Consignment, How To

[wellmowmedown]

I liked KL Wisconsin's idea about selling flower baskets on Mother's Day as a fund raiser. I have absolutely NO business sense. How do you get baskets on consignment from the local nursery? In detail, how does this work?

[KL Wisconsin]

Hope this explains the steps we used.

We called wholesale nurseries until we found one who would supply us with hanging flower baskets. Many wholesale nurseries would sell us the baskets outright, but only one in this area would do it on a consignment basis. We guaranteed that we would return unsold ones the same afternoon in good, saleable condition. We generally sell between 250-350 baskets depending on weather, etc., and suppliers like those kinds of numbers. We did deal with one nursery who negotiated with us that we could return unsold stock provided we guaranteed that we would purchase a minimum of 75% of the stock we took out. We figured in the worst case, we could extend our sale to another day if we ended up with a lot of plants.

We supply our own trucks for transporting the plants and set up the trucks outside grocery stores where we'd made prior arrangements.

The scouts each bring a jug of water and sprinkling can to keep the plants in good shape during the sale. If weather is good, we take most of the baskets out of the truck and have them on display for passersby. If it is too cool or too windy, we keep the plants on the truck and the boys bring the baskets to the back of the truck as customers appear asking for type of flowers, or color, etc. We have lost some baskets to size 12 feet tripping over them, but generally the boys are very careful with their stock.

In advance of the sale, the scouts place flyers in shop windows and have made large sandwich board signs which we use annually.

If you need more specifics, leave your email address and I will try to answer you personally.