Growing Profitable Revenue Streams, Part 1: How Selling on Consignment Got My Flower Farming Journey Started
Finding the right revenue streams for your flower farm can make the difference between building a thriving, profitable business—or burning out on a dream that just doesn’t pay the bills. I know this firsthand. When I first started Sweet Piedmont, I tried (and by tried, I mean I did) most revenue streams I now cover in the upcoming Revenue Stream Compass™. If I’d had this tool from the beginning, I would have saved myself months of trial and error, not to mention a lot of stress and wasted resources.
This blog series tells my personal journey behind these explorations. We’ll start where I started: with selling via consignment – a low risk, low reward sales channel for selling your flowers.
Consignment Chronicles: Testing the Waters
When you’re first starting out, one of the hardest barriers to overcome is the lack of any brand recognition. Unless you’ve already got a large (local) social media presence or other “hook” (if you’re a vegetable farm with an existing customer base, for example) there is a good chance no one knows who you are or what kind of flowers you’re producing. That, in turn, makes it difficult to get a subscription/CSA going, or start booking wedding clients.
I had more of a flower patch, back when I started, than a flower farm – and so I needed a sales channel that wouldn’t overwhelm me. As a relative newcomer to growing flowers, I also didn’t have enough experience to be able to accurately predict my production levels. Which meant I couldn’t be sure I’d have enough flowers a month into the future to support a subscriber that I signed up today. I also had a demanding off-farm job, so I often found myself in an impossible conundrum: either grow the flowers or sell them. I often couldn’t do both.
For that reason, and because I’m a risk-averse person by nature, my first venture into selling my flowers was on consignment. Selling on consignment places your flowers in retail stores where your flowers get exposed to a broader customer base than if you relied solely on social media or direct sales. It’s a great way to reach new audiences without a large marketing budget. However, there’s a catch—you only get paid for what sells, and you don’t necessarily control the display.
I remember nervously approaching a local farm market, run by one of the area’s most well-known farmers. Located along a bustling road that attracted both commuters and weekend tourists, it was smaller than a full-scale grocery store but was stocked with a wide range of meats (he farmed cattle), dairy, eggs, vegetables, and other locally produced goods. It had everything except flowers, making it the perfect spot to try to sell my bouquets. I offered to sell my mixed arrangements on consignment, and after we negotiated his percentage of the sale, I began restocking fresh bouquets twice a week.
The early days! My bouquet-making skills have come a very long way from the early bouquets pictured here (at left), though I have to note that even my earliest bouquets had most of the critical ingredients called for in the Bouquet Blueprint. Middle photo: me, standing in the farm store during one of the many events they held to showcase up-and-coming farmers. Right: my early growing area was just a few short rows in the vegetable garden. I almost never plant color mixes these days (too many random colors) but back then, I didn’t know any better.
The experience was invaluable, even though I only sold a few bouquets each week and earned very little after the farmer’s cut, especially when factoring in the time I spent traveling back and forth to the store twice every week, exchanging any leftover flowers with a fresh bucket of new arrangements. It became clear very quickly that this was not a sustainable business model for my flower farm.
That said, the experience advanced my flower farming journey in several important ways. First, it gave me exposure. The farm store owner was a gifted salesman, and he clearly talked up my flowers to his customers. My first event orders were thanks to him, for a birthday, and then a graduation party. He also gave me plenty of space and encouragement to include signage and other branding alongside my flowers. That was critical. Without my farm’s name, story, or visuals displayed, customers would have assumed the flowers were grown by the store owner, or they would have had to ask questions to find out. Instead, that little corner of the shop became a mini-billboard for my farm, helping me start to build both brand awareness and a loyal customer base.
It also boosted my knowledge, and with that, my confidence. The process of creating the bouquets helped me understand the time requirements, ingredient combinations, and mechanics of building attractive mixed bouquets. It was nice to learn those lessons on a small scale, before committing to larger endeavors. It also helped me understand what customers liked – and what never seemed to sell.
Consignment may not have been a long-term strategy for me, but it was a valuable step in building brand recognition with shoppers and developing my skills. After just a month or so, I decided to make my next leap, into farmers markets.
Could Consignment Be a Good Fit for You?
Consignment might not be a big money-maker, and it definitely puts most of the risk and effort on you rather than the retailer. But it can be a smart way to test the waters, especially if you’re just starting out with a small amount of product and want to see how customers respond. It’s also a low-barrier way to build local visibility and gain real-world feedback on your bouquets and pricing.
Want more guidance? The Revenue Stream Compass™ will help you decide whether consignment belongs in your sales mix—or if other revenue streams could be a better fit for your goals, strengths, and personality. Get on the waiting list for the Revenue Streams Compass™ now and be first in line for the strategies, worksheets, and insights that can help you make smart, profitable choices for your flower business.
Next up in this series: my experiences selling to wholesale florists—where blush is never just pink, timing is everything, and meeting exacting standards is the key to building trust.
Want to skip the guesswork and find the revenue streams that truly fit your farm?
Join the waiting list for the Revenue Stream Compass™ here ⬇️