We interviewed 99 flower shop girls: 100,000 in tuition fees, always losing money, physical labor... 3 truths you must know before quitting your job to open a shop
Yesterday, Shaoyao introduced floral designer Zhang Shuyang to everyone, and the medicine fans once again ignited their floral designer dreams. Having dreamed of opening a flower shop for so long, let's talk about how to make it happen.
To help everyone resolve all their questions, Shaoyao interviewed "99" floral designers. Regarding everyone's floral designer dreams, they shared their own experiences and offered three suggestions.
After reading this, you will have a clear direction on whether to make floral design a hobby or a career, how to learn floral design, and how to enter this industry, and you will no longer be conflicted.
My My Love
Wax Wings
Joshua Radin
00:00/03:47
{Shaoyao Girl Vol.853 }
x
Making the flower shop dream come true
"I'm 40 years old this year. I want to learn floral design. Is it too late?"
"A beginner wants to quit their job to open a flower shop. How do I start?"
"I want to be a floral designer, but I don't know if I'm suited to working with flowers. What should I do?"
As for the answers to these questions, two comments last night happen to offer everyone some inspiration.
Both are mothers of two children. One stays home to take good care of the kids, and the other took her second child to learn floral design, taking the first step toward her dream. What about you? What stage are you at now?
You are 20 years old this year, still a junior in college, you don't like your major, and you are completely lost about the future. You like flowers and want to learn floral design, but you don't know how to start, what kind of teacher to choose, or what style to learn.
You are 27 years old this year, typing away at a computer every day. To meet deadlines, you often work overtime late into the night. When you get home, you open Shaoyao Girl's official account. "Another girl opening a flower shop, so happy~" Actually, you also have a flower shop dream. It's just that right now you have neither savings nor time. You tell yourself, wait a little longer~
You are 35 years old this year, revolving around your child at home every day. To soothe him, you haven't eaten a hot meal in two years. Every day when you open your eyes, it's your child; when you close your eyes and dream, it's also your child. You like flowers and long for space of your own. You hope that one day you can go with friends to a floral workshop.
Most people's floral designer dreams are spent waiting. Wait a little longer, wait until you've saved a bit more money, wait until the child grows a bit older, wait until you have time, then go do what you love. You wait and wait, and aside from a few more wrinkles, nothing changes.
No one's life begins only after they are ready. In the movie Still Walking, there is a line, "You're only 25, you can become anyone you want to be." Whether you are 25, 35, or 45, you can become anyone you want to be.
But how can you become the person you want to be? Dreams and passion are the first step, making up your mind to do it is the second step, and more importantly, when you go to do it, you need to know the right method.
What kind of method is the right one? Floral designers want to use their own experiences to tell you.
Shaoyao has interviewed many floral designers. About learning floral design and opening a flower shop, they have things to say:
It starts simply because of love, but love needs persistence
Whenever Shaoyao asks why they went to learn floral design, 99% of floral designers tell me it's because they like it.
Ivy of HeartBeat said that she started learning floral design because she happened to see teacher Guo Shaojing's work. At the time, she was still a nine-to-five white-collar worker, and she didn't quit immediately but studied while working.
Qiao of CourageFlower said that because she suddenly liked flowers, she wanted to go do it. At first, she was self-taught and figuring things out on her own. Life was very hard, and she persisted entirely out of love.
Opening a flower shop is not as simple as imagined; every step can crush you
There is still a long distance between learning floral design and opening a flower shop. If you learn floral design well and just work seriously, you won't be too bad, but opening a flower shop is completely different.
Luo Jun of Fula Huaqu opened a Weibo flower shop, and only after three months did she receive her first order, and it was even sponsored by a college classmate.
Most floral designers start out alone, and everything has to be done by themselves. One person is the floral designer, and also the photographer, copywriter, and operator, while also doing events. If the team grows larger, you also have to consider finance, staff turnover, and shop management.
In fierce competition, use floral design to feed your dream
Every floral designer hates making copies, because that is not the original intention behind learning floral design. But during popular periods like Qixi Festival, they have to copy the same bouquets to improve efficiency. Because dreams are one thing, and survival is another.
How should dreams and survival be balanced so that your dream doesn't starve to death?
For beginners who want to learn floral design and open a flower shop, they offered three suggestions:
First, before learning floral design, please confirm whether you are just having a momentary impulse or truly love floral design, and whether you are truly tired of your current life.If you are not sure, don't rashly quit your job.
Second, after confirming your original intention.First think clearly about what style you like, and what skills you still lack and need to learn.
Third, after making up your mind to become a floral designer. You have to calculate,how much you are willing to pay to realize your dream,including the cost of learning floral design, time, rent, renovation, and have the confidence to bear the consequences of failure.
If you are extremely firm about these three points they mentioned, then the next step is to choose a learning method. At present, there are mainly three ways to learn floral design:
The first is to learn at a local training institution or flower shop. If you are in a first-tier city, you can find relatively good institutions to study at, but if you are in a third- or fourth-tier small city,the teacher's teaching quality is hard to guarantee, and you may spend tens of thousands yet learn nothing.
The second is to go to the best schools and study with the best teachers. This method generally requires studying in another city,and besides tens of thousands in tuition, there are also transportation and accommodation costs, while also spending more time.
The third is online learning through video courses. This learning method has become popular with many people in the past two years,because it has low cost, flexible study time, many courses, and you can learn anytime and anywhere by taking out your phone.
Today, we will focus on introducing the third one, online learning.
Maybe many people will wonder, can you really learn flower arranging just by watching videos? This depends on whether the quality of the videos you watch is high enough, and whether you can persist.
These are several student assignments Shaoyao saved on Huatian Xiaoqi. Although they can't be called stunning, they are already enough to beat some flower shops on the street.
User: Huafen-648598
User: Huafen-889246's assignment
Shaoyao's friends and medicine fans
will learn through Huatian Xiaoqi's video courses,
notes taken by a friend during a video course.
A few days ago, when introducing teacher Cao Xue,
(Review | Can't do flowers without money or experience? He dropped out of a vocational college, yet turned things around to become a top domestic floral designer)
many medicine fans left comments saying they also study on Huatian Xiaoqi and have gained a lot.
Huatian Xiaoqi was founded by renowned domestic floral designer Cao Xue. It is an app focused on a plant aesthetic lifestyle platform. Every day it continuously shares pure practical content in videos and articles about plants, floral design, and life aesthetics.
The Research Society column in the app is an online floral design learning platform. Besides Cao Xue, many internationally renowned floral design masters also teach there. The courses are rich and the design styles are diverse, helping tens of millions of people realize their floral design dreams.
Screenshots of some courses
In Huatian Xiaoqi Research Society,the courses are systematic, from introductory to beginner, intermediate, and advanced, a step-by-step process.
If you also want to learn floral design through Huatian Xiaoqi's online courses, you can match yourself according to this and choose the course that suits you.
Floral design beginner: start with Cao Xue's introductory course
The first step in floral design is recognizing and caring for floral materials. In this series of courses, you can follow teacher Cao Xue to learn the identification and care methods for more than 200 kinds of floral materials.
In the floral design tools course, teacher Cao Xue classifies tools according to the different work of flower arranging, bouquets, and preserved flowers, and systematically explains the purchasing, selection, and use of each tool.
Hand-by-hand teaches you to wrap bouquets
Those with a floral design foundation: study advanced courses and systematic design
If you have a certain floral design foundation, or after studying teacher Cao Xue's introductory course, you can begin advanced courses, including bouquet design, commercial floral gifts, holiday design, classical floral design, space decoration, body floral adornment, and more.
Bouquet design - upright bouquet
Commercial floral gifts - tall flower basket
Space decoration - modular dining table design
Want to open a flower shop: flower shop management course
The most important step in realizing the flower shop dream, about flower shop management, it analyzes in detail the entire process of a flower shop from 0 to 1 in all aspects, from site selection, financial budget planning, personnel management, and more.
Regarding flower shop site selection, have you ever struggled over this: should you open a studio or a storefront? The course gives detailed answers on the pros and cons of these two forms, including judging site selection from aspects such as lighting rate and street-front shops.
Regarding the flower shop's financial budget planning, from labor, costs, purchase fees, and so on, it tells you how to make a budget. Being able to do accounts will help you save a lot of money.
Choosing floral design style: comprehensive and diverse choices with freedom
Before learning floral design, many people struggle over floral design style. Shaoyao, for example, is rather greedy and wants to learn a bit of everything. In training institutions, different styles belong to different courses and need to be studied separately and charged separately.
The teachers in Huatian Xiaoqi are all renowned teachers who have won global awards, and each teacher has their own unique style. From techniques and styles to design concepts, you can gain great inspiration.
Classical floral design
Natural-style arch
Now that the courses have been introduced, I know what you care about most must be the price!
Learning all these courses through traditional offline learning would take at least 3 years, with 3 classes each year. If we calculate 8,000 yuan per class,8000x3x3=72,000 yuan, plus related costs such as transportation and accommodation, at least 100,000 yuan is needed.
The original price of Huatian Xiaoqi's annual card is 518 yuan. Now,the group-buy price for medicine fans is only 298 yuan!That is equivalent tospending 8 mao per dayto get5 major modulesmore than 100 courses, 8 international floral design professors teaching personally, 10 design styles, and 30 online sharing sessions.
What kind of people is this course suitable for?
Students, win at the starting line and make floral design one of your career choices after graduation;
Moms, realize your pursuit in life and make it one of the skills for future career freedom and financial freedom;
Complete floral design beginners with no foundation, from introduction to mastery, and finally realize the flower shop dream;
Hobbyists interested in floral design, learn floral home decoration and make floral design a reserve professional skill;
Floral design practitioners, a 10,000+ member mutual learning group, learning floral design with foreign masters.
Purchase method
The original price of the course is 518 yuan, now medicine fans only need to pay298 yuan！
(298 yuan is for one year of study time,
from the purchase date, such as 2018.8.22-2019.8.21
users can study all courses online.)
For purchase instructions, follow the images below:
After scanning the code, click the yellow button at the bottom, two-person group-buy price
Step two: choose the "two-person group buy" button in the lower left corner
Note: no group buy is needed, medicine fans can purchase directly
Step three: enter the login mobile number
Step four: buy now and pay
Step five: after payment is complete, download "Huatian Xiaoqi,"
enter the login mobile number, and you can use it online.
You always say you want to learn floral design and want to open a flower shop, so what have you paid for this dream? If you also have a bit of persistence in your heart, now there just happens to be an opportunity. Why not give it a try? Maybe next time the person Shaoyao interviews will be you!
Finally, here is a photo full of energy,
I hope every medicine fan,
no matter what age, has the courage to start over,
and change the life they are dissatisfied with right now.
END
Some of the images in this article are from Pinterest
The images are from Huatian Xiaoqi and have been authorized by them