What’s up everybody, this is Joe Vega, and welcome to another Flower Shop Secret podcast. And today, I’ll be speaking with Corinne Heck, CEO and founder of Details Flowers.

She’s going to give us hope for the future of weddings and events in a post COVID world and how the software she’s developed ultimately helps florists do more and earn more. Let’s go…

Corrine Heck 0:00
But then I think there’s always going to be new entrepreneurs out there and creatives that are coming into this field and wanting to, to make a name for themselves, so I am definitely positive about the future.

Joe Vega 0:15
What’s up everybody, this is Joe Vega, and welcome to another flower shop secret podcast. And today, I’ll be speaking with Corinne, heck, CEO and founder of details flowers. She’s going to give us hope for the future of weddings and events in a post COVID world and how the software she’s developed ultimately helps florists do more and earn more. Let’s go. So the big question is this. How can small business owners like us in the flow industry overcome the greed of order gatherers, and bypass the deceitful games played by wire services? How do we market sell and deliver flowers online? So we may break free from these antiquated practices and earn our freedom? Those are some of the questions we will answer on this podcast. I’m Joe Vega. Welcome to flower shop secrets
Want to connect with Corrine and Details Flowers? Visit infodetailsflowers.com/lovingly – podcast and use the code “Lovingly20” for 20% off a a new monthly or annual membership.
Hey, Corrine, how are you?

Corrine Heck 1:20
I’m doing great. How are you?

Joe Vega 1:22
I’m doing fine. Thank you for joining me. First of all, what is details, flowers? And how did it come to be?

Corrine Heck 1:29
Oh, gosh. Okay, so details. Flowers is a software. And we mainly service event floors throughout the United States. We’re in a few other countries, but mainly serve the US and Canada. And it is a software that’s designed to help you do more and earn more. And through crafting beautiful proposals and all of your contracts that you might send out for weddings and special events. It also stores any recipes that you might do, and has some really great drag and drop functionality to help you price and be more profitable. And it came to be because I was an event florist for 12, almost 13 years in Central Florida and really struggled with a lot of those components and searched and searched for a proper functioning software that would combine all the aspects of this crazy job and couldn’t find one. So I spent a bunch of years developing it after, I would say a good r&d period and my own business. And we launched in 2015. And we’re now serving hundreds and hundreds of florists and and couldn’t be more proud. But yeah, it’s it’s a great tool and a resource to streamline things for people in that area of the floral industry.

Joe Vega 2:45
That’s fantastic. So you were an event florist for 1213 years, then, yeah,
Corrine Heck 2:50
I can’t really keep track. Now I keep every time I give an interview. It’s like I’ve added more ears on longer, the dates get further away, I can’t really recall. But I did have to finally put that part of my business to bed, so to speak, and just focus solely on the software. So we did that about three years ago, I transitioned from not serving wedding clients anymore, which was a really tough transition for all my customers because they would they’re still calling me now like please. But yeah, we’re totally focused on that. But yeah, it was a really great run and learned a lot and now we teach a lot about that side of the business.

Joe Vega 3:28
And just to go back a little bit how did you become a wedding florist or wedding any events? florists like what what got you How did you get started in the flooring industry?

Corrine Heck 3:37
Yeah, I my family actually owns nurseries in Apopka, Florida. So I grew up in. We sold dish gardens, basically to florists throughout the country. So I never grew up wanting to be a florist. I actually wanted to be as far away from the plant business because it did not seem glamorous at all. And then in college, I was for my sorority and all of Panhellenic at the University of Florida, I became their events chair. So I hosted all the events and just found I loved it. And then once I got out of college, I started working for a florist and then an import company selling boxes of flowers. And it just wasn’t glamorous enough for me like I really wanted to be where the events were. So I went to a bridal show, I made a bunch of bouquets and got a book of business and then I was on my way. So I opened a small boutique after that and was basically learning as I was going because there wasn’t a manual. So I just was creating my own little world But yeah, became wildly successful in the Daytona Beach area, which is a huge destination market for weddings coming. People coming from out of town just to host their weddings at the beach. And yeah, it just got going from there but definitely had a lot of great friends who helped mature me through the process of learning the ins and outs

Joe Vega 4:59
you mentioned You went through an extensive r&d process. Can you tell me what that’s like? Because, for me, that’s, that’s my favorite part of after like, I do a lot of things. But that is my favorite part. So I would like to hear from you. What was that process like for you?

Corrine Heck 5:15
Well, I think the research and development part was more participating in over 800, weddings and special events. So learning, like everything that needed to be included in my contract, you know, you, you get burned a few times, and then you learn your lesson. So that was a great place for research and development. And then, once we got started, we really had to interview our florists because I realized that not everybody was selling events the same way as I was. So you know, initially, it started as just components that I found necessary, but then once we started working with people, we would find that they would do something so entirely different and that we had never even thought about. So had to start bringing in other people’s opinions and so forth. But I would say that part of research and development like on what our software should include, but then we also did research on like the market, meeting people going to events, just kind of learning the entire industry and realizing that it’s massive, massively complicated. And so we’re always in the business, I think of research and development, I’m just going to places learning more, not only about our customers, but also about different potential partners and how they, they relate to all of the people in the business.

Joe Vega 6:38
Yeah, you learn a lot through that process. Did anything surprise you, as you were going through that process yourself?

Corrine Heck 6:43
I was surprised by how many people how how the industry has shrunk in the last several years from what it was. And getting into this, you know, I thought there was a lot of more customers, and I think that there were but the the supermarkets have definitely taken a large chunk of our, like business. So I’ve seen just kind of understanding how products are imported into the country to it’s been a really eye opening thing, you know, to work on the Import side and see how much product is coming in daily and having that process of, you know, going through customs, just to make it to the florists hands. I’ve learned a lot. And so it’s really hard to kind of piecemeal that together for people to understand, because I think when people are just getting started in the industry, or even consumers, they don’t really know where product is coming from. And so to learn, you know, for an event, you might have 50 different products that are coming from, you know, 30 different countries. So getting all those pieces collaborated at the same time has been interesting.

Joe Vega 7:53
Okay. You mentioned supermarkets they play How do supermarkets play a role?

Corrine Heck 7:59
Oh, well, I feel like they have you know, kind of diminished the everyday florist business and in a way, because you can easily go into any grocery store and and buy that. So I was just saying that the industry is kind of shrunk from even when I started in it 12 years ago, you know, 13 years ago, there were a lot more florists and I feel like since a lot of grocers are introducing more bouquets, it’s made our part of the business that much harder. And so we really have to be price competitive, but also smarter and our buying habits and where we get our products. So that has been something we really just try to to help or teach.

Joe Vega 8:42
Yeah, I completely agree with you ever since the supermarkets got involved. I mean, the industry has shrunk in terms of local florist, and they do have a huge sort of, you know, they have a lot of buying power, as you know, as they’re big organizations. And they definitely affect the everyday orders. But do they also affect the weddings and events of business? You

Corrine Heck 9:06
haven’t seen that? I mean, I think there are certain larger grocers and say like Texas that are getting into that field of like, I think he does a lot of weddings. So I haven’t seen that here in Florida, so much. But I definitely know that especially with this pandemic they have with the events not happening. Retail, florists, or event, florists have been moving into that retail sector. So they’re definitely trying to get their foot back in that door. And I think it’s our role to help convince consumers to support local florists just because they’re needing that extra hands you know,

Joe Vega 9:43
awesome. So let’s switch things up a little bit. Like why do florist enjoy details? why did why do they enjoy your software? What do you hear the most?

Corrine Heck 9:52
I think that they enjoy it because the brides on the other end received the proposals so well and they signed the contract. So fast and are just that price comfortability that you can have all of your products that you like, outlined and what your markups should be. Because I think that the math component in this industry moves so fast, there’s so many different components to consider. And it just is really helpful in like, calculations and knowing where you should be margin wise. And just the the collateral that you get when you finish designing and details which you can do and, and, you know, minutes is top notch. And so it’s a it’s a contract that sells.

Joe Vega 10:39
So what, you know, besides the business being successful, and you know, having financial success as well, what do you enjoy the most about having a business,

Corrine Heck 10:51
I love my employees, I love having people on my team that are as committed and invested in what we’re doing like that, to me, as is so beautiful. That part has been really rewarding. And in, we’re still small, but I feel like everybody feels like they’re treasured, and they have a specific role. And they know what that is. So there’s great accountability. And then I love seeing people win contracts. And I love those thankful people who are just like, Wow, thank you so much. Because it did take like a long time, like when there’s nothing there. You know, we get you know, there’s a few people that complain probably almost daily, and it’s usually the same five people, but they’re really loud and kind of uncomfortable, like, I’m like, Oh, it’s like the bride you wish you didn’t book like, you know, and you get these people and but they teach you so much about where you need to go. So even those people I’m thankful for, because they’ve really helped us make the software better. But I really enjoy the people who are thankful and live from that place. So when they are thankful, like that makes me say, Okay, this was all worth it.

Joe Vega 12:08
Yeah, that could be a tricky spot. Because, you know, for them, this is not a job. This is their livelihood, right. So every little thing matters and is magnified when something doesn’t work out, as they expect it to work out. It’s it’s not just, oh, it’s a mistake. Let’s fix it. It’s more like what is going on? Like, this is not how it’s supposed to be. And it’s Yeah, it can be challenging sometimes.

Corrine Heck 12:32
Yeah. And, you know, getting into the coding world. And I’m so thankful to have such brilliant minds working on our software. But, you know, things people think are easy fixes are easy solutions, and it seems so like simple to them. They don’t realize that for everything we add or remove that we have so many users to consider, and what is this going to impact them and, you know, so to add like a modal to have like a button where you can turn something off or on maybe if you don’t want it there, you do want it there is not always the easiest solution for the people making it. So I feel like there needs to be a bit of understanding on the part of like, even our customers like understanding what we’re doing and how complicated all of this is, and that we don’t want to disrupt their, their work too much. And we really do a good job of I think, giving our users all of the tools that we create, like we don’t make them by one piece or another leg if we make it and they’re a customer like they get it. And I think that sometimes they don’t really notice how it’s expanded or we’ve made so much more that they have we haven’t asked them for fees on either so, but the demands keep coming of what they want. So it’s like, Okay, well remember what you had when you signed up. So it’s a lot better now. And a, I don’t know, those kind of things are just I think growing pains and things we just have to realize how to talk to to our customers or communicate things. So we really try to be an open book and honest about where we’re going or, or how we intended for this to function. Maybe it’s not the way you envision it to be. But then, you know, you could go right to software as well.

Corrine Heck 14:25
Like mom’s dinner.

Joe Vega 14:27
Yeah, listen, I I couldn’t agree with you more on on. It’s not just about building this one thing. You know, a lot of times people don’t realize not only how complicated it is, but the fact that there’s if you create something, it’s going to affect something else, and they don’t consider that something else. As an example, if, let’s say a, you know, a customer there’s two or three customers have their has for a particular feature. They call you up and they’re like, Hey, can you build this feature? My customers needed, but they may not realize it, but building this feature will interfere with something that’s actually already working flawlessly that 97% of the people wanted that way. So they don’t, I feel like they don’t consider that 90 said, because it’s kind of invisible. It’s kind of, it’s hard to blame them because they don’t see it. And and that’s what that’s what we have like, for example, like analytics, for example, we make you make decisions based on data and analytics.

Corrine Heck 15:25
Absolutely, yeah, we look at almost everything that our our users are doing or how they’re interacting. And then we log every feature request. And so we actually have that setup by like pages, so we can see all the features that were requested on this page. And when we develop or add new features, we, we only work on one section at a time, like to not. And we try to check off all the things that were requested. So when we do something, you know, we’ve take everybody’s input into that. And usually we do deliver on there’s nothing that we really will ever say no to. But we also found that when we started in this that we wanted to do things a little different. And the way florists have calculated their their pricing and how they should charge for recipes is like, oh, like so complicated, so complicated. And we’ve really simplified it. And I think there’s a lot of people who appreciate that, and some that still want to do it the old way. And they can’t quite consider our new way that we’re doing it. So it’s a it’s a it’s a fine line where you can only make some people happy. You know, I’m at a time, all the time. And but most of our customers are raving about us. And, you know, we do track their activity level, we can tell if someone isn’t using the site if they’re, and we consider those high risk. And so we do try to put more educational information because we do want users who are in there every day working on their events, you know, collecting payments from their customers. And these are all signs that their business is healthy. So we tried to make content to help them along to

Joe Vega 17:07
That’s fantastic. So what are some of the newly added features you’ve added lately,

Corrine Heck 17:11
there was probably 20 new features that we added this last year. And of course, my mind is going blank, I’m really only focused on what we’re doing like now. But we have recently added something called collections. So this is where people can make any type of collection they might want. Maybe they want a color collection or a trend collection. But basically, it’s just different folders that they can house all of their blooms and items. And so they can easily upload all of those to an event. So if you were doing, say a Halloween inspired event, you might just go into your Halloween folder, grab all those items there and add them to your design contract. And voila, you have a beautiful Halloween designed wedding in a matter of minutes. So it’s a pretty exciting what you can do with it. And our users always just blow me away with the way the creative ways and things that they come up with on how they’re, they’re doing that. So that is one of our, our newest features that is really, really cool. And also templates. So people can create a whole event and they can just save it as a template and use it again and again. And I mean, it’s pretty fabulous. You know, as far as, you know, designing a wedding and Excel, you almost can’t save that as an exact replication sometimes. So we tried to think of the ways that we can save people time,

Joe Vega 18:42
in your space, has there been any new players in into the market since you started?

Corrine Heck 18:48
You know, we only have I think, really one competitor. And so that I think is, um, you know, I don’t think it will, will stay that way forever, because I think people will see there’s things lacking. But I also know how complicated the side of the business is, and that there are a lot of people in the space that haven’t wanted to even dip their toe in the water as far as eventing and how to get all those pieces together. But I would have to say as far as our competitor goes, I think that we’re more floral centric, and that we’re really focused on the floral industry. And I think that they’re more into service seen any kind of event professional, which you know, can be easily big distractions when a catering company is asking you for something or you know, a DJ company’s asking you for something and we’re only listening to our florists. So I think that’s good thing.

Joe Vega 19:40
So would you say that florist should definitely sign up with you because you’re laser focus on them.

Corrine Heck 19:49
Yeah, and I think that that’s necessary. Like when I first started my event business, you know, I wanted to do it all. And I wanted to be a wedding planner, and I was like, oh, I’ll handle the invitations and all that. Do all of this, but you realize that you can’t be good at everything. And that’s why I’ve really made it a mission to focus on the floral industry having worked on the Import side, and seeing how disconnected a lot of our wholesalers were to our customers and, and even beyond that our farm. So we have really gone above to have our farms connected with our florist. And so people can actually see what products are being grown or what’s available or what is new and coming up. So I think that that is really exciting. And definitely the next year is going to bring us

Joe Vega 20:38
right so you you work with florists, but you also work with wholesalers or farmers, correct. Yeah. He did talk about that a little bit.

Corrine Heck 20:48
Yeah. So details was designed so that we can house any type of catalog of sorts of products. And so we have different representations from ball, which is a breeder, so any product that ball breeds is on our site. And so when our florists do use that product, they get those specific varieties, so they know exactly what to ask their wholesaler for. But it’s really interesting for ball because they can see what products are trending? Or what months, are these products going to be most sought after? Or most used? What should they plant more of? What should they sell more seeds of? So all of those products we have Alexandra farms on they’re all their garden roses, you know, when you’re selling a wedding you want to sell. You’re usually very color specific. But you would like to see oh my gosh, there’s 40 different varieties of different garden roses. And I want that one. So if you have the intention of what you’re looking for, not only are you getting the name, right, but you’re also able to like communicate Kate that to your suppliers in a in a more robust, like way. So yeah, we have all lots of different products. We’ve got Alaska peony growers on there, and we added a new wholesaler, and we haven’t started marketing for them. But all their products are online right now. So,

Joe Vega 22:06
so detailed flowers behaves more like a platform, right? You talk to both sides, and you allow both sides to talk to each other. And they conduct business there. Is that right?

Corrine Heck 22:15
Yep. Yep, that’s, I mean, that’s what my big vision was. Because, you know, when you’re planning an event, and you need 30 different products, it’s sometimes hard to know where to get that. And where do you keep that information? So now you can log in and check off this rose? Oh, yes, I got that rose from this supplier, this is how much I spent for it. Okay, I know if I send out this proposal that I’m priced, right. And that that is a variety I can get at that month of the year. So it’s really like a database that houses any information that you might want on your inventory. You know, accent to corps inventory, we we have a connection with them where their inventory is updated nightly, on our site. So if you’re going to look at a certain votive, you can check their inventory to see if it’s available even before you sell it, which I think is so vital, we get into this thing where we’re selling to our clients a certain look. And then when you go to buy it, you’re like, Oh, crap, I can’t get any of that product, because it’s not available. How did I not know this? So like These issues that I was faced with in my daily business of research and development are part of the tools and functionality that we’ve added specifically for event florists.

Joe Vega 23:25
Okay, so let’s say I’m a florist. I have details, flowers, and I am I’m with a bride and I want to, and she’s looking to get married sometime next year. Yeah. Could I look what kind of flat what type of flowers are going to be available during the time wish the wedding is going to happen?

Corrine Heck 23:43
Yeah. So you can either you can either sit with your brides and use our software during your consultation, we have a privacy mode so that they can’t see any costs or any things that you wouldn’t want them to see. Because there’s been a lot of our customers that have been doing these virtual meetings over zoom. So it’s really fun to share the details screen. It’s really a beautiful platform. So if you it was designed specifically that way because I think that florists are very visual and very creative. And they want to look at something that is beautiful all day long rather than a das. So yeah, you could sit with your bride drag and drop some blooms in Oh, is that bouquet too expensive? Okay, well, rather than garden rose. Let’s use, you know, Colombian roses. And you can see how the prices change just by selecting different blooms. And, you know, we don’t say to our florists to build a whole bouquet, but you could come up with budgets, and set designs, pick some flowers, pick a color palette, present them with a beautiful proposal at the end. And our goal through our executive summary is that you at the end of that consultation will walk away with a retainer holding in that date and then you can create the rest of the event in the in the next few months. But our Brides, once they see that proposal, man, they want to just share it with all their friends. So we try to convince our florist not to give the bride the copy of the design plans until they get that retainer. So they get that booked. But, you know, the bride will pay a pretty penny to get that get that design to show her all her her girlfriends. So it’s, it’s just a great sales tool I have to say.

Joe Vega 25:16
So you you you build the florist side first. And then you notice through r&d, that there was a need to connect them to the wholesalers. And how long did it take you to realize that At what point did you made that first connection.

Corrine Heck 25:34
Actually, I was the first connection I made. So the I worked on the Import side for a number of years selling boxes of flowers, to wholesalers. And through that process of selling for an import company, I was always angry at my buyer, because my buyer never brought the right color of product and like they would bring in yellow, and everybody that was calling me was asking for purple. And I would say how did you not know that we were gonna need purple, more purple because I worked off the commission, I thought if you would have brought in more purple, like, hey, we’d all be happier. And they said, Well, no one knows. And it just suddenly clicked with me. The moment I started doing weddings that for the first couple years of doing weddings, I really flew by the seat of my pants, I didn’t know what I was going to need to order when I sold an event. And through a lot of mistakes, I realized I had to be more granular. So I had to know all the product that I was going to need for that event. And the moment that I sold the event. And I had to know what I was going to pay for it. And once I had that wedding all done in the moment I met with a bride I realized if I could get other people to use the software, they were doing it the same, then it would hugely benefit the other side because we would have that order, say in January for a wedding in October. And that was the information that I needed. as a as a salesperson of selling boxes of flowers. Did I make that?

Joe Vega 27:03
Yes, that man? Yeah. Yeah. perfectly. It was. That was great.

Corrine Heck 27:08
Yeah. So I was almost like, I saw that that was a problem. On the wholesale side. Because I wasn’t maximizing those sales, like I was missing out on sales simply by not having the right product and house that day. And then yeah, once I became a florist, it was like, why can’t make money if I don’t don’t know what I’m going to be selling? Or, you know, people send you this picture. What is this going to cost? It’s like, heck, I don’t know, I have to make one to see how much product I’m going to use, then I have to calculate how much that product cost? How much am I gonna cost to get it? And those things were just so it’s such a complicated job, that I feel like we’ve made it a no brainer.

Joe Vega 27:51
That’s fantastic. You mentioned that you mentioned that a lot of florists are having zoom calls, I think the whole world is having a lot more zoom calls right now has COVID impacted your business.

Corrine Heck 28:03
Goodness. Um, so, you know, I was actually in DC when COVID struck, and they shut everything down. And it was I came back to Florida and was like, Okay, well, we need to get our whole team remote. You know, we have an office here. And that was like a big challenge just to, you know, how was I going to redirect the phones and, you know, we had to go and get a bunch of new apps and, you know, really change our business almost overnight and the way that we were operating, but without, like we are available to our florists nine to five every day Monday through Friday. So at no time did we ever disrupted that type of service. If anybody had questions, they were able to meet us. And I think what we realized is we had to provide our customers with more content on how they were going to do their business better. And not that we could, we created more videos for them on how to use almost every aspect of our software, wherever they had questions, we had all this on line and found that that was a really useful time because a lot of people wanted to spend the time at home or when they weren’t doing anything enhancing or learning new skills. And so we really had to come at full speed to bring those, you know, teaching time to our customer. So I would say that’s how we pivoted the most, but it was it was really kind of healthy for us to to go through that experience.

Joe Vega 29:33
So How is COVID? You know, have you heard from your experience in terms of like the wedding industry? How How do you think it’s affecting it? Oh, gosh,

Corrine Heck 29:42
I think it’s impacted enormously. I think it’s we’ve really taken a big hit. And we’ve seen a lot of of our customers having to close their doors so that is really unfortunate and really, you know, kind of is is very sad. We definitely early on, knew we had to evaluate our business differently, given those circumstances and say, okay, a customer that’s here now might not be here in the future. So we really had to focus in on our cash flow, our cash flow projections, you know, we’re subscription based. So if, and, you know, if people cancel their subscription, they’re gone. You know, so what do we do there? But, um, wow, it’s been really tough. And it’s been really great to see that there are certain states that are opening back up and getting events happening, because that’s our bread and butter, like our our florists bread and butter, too, like they, they are eventful hours, they do not want to be like full on retail, they want to, you know, have their business the way they want their business and not, you know, necessarily open to the public. So it’s been certainly a challenge just to see how they’ve maneuvered. And initially, we only had one contract template that they could create. And then we found that that was just not going to be the case. Like they needed a variety of different templates that they could use for their contracts, depending on the circumstance. So that was a really addition that we added this year and a couple of weeks, just by all these people saying, hey, I need this to be in here for this bride, I need this to say this for this bryden. Now they can, you know, write any kind of template contract they want, as far as terms go, and attach those for different unique customers.

Joe Vega 31:29
So is there a hope for the future despite a drastic change?

Corrine Heck 31:34
I think there’s definitely hope for the future. We have seen a this is our biggest January, as far as like seeing what our florists are selling through the system, like as far as contracts go. So we can see from those stats that businesses definitely picking up. And so that is a kind of a relief to see. Because it definitely, you know, April declined, may decline, June was like really down, July was down. And then all of a sudden, towards the end of the year, we see a little bit going stronger. So I think that, you know, there may be less customers, just like with the supermarket shrinkage, there might be less when we fully come out of this. And I think the floors that are left will be really, really strong and getting a lot of business. So I think that those ones will be waving the Blue Ribbon like, hey, here, we made it out of this alive. But that I think there’s always going to be new entrepreneurs out there and creatives that are coming into this field and wanting to to make a name for themselves, so I am definitely positive about the future.

Joe Vega 32:44
Yeah, me too. I’m definitely optimistic about it. Corinne heck from the tail flowers. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Corrine Heck 32:50
You’re very welcome. Thank you, Joe.

Joe Vega 32:52
It’s been a pleasure. This has been really fun. Yeah, yeah.

Corrine Heck 32:55
I always love to get to know more about you. And I think you guys are doing such a great job over there. So happy to be a flower friends in the industry. And anytime we can do anything, let me know.

Joe Vega 33:07
Thank you. We want to help your business bloom. Follow for more episodes of flower shop secrets streaming now on Spotify, Apple podcast, Google and more.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai