On The Theme

“Change the way you look at things, and the things you look at change.”

The new year is always a chance to look at yourself, where you’ve been and where you’d like to go. As we look forward, that’s often no different from our businesses.
At Florists’ Review, we’re celebrating our success this year in launching our new websites and integrating our social media and e-mail with our print publications. We want to be everywhere you, our readers, consume content.
You also may have noticed the hundreds of new videos being produced that give you design techniques, feature florist profiles from across the country and celebrate many of our floral industry events.
These were all hard-fought successes in the last year. But we’re not resting on our laurels. This year, you will see a new shopping platform and a community website that features a new and improved vendor directory, florist directory, job boards, classified ads and much more!
And we’re always getting wonderful feedback from our readers. Katy, at Katydid Flowers in Mendon, Mass., sent me a lovely note asking why we don’t do more stories on floral shop technology; photography techniques; flower farm profiles; and business issues like workers’ comp, installation liability issues, merchant services and more. Katy, I’m happy to report that we are working many of those topics and hope to add more to the docket. Helping you succeed is the magazine’s No. 1 priority, and I always welcome your feedback.
So please do e-mail me. I do listen to your ideas, and I do want to know what your struggles are as businesspeople. We have experts who can help.
Speaking of helping you succeed, in this issue, we explore management ideas across all areas of your business, from human resources and accounting to marketing and sales. Columnist Alison Ellis shares how to set goals for your business in 2020, and Phillip Perry tells us what to expect in his retail forecast for 2020.
As the late Dr. Dyer suggests, how you look at something sets the tone for what it becomes. As we look at ourselves and our path for the year ahead, I hope we do so with optimism, and I hope that Florists’ Review gives you a few tips on how to make your business more successful in the coming months.