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Perfect for gardening enthusiasts at any level, this podcast is your companion to cultivating success and beauty in your own backyard or flower patch. Hosted by Jane Westoby from Fuchsia Blooms Florist and The Hampshire Seed Company.
Each episode is a treasure trove of practical tips, expert advice, and insider flower farming guides designed to help you sow and grow with confidence and harvest with pride. Whether you’re dreaming of rows of neat vegetables or cutting flowers for bouquets all year round, we’ll walk you through every step.
Let’s grow together!
Jane Westoby (00:01.486)
Hey there flower friends and welcome back to the podcast that believes that flowers should be local seasonal and grown with love not wrapped in plastic and grown halfway around the world.
Jane Westoby (00:25.248)
I'm Jane, the founder of the Houchi Seed Company and today I'm kicking off part one of a new three-part mini series all about how to make money in your flower business and more importantly how to stop quietly losing it. And before I dive in, I want to start with something really personal and very relevant. At school, I was absolutely hopeless at maths. Hopeless. I was the kid sitting there thinking.
I can't wait to grow up and get a job where I never have to use maths again. So if numbers make you sweat and if you've ever avoided actually looking at the costs in your business, if you freeze the second you see a spreadsheet, just know this, I get it. But here is the twist. I actually ended up spending more than 20 years being paid to make other people money. I was a buyer.
And my whole job was all about sourcing products, negotiating prices, calculating margin, and making sure that the company that I worked for and my category made a profit. And I did all of this whilst being someone who genuinely does not identify as good at maths. So if I can do this, then you absolutely can do it too. Because the maths behind a profitable flower business is really simple.
basic actually it's calculator on your maths calculator it blah blah blah it's calculator on your phone type of maths or as i like to say back of a fag packet maths and i have actually literally done big business maths i'm talking multi-billion pound businesses where comments have been made in a meeting and i've literally sat there with a
Post-it note, written a couple of numbers down, got my phone out, used the calculator and been able to confidently say that number makes no sense. Okay, so it is really, really simple and it's only scary because actually they don't teach you this at school. I think it's too simple and no one teaches it clearly.
Jane Westoby (02:44.844)
And this has become really, really obvious to me recently. And it became really obvious at Christmas market that I did just a few weeks ago. So I did, I will admit it was a very expensive Christmas market. And when I expensive say, and when I say expensive, I mean, it was way more than what I wanted to pay. And the costs just stacked up. And I had a feeling that I wouldn't make my money back, but
I took the risk and sometimes in business you do have to take a risk and some of those risks are really painful. But sometimes you do a show not just for the sales, but for the learning. And here's the spoiler alert. I didn't make my money back. I did make a loss. So did everybody else I spoke to. But the important part here is that I knew by lunchtime on day one that we wouldn't make
any money that we just wouldn't make our money back and that's not because I'm pessimistic or not because I don't believe in myself but because I'd already done the maths before the show even opened and actually going back when I paid even before I paid for the show I did the maths and worked it out and realized I don't think we're gonna make our money back here okay what else can this show deliver for me
and I worked out some of the other things that this show would deliver and then took a calculated risk knowing that if we didn't make our money back, it was okay because the show had delivered some other things for us like marketing and some of the connections that we would make. So I worked out what my total fixed costs would essentially be. So that's my cost of.
goods, my margin, my break even for the entire event, my break even per day and even my break even per hour. So in three hours, in that first three hours of the show, when my numbers were not matching the footfall, I knew exactly where it was heading. So some shows do have a peak time and a quiet time and sometimes you can play catch up.
Jane Westoby (05:08.844)
but this show was incredibly steady and incredibly predictable. So I knew quite early on how the four days would end. And that gave me real clarity and it gave me power. And it let me adjust and pivot. And we did take double on day two compared to day one, but the shortfall was just too much and the truth was already written. But this is where it gets a little bit interesting because at one point I chatted.
to a few of the other traders and I asked them the simple question, so have you covered your costs? And the fear in their eyes was quite honestly something, not because they weren't clever and not because they weren't hardworking, but because they suddenly realized that they didn't actually really know. Although a few did say quite confidently, yes, we covered the stand fee. But then I asked, well, what about petrol?
What about your food? and your hotel? insurance, packaging and supplies, card machine fees? What about your cost of goods? And that's when the penny dropped. Most hadn't covered everything. They only covered the cost of the stand. They only covered the cost of the stand. And even that wasn't true once we'd run through the full maths. So...
Here is the maths which will actually change your business. So let's take a really simple, let's take some really simple numbers. Let's say you do a show or a stand or a pop-up or whatever it is you're doing. And let's say the fee for that space is, we'll keep the numbers simple. These aren't necessarily real numbers. Okay, let's say the stand fee is a thousand pounds. Okay. And then let's say you have some other overheads.
or petrol, coffee, a hotel maybe. Let's say they add up to 200. So your fixed costs for that show are 1,200 pounds. So whether you sell something or not, this is how much it is going to cost you to be there. This is also the amount of clear profit that you must make to just cover your basic costs. Okay, your basic fixed costs.
Jane Westoby (07:31.628)
then you need to know what your margin is. So your margin is the percentage of profit that you make when you sell a product. So your margin, it might be the same for all of your products, or you might have a blended margin. So you might make a different amount from different products, which I will cover in next week's podcast. So be sure to tune in next week and I will go through percentage margin and how to work that out.
on what really matters there, okay? But let's just assume in this case that your margin is a 50 % margin. So most people assume, okay, so if I take 1,200 pounds in sales on the day, and my fixed costs are 1,200, then I've broken even, because that's what their fixed costs were. But here's the reality. If you take 1,200 pounds in sales,
at a 50 % margin because that's the product that you're selling, it's also cost you a further 600 pounds in cogs, which is your cost of goods. So whatever you're selling, you might be selling flowers, you might be selling cards, you might be a candle maker, you might be selling candles, you could be selling anything, toys, furniture, anything, okay? Your...
it costs you to make those sales. So in this example, only 600 pounds of that 1,200 is actually your profit, but your fixed costs were 1,200. So in reality, you're now 600 pound down because your break even number is actually
your £1,200 of your fixed costs times by two because you need to double it. So you would have actually have had to have taken £2,400 in sales to actually break even.
Jane Westoby (09:36.014)
So if you want to work out your real break-even point for any event and that can be a market stall, it can be the corner of a coffee shop and whether your stand cost is £300 or £3,000, there's only actually one formula that you need. Okay, you ready? I will give you the formula now so that you can write it down but I will pop this in a blog post as well. And I'll pop that in the show notes for you so you've got that to refer.
back to. So your break even sales number, the formula that you need to use here is your fixed costs, whatever that might be, divided by your margin. It is literally that simple. And don't panic, let me walk you through this in plain English. So first just write down your fixed costs for the show. That's everything that you've had to pay for, whether you sell something or not.
your stand fee, your travel, your accommodation, your parking, everything. Next, work out your margin percentage. Be sure to come back next week if you don't have that, but you might already know it, okay? But if not, I'll cover that for you next week. So this is not your markup. This is not 2.5. This is not three. This is not the number you use as a simple calculation to work up a markup. This is your actual percentage margin. So let's say,
If your margin is 50%, write down 50%. If it's 62, write down 62%. The number exactly as you say it, kind of in real life. Now, you need to take, and you just need to do a little bit of maths here, it's not complicated. Now take that percentage and just divide it by 100. Now, you can do that on your calculator, but all you're basically doing is moving the decimal place over to the left by two.
And what this will do is just convert, it will convert that percentage into a decimal number. So 50 % will become 0.50, 62 % will become 0.62. If you have a 40 % margin, it will become 0.40. Okay. So you can use the calculator if you need to, just divide it by a hundred or just move your decimal place or just stick a 0.
Jane Westoby (12:04.3)
in front of your percentage. It's literally that simple. Okay, so all you're doing here is you're just turning the percentage into a version that your calculator will understand because you won't be able to do the calculation if you don't do that. Okay, so now take your fixed costs and divide them by that number. And whatever answer you get, that is the exact sales target that you must hit just to break even at the show.
So that is not profit and that is not to pay yourself. That is just to break even so you don't lose any money. If you want to pay yourself or make a profit, you need to take more than that number. Okay, so let's just go through that. So if your fixed costs are 1,200 pounds and your margin is 50%, you put into your calculator 1,200,
and you divide that by 0.5. So 0.5 is your percentage number. So your break even number and you press equals and your calculator should come up with a number, 2,400. So that is your break even number. Okay, let's do it with another number. So if your fixed costs are 326 pounds and your margin is 63%, in your calculator, you put 326, you divide that,
by 0.63 and your breakeven number, you press your equals and your breakeven number should come out at 517 pounds, okay? So this formula, works every time, for every show, for every margin. And I know this is really, really basic, but this is the maths that actually matters. It's not the fancy stuff from school.
But it's the stuff that stops your business quietly losing money in the background without you even noticing.
Jane Westoby (14:10.52)
So knowing your numbers, it does really, really matter. It gives you clarity and confidence and control. And it gives you the ability to adjust and pivot really quickly when you need to, just like I did at the show. But it stops you from guessing and hoping. And it stops you from walking blind straight into loss after loss. And most importantly, it stops you from telling yourself that you're doing fine when actually,
your business is quietly sinking. I really want you to feel empowered and confident about the decisions that you make and not overwhelmed by the maths. This isn't school, you just need real maths that works. And remember, it's not always about the straight profit. know, sometimes it is about marketing and without marketing, you don't have a business. But sinking money into marketing day after day, show after show without
actually working out what you can afford to either lose or write off as a marketing expense is the worst thing that you can do for your business. And if someone like me, the girl who was hopeless at maths, like literally utterly hopeless, my parents actually gave up trying to teach me. If I can learn this and use it every day, then you absolutely can do too. And I can help you to do this.
I can help you to forecast out what you need for the year. So before I wrap up, I want to share something very, very exciting because this episode has really made it crystal clear to me what so many of you need because in addition to this show, I also get lots of messages from people, mainly over on Instagram and I get the occasional email too. And they say like, Jane, I want to start a flower business, but I don't know where to start.
And the advice I always give is to start with a business plan. And this is like rabbit in a headlights. You you might already be growing flowers and you might have already sold some, but actually that doesn't make it a business. That's basically an out of control hobby with a bit of a return. So I'm putting something together for you. It's the flower business bootcamp.
Jane Westoby (16:29.942)
It's a beginner friendly bootcamp for anyone dreaming of building an actual flower business, but feeling really stuck at step zero. So if you have an idea, if you want to sell wholesale, bunches, bouquets or dried flowers, or maybe you don't actually really know exactly what you want to sell, that doesn't matter because the business planning bootcamp will help you decide. We will cover.
how to actually set up your business without the jargon and the overwhelm, how to decide which market segment you will target and how to find your first customers, how to make sure you're actually making money and going to make money, and what goes into a really simple, realistic business plan that you can use day after day and how to forecast out that first year properly, breaking everything down.
quarter by quarter, month by month and week by week. So maybe you've already had your first year or even your second year, but without a plan and without a business plan and a forecast. This is essentially everything that I wish somebody had given me on a plate when I started, but I had to figure it out all myself. Now I'd worked in buying for over 20 years, so I did have the skillset.
But putting it all together is a total minefield. And luckily for you, I have all of the tools that you'll need to get your business on track. So if this sounds exactly what you need, make sure you are signed up. I will put a link in the show notes for you to sign up for the workshop. And that's it for this week. And until next time, happy sowing, happy growing, and I'll see you next time.