Heather Gorringe, managing director at Blakemere-based Great British Florist, explains why the business should win the marketing and PR category of the Guardian Small Business Showcase competition.
We built the Great British Florist e-commerce site nearly three years ago to grow and sell British flowers for all occasions, capitalising on a good social media presence. Our challenge was to build our local wedding and funeral sales. We needed a shop front without the risk or expense.
In October 2014, we approached the new shopping centre in Hereford offering to fill one of their empty shops for Christmas and make it a winter wonderland packed with British flowers, proper handmade Christmas garlands, trees and door wreaths. Customer engagement was key so we arranged four flower workshops and a mistletoe kissing booth where shoppers could have a Christmas kiss. The shopping centre loved the idea and let us have the shop for a peppercorn rent, and we got to bill them for the mistletoe kissing booth.
This helped to raise brand awareness and brought in more than £20,000 in shop sales. It also resulted in a shopping centre contract to decorate Christmas trees, all four of our workshops were fully booked and our efforts created leads for two wedding bookings and four new corporate contracts. We closed our pop-up shop as planned on Christmas Eve. But this process gave us the evidence and confidence to open a permanent shop in another part of town. We opened in March this year, ready for Mothering Sunday. We now have a profitable and beautiful shop, and are about to open our second outlet in Cheltenham at the end of October 2015.
All entries which meet the competition criteria are published and our judging panel select a shortlist of the three for each category. Winners are announced at an awards ceremony in summer 2016.
