The dream of starting a floral business can easily become a reality. Florist shop owners enjoy creating beautiful floral arrangements for individuals or special occasions. According to the customer s order, they cut and arrange live, dried, or artificial flowers and foliage. They design arrangements by trimming flowers and arranging bouquets, sprays, wreaths, dish gardens, and terrariums. This new book will teach you all you need to know about getting started in your own florist business in the minimum amount of time. Here is the manual you need to cash in on this highly profitable, quickly growing segment of the retail industry. This new book is a comprehensive and detailed study of the business side of a floral shop. This superb manual should be studied by anyone investigating the opportunities of opening a store. If you enjoy meeting people, this may be the perfect business for you. This complete manual will arm you with everything you need, including sample business forms, leases, and contracts; worksheets and checklists for planning, opening, and running day-to-day operations; plans and layouts; and dozens of other valuable, time-saving tools of the trade that no entrepreneur should be without. While providing detailed instructions and examples, the author leads you through finding a location that will bring success, drawing up a winning business plan (the companion CD-ROM has the actual business plan that can be used in Microsoft Word), buying (and selling) a floral store, pricing formulas, sales planning, tracking competitors, bookkeeping, media planning, pricing, copy writing, distribution channel planning, hiring and firing employees, motivating workers, managing and training employees, accounting procedures, auditing, successful budgeting, and profit planning development. By reading this book you will become knowledgeable about basic cost control systems, retail math and pricing issues, floor plans and diagrams, equipment layout and planning, legal concerns, sales and marketing techniques, IRS reporting requirements, customer service, direct sales, monthly profit and loss statements, tax preparation, low cost internal marketing ideas, management skills, low and no cost ways to satisfy customers and build sales, as well as thousands of great tips and useful guidelines. In addition, you will learn how to set up computer systems to save time and money, how to hire and keep qualified professional staff, how to generate high profile public relations and publicity, and how to keep bringing customers back. The manual delivers literally hundreds of innovative ways to streamline your business. Learn new ways to make your operation run smoother and increase performance. Shut down waste, reduce costs, and increase profits. Store owners will appreciate this valuable resource and reference it in their daily activities as a source for ready-to-use forms, Web sites, operating and cost cutting ideas, and mathematical formulas that can be easily applied. The Companion CD-ROM contains all the forms in the book, as well as a sample business plan you can adapt for your own use.