MEMBER PROFILE 



Ci 



in the country 



There's phone access and also ac- 

 cess by car. Paul's second shop, 

 Chagnon/Stache, located in the Pin- 

 ardviiie section of Goffstown, is a 

 new (IQ89I retail/office structure 

 (Paul rents the buiidingi Spacious 

 and efficient, without the cozy charm 

 of Jacques' warren of spaces, it does 

 only a third the business of Jacques, 

 but because it has plenty of parking 

 and is clearly visible on a main thor- 

 oughfare, far more of it is walk-in, 

 "When we first opened— on 

 Palm Sunday, 1992- even 

 before the sign was up, 

 walk-in business was higher 

 than lacques." 



If there's a long-term 

 trend, it's probably the in- 

 creasing sales of outdoor 

 garden material. At Chag- 

 non/Stache, poly green- 

 houses around the parking 

 lot are filled with bedding 

 plants and perennials in the spring 

 and summer (one house is devoted 

 to nothing but impatiens) and mums 

 in the fall. Basic shrubs and garden- 

 ing supplies are sold here too. 



PAUL REMEMBERS the Worlds Cup 

 for Floral Design, an international 

 competition for designers held every 

 four years, that he and Nancy at- 

 tended in Stockholm in 1993. The 

 designs--"way out, using material 

 we've never seen here, with no tra- 

 ditional sense of line or direction... 

 ten designers were on stage; each 

 had a four-foot globe with which 

 they could do what they wanted with 

 whatever flowers they wanted. ..an 

 auditorium filled with 10,000 people 

 cheering and carrying on like it was 

 a sporting event. ..a woman won 

 --usually it's a man— but this time 

 the winner was a woman from Great 

 Britain." 



Events like this are important 

 sources for new ideas; they also 

 help put things in perspective: "I'm 

 not a designer--there are very few 

 real designers; at best I'm a good 

 copier-I can copy well what I see in 

 a book." 



Vacations are also a time to re- 



fuel. On a recent trip to Florida, he 

 and Nancy brainstormed on the way 

 down and came up with a half-dozen 

 pages of possibilities. Some were 

 just foolish ("a six-week vacation for 

 everyone"), but others, he's in- 

 trigued by the idea of basing em- 

 ployee pay on performance— the 

 number of calls taken, the number 

 of designs made, then docking pay 

 for complaints— "everything's on com- 

 puter now, so it could be done", and 

 adding a share of the bottom line. 



6 



ut your success," Paul warns, 



contains the seeds of your destruction — 



you tend to repeat the ideas that are 



successful and stop looking for 



new ways to do things." 



The idea is probably not feasible, 

 but the idea of the individual's re- 

 sponsibility for his own actions is. 

 "We have no rules," Paul says. "We 

 see each sale as an individual trans- 

 action. If someone wants to do 

 something, I ask ^Well, how would 

 you do it?' and if it sounds reason- 

 able, I say, "Go for it.' 1 let the em- 

 ployee decide. There's no official 

 policy— if a customer has a com- 

 plaint, we listen and if it seems jus- 

 tified, we rectify it; if someone calls 

 and wants an arrangement delivered 

 in two hours we don't say, 'our 

 policy is...' If the truck's leaving in 

 an hour and we think we can do it, 

 we say we can; if we can't, we ex- 

 plain why. Sure, some people get 

 mad, but most appreciate the hon- 

 esty and just plain common sense." 



He goes on: "The worst thing a 

 business can do is to create stan- 

 dardized policies that are basically 

 negative--~We will not give refunds;' 

 ~We do not deliver...' Customers find 

 that unfriendly. You should always 

 be flexible and remember who's 

 serving who." 



lACQUES DELIVERS in four com- 

 munities—Bedford, Goffstown, Hook- 



set, and Manchester; for others he 

 uses only one wire service— FTD. 

 FTD was member-owned, but re- 

 cently members voted to sell the 

 wire service to Richard Perry, a pri- 

 vate investor 



What will happen? Paul will stay 

 with FTD— "for awhile, anyway," but 

 "there will be a lot less loyalty." Al- 

 though there are lots of wire services 

 to choose from (he mentions the 

 recent growth of 1-800- 



FLOWERS), he sees another trend: 

 more individual customers 

 calling directly to the local- 

 ity in which the flowers are 

 to be delivered rather than 

 going through a florist near 

 them: "More and more flo- 

 rists are getting 800 

 numbers— we get calls from 

 all over the US." 



Jacques not only has 

 an 800 number and a FAX 

 number, but an E-mail num- 

 ber as well. "The Wave of the 

 Future-it's still probably going to be 

 product, but the biggest profit goes 

 to the shops that can send out the 

 most orders." 



There are other sources of new 

 revenue. Two days of visiting area 

 businesses last December convinced 

 Paul that he hasn't even begun to 

 tap into the supplying of plant mate- 

 rial for commercial accounts. Of 

 course, more work at Christmas when 

 you're already stretched to the limit 

 may not be what you want--the best 

 accounts would be year-round. But, 

 "there's as much out there as you 

 want— you just have to have the en- 

 ergy to go after it " 



If there's plenty of business in 

 New Hampshire, what do customers 

 like? "New Hampshire? Very 

 traditional--old-fashioned In the 

 wealthier suburbs, people like some- 

 thing different, a little more creative, 

 but even they prefer the traditional. 

 Still, that doesn't mean a standard 

 arrangement can't be well done--it 

 can be the best standard bouquet 

 ever created. You have to remember 

 —people aren't buying the bouquet 

 itself--they're buying what the bou- 

 quet can do--express friendship, 



April & May 1995 



