Tisdale Florist

FTLComm - Tisdale - Monday, June 18, 2001

Last week we considered the retail battlefront in small town Saskatchewan and discovered that retailers can not resist advertising hype. So while we are at it let us check up the world of small town florists. Mrs. Bowtditch has been in the florist business for seven years and has owned Tisdale Florist for the past three years. She says business is steady and pretty much as it has always been. The cycle of weddings and funerals moves on and keeps she and her staff busy. She is not alone in the marketplace with a rival just down the street and both stores seem to be holding their own and to augment their business with flowers

both stores do well with other products. Mrs. Bowditch pointed out that the stuff animals are very popular and with the displays of other products you can see that this is a diversified market. (Another day we will visit the other shop where crafts are the sideline product) Mrs. Bowditch said that the other retailers who can afford to bring in competitive products for mothers day and Christmas really hurt business since Zellers, the Co-op and Extra-Foods can buy in such large amounts they can sell products retail at the price a florist has to pay for wholesale. To make this even harder to handle the large merchants will even make these special products

"lost leaders" (products sold at a loss, just to attract customers to their store). This means that a florist just has to concentrate on giving good service and being able to provide quality arrangements to regular customers.