When I first got married 7 years ago, the one thing I could not figure out about my wife was why she loved flowers so much. At that time, flowers seems like such a waste of money. You pay $5 or $10 or $20 for flowers only to have them die in 7 days. “What about those fake flowers?” I would ask Olive. They seems like such a great deal – buy them once and they last forever. “They’re not the same,” my wife would tell me.
Over the years I’ve learned (slowly) how much joy fresh flowers bring to Olive. Isn’t it worth it to pay $5 or $10 or $20 to bring a week’s worth of joy into my wife’s life? Maybe it’s because I have a better understanding of my wife now. Or maybe it’s because my wife’s life has been difficult these past few years with caring for young kids and I want to show her how much I appreciate and love her. Whatever the reason, my budget for flowers has grown significantly over the years.
When we moved to our new house 4 years ago I needed to find a new shop to buy flowers. What was I looking for? A place with good prices and fresh flowers. Somewhere close and convenient to get to. So I tried Safeway, the flower shop across from Safeway, Superstore, some flower shop at Henderson Mall, a flower shop in downtown Port Coquitlam, and Fran’s Flowers at Coquitlam Center. I would rotate between them depending on where I was and whether any good deals were available.
Some days I would take my 4-year old daughter Allie with me to buy flowers. One time when we were picking up flowers at Fran’s Flowers, the young woman working there gave Allie a flower of her own. “That was a kind thing to do,” I remember thinking. Allie was delighted! (It turns out that Allie has the same love for flowers as her mother.) My daughter went home so excited to tell Olive about the flower she got. Olive put Allie’s flower in a special vase and put it in the washroom Allie uses.
The next time we were at Fran’s Flowers it was a different woman working, and she offered Allie a flower as well. “It’s great to be cute,” I thought. A few months later, Allie got a 3rd free flower from the person at Fran’s Flowers.
As a result of those experiences (and because their flowers are fresh, their service is good, and I like their simple pricing), Fran’s Flowers has become my go-to flower shop. When we celebrated our 7th anniversary last Thanksgiving and I was prepared to spend $50 on a very nice bouquet of flowers for my wife, I went to Fran’s Flowers. That day I asked the ladies who put the bouquet together for me if I could take a photo of them and blog about them. They said yes. When I told them about my blog post idea, one of them excitedly told me that giving away broken flowers (where the stem was bent) to kids was part of their policy, and it was one of her favourite things to do.
Whoever thought of that business policy is brilliant and kind. From a pure for-profit-business mindset, giving away damaged inventory to reward your customers is genius. From the human side, creating a policy that brings delight not only to your customers and their kids, but also to your staff is a kind and generous thing to do.
Can kindness be a marketing strategy for your business? You decide.