The Flower Guru

The Flower Guru

A Gulf Coast florist, known to dozens of florists nationwide as a "never ending machine of ideas," is competing against - and beating - industry heavyweights.

SURVIVAL STORIES by Mark Gordon | Managing Editor

Art Conforti has a message for independent retailers struggling to survive the sickly economy: It's not about lower prices.

Conforti realizes the temptation is at an all-time high to push sales and lower prices to get people in the door and cash in the till. That's what worked for many national retailers on Black Friday, after all.

But Conforti, the owner of Sarasota-based Beneva Flowers, one of the largest and most successful independent florists in the country, says that kind of thinking only works in the short-term. Long-term survival, he says, will always fall back to the product and the service. It's a mantra Conforti preaches regularly, both at his own shop and with his second job, running a thriving marketing business for other independent florists nationwide.

"Today more than ever, customers are looking for value," says Conforti, whose shop has about a 70% market share of the Greater Sarasota flower marketplace. "It's not about a price war."

That doesn't mean Conforti hasn't lowered prices, run sales or conducted giveaways to drum up business; he's actually done all three as the economic downturn plods along. But Conforti isn't afraid to nudge some prices higher, at the same time taking several steps to ensure his business' second-most important product behind flowers - customer service - is getting better, too.

On the latter, Conforti, 44, constantly monitors employees and how they are doing, using a sport's fan notebook of motivational phrases to get a little more out of each person. He can regularly be found walking the store's 8,000-square-foot showroom and design center on Beneva Road, asking his staff if they want to be known as expenses or assets. "If your employees aren't assets," says Conforti, "they shouldn't be in your company."

Conforti's pricing strategies and motivation techniques are just one of several reasons Beneva Flowers, with 50 employees spread over five divisions, has been able to survive the downturn that is crippling many other small businesses on the Gulf Coast.

While he declines to disclose specific annual revenue numbers, Conforti did say the company is well into the seven-figure range after growing about 12% a year the past few years. Beneva's sales were merely flat in 2008, which Conforti considers to be a small victory, especially for a discretionary income business such as a florist. The 22-year-old company has also steadily moved up in the nationwide rankings of florist sales tracked by industry trade group Teleflora, making the top 50 by 2000 and the top 20 by 2005.

Just say 'yes'

The Beneva Flowers survival story orchestrated by Conforti, whose father ran a popular neighborhood florist in the Bronx, N.Y. for 30 years, is a balancing act of cajoling and comforting.

Conforti's style is a fast-talking, straight-shooter approach, a philosophy he likely derived from leaving high school after his junior year so he could find his entrepreneurial way. That, and his blatant 'I'm from New Jersey' attitude.

The survival story includes some obvious steps, such as asking each employee to work an hour less a day; switching most of the company's delivery fleet from Dodge Sprinters to Toyota Scions, a "huge savings," says Conforti; and saving as much as 70% on costs by buying flowers through a 30-member national buying group, which uses its bulk purchasing power to bring down prices.

But it's also about subtle steps, such as when Conforti will pick up the phone to listen in on a random sales call. If the employee closes a deal for a new order or client, Conforti will be at the ready with a $20 bill and a high-five.

If the potential customer doesn't translate into a sale, Conforti will go over the call line by line with the employee. Plus, anytime an employee says no to a customer, for any request, it's logged into a database and the employee has to have a "sit-down" with Conforti, to explain what happened.

Another Beneva Flowers specialty: Instead of going into a marketing and advertising cocoon, as many small retailers are wont to do during tough times, Conforti is leading the charge to get the word out about Beneva Flowers.

That includes personally handing out the company's newest marketing tool - mystery gift cards worth anywhere from $10 to $50; a recipient has to go to Beneva.com, the store's Web site, to see how much the card is worth. Conforti has handed out cards at gas stations, in restaurants and in the park. "Maybe if you didn't deal with me before," he says, "you will now."

The company also has been placing the mystery gift cards on tables at area events and luncheons.

'Exudes motivation'

Conforti's entrepreneurial musings are more than just business survival fodder, too. Over the past few years, Conforti has become something of an Oprah-like presence in the nationwide independent florist community, traveling all over the country as an in-house consultant for other florists, some much bigger than Beneva.

"He really has enormous respect in the flower community," says Reid Kellogg, who owns Boyd's Florist in Wilmington, Del. and has known Conforti for 10 years. "He exudes motivation and he's a leader in florist marketing."

Adds Renee Cox, who runs a two-store, 20-employee florist company in southern Arizona: "Art is very upbeat, very driven and a man of integrity. And he's a terrific marketer."

The key for Conforti, who counts consulting jaunts to florists in Billings, Mont. and Louisville, Ky. as two of his more recent trips, is that with Beneva Flowers, he's not competing against other independent florists. He doesn't even consider most of the florists on the Gulf Coast to be his competition. Instead, he's going up against 1-800-Flowers, the Wal-Mart of the florist industry, with annual revenues approaching $800 million and the ability to outdo just about any price cut an independent florist can muster.

Conforti's weapon in the battle against 1-800-Flowers is called Flower Manager. It's a high-end Web site platform and program that Conforti helped create for independent florists, with technical assistance from Gravity Free, a Sarasota-based Web design and hosting company.

The catch is that Flower Manager is like a secret society, with Conforti serving as the chief gatekeeper. Through his side consulting business, Advanced Marketing Strategies, Conforti finds florists in all pockets of the country that he invites to join Flower Manager.

There are currently about 50 florists nationwide that have joined the Flower Manager club and Conforti invites no more than eight a year. And in addition to the Web site, the florists that sign up for Flower Manager meet in Sarasota every January for a business ideas conference. A Google marketing executive spoke at the most recent meeting.

Exclusivity, however, comes at a price: It costs a florist $43,000 to license the program through Gravity Free, in a deal where Conforti gets a small portion of the proceeds in return for training new members. After the license fee, a florist can expect to spend at least $6,000 a year in maintenance and marketing fees, says Gravity Free owner Scott Heaps.

"There is nothing like this out there," says Heaps. "I don't think anyone has ever been disappointed in this product."

Conforti has used technology in a big way in his shop, too. He had Gravity Free set up and retrofit a tracking system, so he can use one computer program to monitor where every order came from - from a Web site click to a phone number taken from a Google ad.

The program is updated every six months and Conforti calls Heaps much more frequently, to ask if he can do something else. Says Heaps, with a mix of admiration and weariness: "Art is a never ending machine of ideas."

Not bad for a high school dropout.

Entrepreneurial spirit

Conforti has a history of basing business principles on the concept that if it doesn't exist, than he wants to work even harder to make it happen. He first carried out that mission while he was a teenager, when he started his own under the table New York City bus service.

He did it by borrowing his dad's florist van and running 15 minutes ahead of busses going into Manhattan from northern New Jersey. He would pull up to the bus stop and offer rides into the city for $5 - $3.20 more than the real bus rate, but Conforti offered a more comfortable ride with less stops and relaxing music.

While he recalls liking the extra money, he also recalls how his father didn't like the business at all. Indeed, it was the first time Conforti learned a valuable business lesson: liability.

Then there was the time in the late 1980s, soon after Conforti moved with his family to Sarasota from New Jersey.

Back then, Conforti took a job as a bus driver for Sarasota County - a legit job this time - as opposed to going to work for his father's new flower shop right away. But Conforti quickly discovered there was no place on his route to get a cheap bite to eat during the lunch hour.

So using his own money, Conforti opened a hot dog stand. He called it Wieners on Wheels. When the elder Conforti was ready to retire from the florist business in 1992, the son gave him $5,000 and financed the rest in order to buy the family business.

The next 15 years became Conforti's laboratory time, where he brought his approach to the flower business. The company's divisions now include a separate unit for weddings, a wholesale business and a single phone line devoted to special services, such as catering to celebrities that descend upon the Greater Sarasota marketplace.

Conforti says he's currently satisfied with working to perfect the current operation, although he doesn't rule out expanding further in the future.

"Beneva Flowers isn't about getting bigger," Conforti says. "It's about getting better."

REVIEW SUMMARY

Businesses. Beneva Flowers, Sarasota

Industry. Retail, florists

Key. Continuous innovation, especially in technology, fuels company's growth.

Executive Tips

Art Conforti's ideas for running a business in tough times can be boiled down to one thought: Be smart. That's how he says Beneva Flowers, the Sarasota-based florist he's owned since 1992, thrived during the good times and is surviving the bad times.

Here are some other tips from Conforti on how to survive a downturn:

• Create a list of expenses and assets. Expenses should be line-items such as fuel, rent and insurance. The top of the assets list should be employees. "If employees fall into the expense category, that may be the first area to look for to cut back," Conforti says "If employees are not assets than why hire them?"

• Marketing should remain a priority, despite the expense. People are still making purchases, Conforti says, and even though the "pie is smaller, it's up to us to get our piece."

• Be more efficient. Look at operations and look for ways to streamline systems.