Boulder Blooms has a relationship with all 10 sorority houses at the University of Colorado. The outreach provides for new customers and lots of orders in the relatively slow fall season.
Want to boost sales during the relative slowdown between the busy summer wedding season and Christmas? If you’re located in a university town, you might want to start thinking Greek — soon. (As in, now.)
Greek rush season at the University of Colorado has proven to be a lucrative time for Boulder Blooms in Boulder. Over the past six years, the shop has steadily built relationships with all 10 of the school’s sororities — relationships that translate into hundreds of new customers, across demographics — every fall. (Sound familiar? We’ve written about them before, but their outreach has only gotten more successful.)
“October and November can be slow for florists — you have Thanksgiving and you have Halloween, but they aren’t busy floral times of year,” said Tim Jordan of Boulder Blooms. “The revenue and business helps bridge the gap.”
The shop works closely with the sororities for rush, “Big-Little Week” (when older girls give gifts to younger girls joining the sorority) and initiation. The sororites need flowers for décor and gifts, and each sorority also sends a letter to new members’ parents, suggesting they call Boulder Blooms if they’d like to send congratulatory flowers to their daughters (hint, hint).
Because the shop stocks sorority-specific merchandise and understands the groups’ calendars and logistical details (e.g. when and where to deliver), “we make it very easy for the parents,” Jordan said. (Sororities have other events later in the years, including formals and events, but fall by far is the busiest time, Jordan said.)
For his part, Jordan sees the outreach as much more than a one-time effort to drum up orders in a slow season. “Many of the students will graduate and stay in the area, and many of them will end up in good jobs,” he said, presumably getting married, having children and buying flowers. The inclusion of parents sweetens the deal even more, giving Jordan a chance to win over their business, too — and that can mean “decades of anniversary and birthday gifts.”
Thinking of the local college down the road and opportunities for your business? Start laying that groundwork, Jordan said. Some of his suggestions for getting in with the sorority crowd:
Make it an Inside Job: Jordan hires a part-time worker to serve as a “sorority liaison.” Usually, the employee is either a current student or recent grad. Her understanding of her own sorority, and the broader system, helps the shop better understand and serve this niche base.
Show Your True Colors: Boulder Blooms stocks sorority-specific merchandise — “In fact, we stock University of Boulder sorority-specific” merchandise, Jordan said. The shop, one of the few local brick-and-mortars to have such items, also devotes a page on their website to the goods. (Don’t worry: If you don’t have time or money to invest in those goods, you can still research sorority history, colors and traditions and work those ideas into designs.)
Read more about Jordan’s efforts in an upcoming issue of Floral Management magazine.
