332 



HORTICULTURE 



September 4, 1915 



Horticulture? 



The man with a serious object in 

 life, of progressive purpose and 

 broad business aims; who is inter- 

 ested to know what the other suc- 

 cessful men of the trade are doing 

 and how they are doing it; who 

 reads to learn and improve. 



Find a regular reader of Horti- 

 culture and you will find he fits the 

 foregoing qualifications. 



If you have stock to sell, he is the 

 man who wants to know about it; 

 who is in a position to become a 

 customer if you can suit him; who 

 has the ability to pay for the goods. 



Do you want to get in touch with 

 him and do business with him? 



If you do, 



You Know 



the Answer 



Your advertisement in Horticulture 

 will get the attention of a larger pro 

 rata percentage of such readers 

 than in any other publication in 

 this country. 



Get Busy 



THE NECESSITY OF NATIONAL 



PUBLICITY TO ADVANCE THE 



INTERESTS OF COMMERCIAL 



FLORICULTURE IN THE 



UNITED STATES. 



(A Paper by A. Pochelon, Presented at the 

 San Fraucisco Convention.) 

 This subject has been given to me 

 and I shall try to treat it from the 

 standpoint of Secretary of The Flor- 

 ists' Telegraph Delivery, an associa- 

 tion which has done a great deal of 

 work in the way of publicity. So far, 

 of course, every member has been do- 

 ing his or her share in their different 

 localities to draw their patrons, or 

 w^ould-be patrons' attention to the tele- 

 graph or out-of-town service, and the 

 results gained in the past few years 

 have been very much beyond expecta- 

 tion. 



This much for the introduction of 

 the points which I will bring out now. 

 If the florists throughout the country 

 can be indorsed by a national advertis- 

 ing campaign drawing the public's at- 

 tention to The Florists' Telegraph De- 

 livery shops all over the country, and 

 the public impressed that P. T. D. does 

 not only stand for telegraph orders, 

 but for the best service, prompt pay. 

 sure and honest delivery— that means 

 progress. 



Immediately after reading the above 

 lines you may think that I am too 

 much F. T. D.. but that is not at all 

 so. Just remember that every good 

 retail florist in the United States and 

 Canada has the same right to join the 

 F. T. D. and work with us. not alone 

 for his or our benefit but for the good 

 of the florist trade. 



Today you may consider the F. T. D. 

 a pretty good organization of the sales 

 department in the florists' trade and 

 if you want to make a start for a na- 

 tional campaign, you have to get a 

 body of retailers who are businesslike 

 enougli to see the benefit of such a 

 campaign and who will have to get up 

 a fund to spend for this advertising 

 and this fund must be guaranteed be- 

 fore any attempt at spending it is 

 made. This campaign must go through 

 periodicals as well as local daily pa- 

 pers. 



For many years this relaying of or- 

 ders has been, you might say, limited 

 to steamer deliveries in New York or 

 for funeral work, but the day is here 

 when this relaying can be applied to 

 every occasion for which we sell flow- 

 ers in our shops. Many a retailer has 

 shipped flowers from his town for one 

 hundred or more miles and felt that 

 he would rather make the sale than 

 relay the order; has he gained any- 

 thing by so doing? Xo. he has hurt 

 the florist trade; in almost every in- 

 stance, these shipments have arrived 

 poorly, where, if the man in the respec- 

 tive town would have made this deliv- 

 ery the patron would have received 

 the full value for his money beside 

 advertising the florist out-of-town serv- 

 ice. 



Do not forget for one moment that 

 you may do .$10,000 worth of advertis- 

 ing and then not be able to deliver the 

 goods right and faithful. By such 

 methods you will do more harm than 

 good to the florist trade. I, therefore, 

 advise, first of all. before any national 

 advertising campaign is undertaken to 

 investigate who can handle and deliver 

 the goods the best and so back up his 



advertising. I would hate to think 

 that an order sent by me to a brother 

 florist in another town would not be 

 handled as conscientiously as I would 

 want to fill it myself. 



There is absolutely no doubt in my 

 mind that our florist trade is still one 

 of the least advertised trades, but it 

 seems a lot of retailers are waiting for 

 someone outside the trade to advertise 

 their goods and you may rest assured 

 they surely will have a long wait com- 

 ing. 



If w'e had flve hundred retailers 

 around the country like Henry Penn 

 and a few others whom I could name 

 who have spent money on a large 

 scale for advertising and yet doing 

 this cautiously, the whole florist trade 

 would gain a lot. but just now in- 

 stead of being thankful to such men 

 what do a great many narrow, jealous 

 retailers do? They knock, criticise 

 and run down the many advertising 

 florists; at the same time forgetting 

 that if all the people they have made 

 flower buyers of, would go back to 

 their shops for everything they need, 

 they could not handle the business. 

 Many a man or woman have I induced 

 to use flowers on their tables and if 

 all would come and trade with me 

 alone I would not care to handle all 

 that amount of business. 



Let each retailer make up his mind 

 to cultivate a want for flowers at oc- 

 casions where people now do not think 

 of using flowers, instead of watching 

 with jealous eyes his florist neighbor's 

 store and criticising his way of doing 

 business, and we all will be better 

 satisfled aside from being better men 

 and better florists. 



I think it is folly for the New York 

 men to dictate to the man in Detroit 

 how to advertise; it is a much safer 

 way for each man to study a plan or 

 system of how he can get the most 

 publicity in his locality. After this 

 is done an indorsement by a national 

 campaign is absolutely in order but 

 before that it would be throwing away 

 money. National advertising is a good 

 deal like co-operation advertising. It 

 is up to a few to do the work to the 

 best of their ability and even after 

 they can show the best results it is 

 hard for the few to collect the money 

 from the others. 



There is absolutely no doubt in my 

 mind that Mother's Day would never 

 have become the great beneflt to the 

 florist trade had it not been for the 

 florists in different localities taking 

 this proposition in hand and following 

 it up so that some day I hope Mothers' 

 Day will become the same as Easter or 

 Christmas is to the florist trade. Yet, 

 ask the fellows who do the actual 

 work and see and hear what they have 

 to say about plugging to get even 3 

 hearing with some of their brother 

 florists. You might be surprised when 

 I tell you they sometimes almost have 

 to beg and plead for the other fellows 

 to come in with them, aside from do- 

 ing the hard work, and I venture to 

 say right here that if they were not 

 successful and got results they would 

 never be forgiven and even the best of 

 us can make a misjudgment sometimes. 

 Cleveland is going to have a big 

 Flower Show next fall and the way 

 they go at the advertising is a study 

 worth while being appreciated by a 

 great many. In the florist trade not 

 just one or two individuals will get 

 the largest benefit from some and the 



