programs, such as state-specific small business loans and other financial incentives.
Is the Area Business Friendly?Understanding laws and regulations imposed on businesses in a particular location is essential. As you look to grow your business, it can be advantageous to work with a small business specialist or counselor. Check what programs and support your state government and local community offer to small businesses. Many states offer online tools to help small business owners start up and succeed. Local community resources such as SBA Offices, Small Business Development Centers, Women’s Business Centers, and other government-funded programs specifically support small businesses.
The Bottom Line
Do your research. Talk to other business owners and potential co-tenants. Consult the small business community and utilize available resources, such as free government-provided demographic data, to help in your efforts.
Facebook Advertising: The Fundamentals for Small-Business Owners
In their book, Ultimate Guide to Facebook Advertising: How to Access 600 Million Customers in 10 Minutes, authors Perry Marshall and Thomas Meloche detail the ins-and-outs of advertising your goods and services to users of the hugely popular social network. In this edited excerpt, the authors lay out the basics of Facebook advertising for first-timers, including how to measure a campaign's effectiveness.
There are a few fundamentals that you must know before you begin spending your hard-earned cash advertising your business on Facebook. These terms and definitions are so important that you really should understand them comfortably and completely before giving Facebook your credit card and telling them to have at it.
An ad in Facebook is content displayed to Facebook users at an advertiser's specific request. Up to five different ads may show at one time. Where ads are displayed, what they are called, how they work, how they are presented and how many are shown at a time are subject to change at any time.
Here are six terms you'll want to get familiar with before embarking on a Facebook advertising campaign.
1. Impressions. Every time an ad is displayed, a user could potentially read the ad. Facebook calls that an impression; it's an opportunity for someone to see your ad. For example, if an ad has 1.4 million impressions, then the ad had 1.4 million opportunities to be seen.
But that doesn't mean 1.4 million separate people have had the chance to see the ad. The esti
If the ad title is good and the ad image is compelling, the ad may capture a Facebook user's attention and they may actually read the ad. If the user clicks on the ad, he is taken to a new destination specified by the advertiser. Facebook captures and reports the number of times all users have clicked on each ad.
One of the first questions everyone asks is "How well is my ad working?" There are many measures, but we'll focus on whether the ad encourages users to click.mated reach for this ad is 200,000, the number of Facebook users who meet the criteria that the advertiser has selected for people the advertiser wants to see the ad.
If an ad has 1.4 million impressions and an estimated reach of 200,000 people, we know that, on average, each of those 200,000 people has had seven opportunities to see the ad.
Most people don't click on an ad on the first impression. As users browse Facebook, moving from page to page, the same ads are displayed multiple times.
2. Click-through rates. Facebook reports how well an ad encourages a user to click, in a statistic called the click-through rate (CTR). This identifies how many impressions it takes, on average, before a user clicks on the ad. CTR is the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions. If your ad had 1,000 total impressions and users have clicked on the ad 10 times, then your CTR is 1%.
3. Landing pages. The page that is displayed after a user clicks on an ad is called a landing page. The advertiser specifies the landing page when the ad is created in a field called destination URL.
You can send a user who clicks on an ad anywhere that doesn't violate Facebook's landing page policies. You may send users to your own web page or you may send users to other locations within Facebook -- such as a Facebook page, event, application or group.
4. Cost-per-click. Facebook does not display ads out of the goodness of its heart. It wants cold, hard cash. You have to provide a credit card before Facebook will even think of displaying your ad. Once it has your payment information, it lets you create an ad. During this process it asks if you want to bid for clicks or for impressions.
If you choose to bid for clicks, you will be charged only if a user clicks on the ad. You can specify the amount you are willing to pay for a click, the cost-per-click (CPC), starting at one cent per click. If you say that you are willing to pay a maximum of 45 cents for a click, then that is the most you will be charged for a click.
Technically, you are bidding on the ad space, against other unknown advertisers. Initially, the higher your bid, the more likely your ad will be displayed. After a few thousand impressions, additional factors affect the cost of your ad, including the click-through rate and whether users "like" or complain about your ad. The good new is that Facebook reserves the right to "lower the price" you pay per click, and usually does.
5. CPMs. You may also select to bid on impressions instead of clicks. In the Facebook interface, pay per view is labeled CPM, short for cost per thousand impressions. (Mille means 1,000 in Latin.) You can pay to have your ad displayed 1,000 times whether or not anyone clicks on it.
6. Reach and frequency. Ads display on Facebook multiple times to the same user. The number of individual people who have seen your ad during a specific period is called reach. The average number of times each individual user has seen your ad is frequency. But as the frequency gets high, you face ad fatigue. Even if the ad is excellent, your prospects stop clicking on it because they have grown tired of seeing it.
Guess how many roses are in this awesome WF&FSA display!
Mayesh Wholesale Florist
In case you didn't see the answer ... there are 455 stems of 140cm Freedom roses! Here's another pic that gives you better perspective on the size featuring Lisa, Isabelle, Charity & Monya!
Monday, October 29, 2012
Meet Keynote Barbara Corcoran at the 2013 Growth Conference
Barbara Corcoran
Barbara is the real estate contributor for NBC's TODAY Show where she comments weekly on trends in the real estate market. She also stars on ABC's reality hit Shark Tank. In the first and second season, Barbara invested in 13 young businesses that she's shepherding to success.More About our Keynote Speaker »
From morning to afternoon, you'll find hundreds of ways to seize fresh business opportunities and tackle tough challenges.
- Make 2013 the year you achieve your biggest branding, sales and profit goals.
- Nearly a dozen hands-on seminars to help your business soar to your highest vision
- Growth strategies from top business authors, radicals and visionaries
- Meet & tweet with host Amy Cosper, editor in chief of Entrepreneur
- Networking throughout the day to build partnerships and connections
- Business growth perspectives from the Entrepreneur of 2012 winners
Date: January 10, 2013Time: 7:30 am – 4:30 pm
Location: Dallas Convention Center in the "C" Ballroom
650 S Griffin St. Dallas, TX 75202
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Monday, October 22, 2012
Stop! Why They’ll Unlike You If You Post That
I recently came across an infographic on the Get Satisfaction blog that listed the top reasons why consumers unlike brands on Facebook and thought I’d provide some solutions for how to avoid dreaded unlikes. Here we go:
44% OF CONSUMERS UNLIKE BRANDS BECAUSE THEY POST TOO FREQUENTLY
SOLUTION: Don’t post so frequently! I’m kidding… kind of. I can speak from first-hand experience that some companies feel pressure to post on Facebook every day. Instead of adopting a ‘once per day’ approach to posting, only post when you have amazing, relevant content. Your fans will love you for your focus on creating great content and not cluttering their newsfeed with crap.
43% OF CONSUMERS UNLIKE BRANDS BECAUSE THEIR NEWSFEED WAS BECOMING TOO CROWDED WITH MARKETING POSTS, AND SOME NEEDED TO GO
SOLUTION: Same as above. Create great content that consumers will actively seek out and that plays a role in enhancing their lives, and your company’s posts will no longer be seen as ‘marketing posts’, rather they’ll be seen as helpful, interesting, educational, or entertaining content.
38% OF CONSUMERS UNLIKE BRANDS BECAUSE THEIR CONTENT BECAME REPETITIVE OR BORING OVER TIME
SOLUTION: Again, same as above. Seeing a pattern here? Only post when you’ve created fantastic content and your timeline won’t be viewed as boring or repetitive.
26% OF CONSUMERS ONLY LIKED A BRAND TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF A ONE-TIME OFFER
SOLUTION: This breaks the pattern, but raises an interesting point. Using offers, discounts, or promotions as a method of fan acquisition is a difficult strategy to sustain. When a consumer visits your Page because of an offer, and you don’t offer another in an acceptable timeframe, the standard that was set with their first interaction will be broken. To combat this, when you give things away – offers, discounts, promotional items – make sure it is done in such a way that it includes an element of brand-relevant sociability. You’ll be providing a stronger brand experience, increasing the opportunity for social amplification, and giving a better idea of what to expect from the brand when there isn’t an offer or give-away being provided.
24% OF CONSUMERS UNLIKE BRANDS BECAUSE THEY DON’T OFFER ENOUGH DEALS
SOLUTION: Same as above.
24% OF CONSUMERS UNLIKE BRANDS BECAUSE THEIR POSTS ARE TOO PROMOTIONAL
SOLUTION: Social media is rarely the place for a hard sell, and I could argue that consumer expectations overall are shifting toward not wanting to be sold to. Focus on posting content that adds value to your consumers and works toward creating a role for your brand, product or service in their lives.
19% OF CONSUMERS UNLIKE BRANDS BECAUSE THEY FEEL THAT THE COMPANY’S CONTENT WASN’T RELEVANT FROM THE START
SOLUTION: You can’t be everything to everyone, and because of this reality, your content isn’t going to appeal to everybody. That said, if your target demographic feels this way about your content, it will pay off to get to know your consumers better so you can tailor your content to be relevant to them. Try using some of the free tools that I listed in a previous post to learn a bit more about your consumers.
17% OF CONSUMERS UNLIKE BRANDS BECAUSE THEY FIND THEIR CONTENT TO BE TOO CHITY-CHATTY, AND NOT FOCUSED ON PROVIDING REAL VALUE
SOLUTION: There is nothing wrong with being conversational in your content, but if you’re not adding value to your consumers, they’ll lose interest quickly. It’s hard enough for people to stay connected and communicate with their family and friends; they don’t need a brand wasting their time with small talk. Refer back to the first few points in this post and create content that is truly compelling, and when you don’t have amazing content to share, don’t feel pressure to post something that isn’t valuable just so you can post something that day.
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Monday, October 15, 2012
BOUQUET OF THE DAY 10/15/2012
A traditonal "Biedermeier Bouquet" with a modern twist.
my-weddingdream.com
Friday, October 12, 2012
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Your Dream Fund: Finding Women Who Launch Free Webinar: Money to Launch, Develop and Grow Your Business
By Barbara Vrancik |
The biggest challenge facing entrepreneurs today is finding money for their businesses. Many entrepreneurs don't even try or give up, thinking it's impossible. But it's not. You may not be able to get a business loan from a bank, but there is plenty of money out there if you know where to look and how to strategize to get it.
In today's economy, you have to be informed, proactive and creative to always have money when you need it. Don't let the lack of financing keep your business from being the success it is truly meant to be!
In Barbara's powerful Webinar, you will learn:
- The Top Reasons Why Most Small Businesses Fail
- The #1 Thing Needed To Ensure Success in Business
- Three Biggest Obstacles for Woman Entrepreneurs Seeking Financing
- Simple Strategies to Overcome These Obstacles
- Ten Great Sources of Money (None of Which Include a Bank)
Barbara Vrancik, Founder & Creator
Finance Your Passion (www.financeyourpassion.com)
Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, Barbara was a partner in a major New York law firm representing banks, financial institutions and corporations in almost every type of financing transaction. Working side-by-side with financial types throughout her career gave her extensive financing experience and insight as to how businesses are financed and when they need to be restructured.
Barbara now mentors entrepreneurs and small business owners on financial matters so that they can launch, develop and grow their businesses year after year with ease, credibility and confidence.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Fan Page or Friends? How to Use Facebook for Business
http://www.businessknowhow.com/internet/facebookbusiness.htm
Confused about how to use Facebook to market your business? Wondering whether you should have a fan page, a group, or just a personal page? Here's advice to help you decide which is right for your business.
It's one of the modern marketing dilemmas facing all companies, whether they're a tiny one-person business or a 100 employee growing concern with offices around the United States: How do you use Facebook as part of your marketing mix?
This can be best illustrated with the story of an artist friend of mine. We'll call him Stan. He does illustrations and other art for companies like Lucasfilms and is both popular and quite gifted. When he first joined Facebook a few years ago, he would happily "friend" any fans who found him there and after a while had hundreds of "fan friends". Then his Dad had a health issue that he wanted to share with his friends online so he could get some emotional support, but he quickly realized that all of those fans would see it too. Checkmate. Not good.
His solution is one that I have seen repeated again and again since then: To correct the problem he created an explicit "Stan the Artist" fan page on Facebook, posted multiple times over a few days the invitation for his friends to join it as fans of his art, and also highlighted that he'd be doing a purge of his "friends" to remove people who he didn't actually know.
He pared his Facebook friends list down to just over 100 people, all of whom he knew, and everyone else got the digital boot, to a few complaints, but that was expected. His fan page blossomed from just a few people to over 200 in a matter of a fortnight or so, and he now has a large fan community with whom he can share his latest projects, sketches of work in progress, and individual art that he's offering for sale. And all the while, his personal Facebook page remains a haven for him to share what's going on with him personally and share things that aren't appropriate for the greater public.
There's also a little matter of something called the Facebook Terms of Service. Specifically, it says: "Facebook users provide their real names and information, and we need your help to keep it that way." In other words, creating a Facebook user page for first name "Coca" and last name "Cola" would be a violation of the ToS unless that happened to be your name, which would be a bit peculiar, to say the least!
So what about a Facebook Group? Used to be that a group owner could email everyone in a group on Facebook, but when that capability was removed -- due to too much spam being sent out -- it turned out that the difference between Groups and Fan Pages became fairly minimal. In a nutshell, if you have a business that has fans or customers then you should probably have a Facebook Fan Page to represent it online. If your business is more of a collective, group or shared interest sort of thing (like "coffee lovers") or if you are creating something tied to a specific interest ("Formula-1 racing") then a Facebook Group makes more sense.
Those are the three basic options: Being friends with people who aren't actually your friends (which is a bad idea and, btw, you probably don't care about their lives much and won't want their updates in your newsfeed); creating a group, which works if it's themed around a meeting or interest; or creating a fan page, which is the best option for most small businesses to stay in touch with customers, clients, fans and supporters.
There's also a little matter of something called the Facebook Terms of Service. Specifically, it says: "Facebook users provide their real names and information, and we need your help to keep it that way." In other words, creating a Facebook user page for first name "Coca" and last name "Cola" would be a violation of the ToS unless that happened to be your name, which would be a bit peculiar, to say the least!
So what about a Facebook Group? Used to be that a group owner could email everyone in a group on Facebook, but when that capability was removed -- due to too much spam being sent out -- it turned out that the difference between Groups and Fan Pages became fairly minimal. In a nutshell, if you have a business that has fans or customers then you should probably have a Facebook Fan Page to represent it online. If your business is more of a collective, group or shared interest sort of thing (like "coffee lovers") or if you are creating something tied to a specific interest ("Formula-1 racing") then a Facebook Group makes more sense.
Those are the three basic options: Being friends with people who aren't actually your friends (which is a bad idea and, btw, you probably don't care about their lives much and won't want their updates in your newsfeed); creating a group, which works if it's themed around a meeting or interest; or creating a fan page, which is the best option for most small businesses to stay in touch with customers, clients, fans and supporters.
Dave Taylor has been exploring the nooks and crannies of Facebook for many years, and you can find his fan page there at http://www.facebook.com/askdavetaylor You can find his extensive tech help site at http://www.AskDaveTaylor.com/
How to Analyze Your Business Expenses
A: While analyzing expense trends is vitally important, I have to first ask if you, the business owner, are the most qualified person to do this task. What's important here are the answers, not the time spent analyzing expenses.If you have a CFO, he or she should already be doing this analysis for you. And a really good controller will be proactive about doing this kind of work. Bear in mind, however, that it's beyond the skills and experience of most bookkeepers.
That said, I understand the entrepreneurial drive to try to find the answers. So if you're going to go it alone, or you just want to understand what your CFO or controller should be doing, here's a step-by-step plan.
Analyze the income statement.
For every line item in the operating expenses, calculate the dollar amounts and percentages of revenue. Your accounting reporting software (such as QuickBooks) should be able to spit out reports like this very easily. Compare the numbers to last month, the last three months, the average of the last three months (called "rolling average"), average year-to-date and the same month last year.
Next, examine the "why" behind the numbers. I had a client whose parking-ticket fines for his delivery trucks jumped significantly compared to the last quarter and last year, and it was killing revenue. Turns out the city had tightened its enforcement. We shifted the delivery schedules and hired a ticket-fighting service that more than paid for itself.
Compare "actuals" to budgets.
One of the most important financial management exercises is the creation and use of a budget--the examination of all your expenses and estimation of what they will be next year. This will automatically get you thinking of the drivers behind each expense. And don't worry, your estimates will nearly always be off-target, but if you understand why a line item is going considerably over budget, you'll know what to fix and how.
Use a dashboard.
Boil down your actuals to the absolutely most significant numbers and trends (profits, expenses, revenue, cash flow, etc.) and compile them into an easy-to-read dashboard. There are dashboard programs available for businesses of all shapes and sizes that can extract the data from your bookkeeping software and post the numbers automatically. This will allow you and the management team to instantly spot trends and problems on a weekly--or even daily--basis. These are your business's vital signs and, good or bad, knowing them will help you sleep better. Trust me.
Make industry comparisons.
Reliable and relevant industry numbers can be hard for a single business owner to come by without spending a good chunk of money, but they're critical to running a smart business. I used a commercial service called ProfitCents by Sageworks to work with an owner who initially thought his sales expenses were very low. But ProfitCents said they were double his industry average. Consequently, he reorganized his sales department and was able to save more than $100,000 per year.
Lacking that, try industry trade associations for any data, such as expense ratios, and ask other local businesses that are roughly the same size as yours--not competitors--to share their expense data. You'll get a good idea of the costs for rents, salaries and other services in your geographic location.
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Monday, October 8, 2012
Halls Fall Fling 2012! Atlanta Wholesale Florist Inc.
Just twice
each year we drastically drop our prices to help you stock up for the
coming season.
This coming
week is one of those times!!!
Here at Halls, we
never raise our prices just to mark them down for a "sale". This is a
genuine 20% off our already low wholesale
prices!
Caveats are
simple:
- No special orders.
- No rainchecks.
- Not valid on clearance items.
Now get in here and SAVE!
Sale dates
are 10.08.12 through 10.13.12.
Limited delivery
available 10.08 through 10.12
Halls Grand Reopening
event~
It's our
brand new front door! If you haven't seen it yet,
you really are missing out! Next week, on Friday and Saturday, we are hosting a
very special (once-in-a-lifetime, in fact) event. It's our Grand Reopening! Yes, we spent 61 years
in the previous location, but now we've built a unique, fun, friendly new place
for you to shop.
We're hosting a
huge party these two days, and special guests include world famous floral
designer and orator Sharon McGukin, representatives from international vendors,
and more! We'll be giving away prizes literally every 5 minutes, and have
snacks, games, raffles, and Grand Prizes as well!
YOU CAN'T MISS THIS!
Here's the
dates and times:
Friday
10.12.13 from 7am until 4pm, and on Saturday from 8am until noon. Bring
a friend who's never been!7 Credit-Card Blunders That Could Hurt Any Small Business
BY Odysseas Papadimitriou
Making it as a small-business owner is tough. The oft-repeated survival statistics: Only about a third of startups survive to celebrate their 10th anniversary, according to U.S. Census Bureau and Labor Department data, and only a quarter last until their 15th.There are many ways to increase your company’s survival odds, but one of the easiest is to control your use of credit-card debt. Too often, entrepreneurs don’t make the best use of their accounts and end up hurting their businesses. Here are seven of the most common credit-card slipups to avoid.
1. Ignoring your personal credit standing: Credit-card issuers pull personal credit reports when making business-card approval decisions because to them, a small business is its owner. So, it’s crucial to try to maximize your personal credit score before applying for a business card. Start by visiting annualcreditreport.com and ordering a free copy of your major credit reports (Experian, Equifax and TransUnion). You can check for inaccuracies that could be dragging down your credit standing, as well as get a sense of whether there is any negative information that you will need to devalue to improve your score. The most efficient way to do so is to get a new personal credit card and either lock it away unused or pay your bill on time each month. This will relay positive information to your credit files on a monthly basis.
2. Leveraging credit too early: The numbers speak for themselves when it comes to the dangers of relying on a credit card to power a company through its infancy: For every $1,000 in credit-card debt that a small business takes on, its chances of long-term survival fall by more than 2 percent, according to a study from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. If you rack up a huge balance from the get-go, you will likely waste money on interest payments and won’t be able to reinvest in your company as freely as you might otherwise.
3. Being wed to only a small-business card: Most people assume business credit cards are the plastic of choice for small-business owners, but for purchases you won’t be able to pay off within a single billing period, you actually could be better off using a personal credit card. Credit-card issuers are banned from increasing interest rates on personal-card balances in the absence of 60 days’ payment delinquency, but this rule doesn’t apply to business cards. So, you could face unexpected higher interest charges if you carry a balance on a business card, potentially disrupting your cash flow and strategic plans. Using a personal card won’t affect your liability; you’ll be personally liable for your small-business spending no matter what type of card you use.
4. Overlooking rewards: Small-business credit cards have long offered unparalleled rewards on business-related expenses, and now, credit-card companies also are offering enticing initial reward bonuses on both business and personal cards to people with excellent credit ratings. You can garner hundreds of dollars in free cash or points, which can be used to score a free flight to visit an important client or help pay for a marketing campaign.
5. Paying interest: You can avoid credit-card interest payments by taking advantage of introductory zero-percent rates on both purchases and balance transfers. For example, the Citi Diamond Preferred Card offers zero percent on new purchases for 18 months, while the Slate Card from Chase offers zero percent on balance transfers for 15 months and doesn’t charge a balance transfer fee. If you currently have a $5,000 balance with a 15 percent interest rate and want to become debt free in 15 months, the Slate Card would save you $518 in interest fees and help you pay down the debt one month faster.
6. Not segmenting transactions: The rewards and low interest rates available today obviously provide value, but you won’t be able to take advantage of both using a single credit card. That’s why you should follow the "island approach" and segment your transaction types on different credit cards. For example, you can use a business-rewards credit card for everyday expenses and a zero-interest personal card for funding. This will enable you to reap the benefits of a business card but enjoy the debt stability of a personal card.
7. Failing to safeguard against fraud: The best way to ward off fraud is to exercise common sense. Avoid leaving important financial documents where employees can see them; it’s possible they could apply for financial accounts under your name or your company’s name. If you regularly deal with clients or vendors over the phone or online, always be careful when exchanging financial information. And keep an eye out for credit-card transactions for unusual amounts, which could be a sign of unauthorized account access.
Friday, October 5, 2012
Thursday, October 4, 2012
How to Spray Flowers With Design Masters Colortool
Learn the simple application techniques used to instantly the change color of flowers using Design Master COLORTOOL and Just For Flowers prays.
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Mayesh Design Star 2013 Winner
To find our 2013 Mayesh Design Star winner, it takes almost 2 whole months from the time we start accepting video submissions. Today is THE day that we can finally announce both our Grand Prize winner and runner up.
And before I reveal the winners, I wanted to quickly thank Unlimited Containers, Inc (UCI) again for their generous support of our Mayesh Design Star, each designer who entered, and all that voted! We greatly appreciate your participation, time, and effort!
Our runner up prize winner will take home a $500.00 gift certificate for their choice of product from UCI.
The runner up for our MDS2013 contest is Jerome Raska AIFD, PFCI, AAF, CF of Blumz … by JRDesigns!! Congratulations Jerome!
The Grand Prize winner will become our next Mayesh Design Star, but also receive Unlimited Containers, Inc. vessels for each month of shooting, their own page on our website, and a choice between 2 trips - the WAFA World Flower Show in Ireland OR the Chelsea Flower Show in London. This is a great way to reach out and give back to our industry. With just 9 full months of videos under our belts, “The Art of Flowers” series has already gained well over 70,000 views!
And the winner is (drum roll please . . . .) Jodi Duncan AIFD! Congratulations Jodi! We are honored to have the opportunity to work with you in the coming year!
Jodi hails from Harrisburg, Illinois that has a population somewhere between 9,000-10,000. If you take a look at Jodi’s website you’ll see that just because she lives in a small town doesn’t mean that she thinks small! Here’s a long list of her many achievements. (picture and list are taken from her website).
- Accredited by AIFD (American Institute of Floral Designers)
- Illinois State Designer of the Year, 2008
- National Designer of the Year (NAFA) 4th place, 2008
- Southern Retail Floral, 2nd, 2008
- Lincoln Cup Runner up, 2008-09
- Lincoln Cup Winner, 2011
- NC-AIFD Board of Directors
- AIFD Marketing Committee Chair
- AIFD’s “Imagine” Social Media chair
- Illinois State Florist Association Board of Directors
- Schaffer Designs, Principal Designer- award winning exhibits, Philadelphia Flower Show, 2010 and 2011
- Chicago Market, 2012 featured presenter
- Press includes Fusion Flowers, Florist Review, Bride and Bloom, Flora, Floral Management, Life and Style
- Clients include Macy’s, Dillards, Design Master, along with hundreds of brides and homeowners
Curious as to why Jodi entered the contest? Read her own words, here.
