[Hua11.com Original] The first article about partnership is here: [Hua11.com · Flower Shop Risk Defense Series 1] Are you sure about partnering? Someone wants to invest in your flower shop. Too good to be true?

As more and more aspiring Hua11.com students emerge, many of them want to open a flower shop or studio. Among them, a common scenario is partnering with another florist friend (possibly also a Hua11.com student) to open a flower shop/studio. The idea is simple: two trustworthy friends can save on investment, reduce risk, and support each other, making the work less tiring.

This idea is great! However, in our opinion, this is a very basic form of cooperation. There are some points we need to remind you of, otherwise, there may be problems later in the partnership. Here we try to highlight these easily overlooked issues through a story.

1. Discover the problem

Let's assume that Little A and Little B, who are both florists, are good friends. They have partnered to open a flower shop, each holding 50% of the shares. They also agreed that everyone has made efforts and should have a salary. So each person gets 3,000 yuan per month as salary (salary is an item of the store's expenditure).

Now let's simulate a scene from receiving an order, to production, and to after-sales service:

"Customer Xiao Wang is Little A's friend. Xiao Wang learned through Little A's social media that Little A is running a flower shop. Coincidentally, Xiao Wang needs to buy a bouquet of flowers for his girlfriend's birthday, so Xiao Wang directly went to the flower shop to find Little A to buy flowers. Little A received him warmly and made this bouquet of flowers on the spot according to Xiao Wang's needs and budget. Because Xiao Wang is Little A's friend, Little A also gave him a 10% discount. Within the following week, Xiao Wang also consulted Little A many times on how to keep the bouquet fresh and how to make dried flowers, etc. Little A answered patiently and Xiao Wang was very satisfied with their service."

The above is a very ordinary daily routine of a flower shop owner. But did you notice while reading the article that in this scene, Little B, Little A's partner, never appeared from beginning to end? That is to say, from receiving the order to production to after-sales, Little A handled it all by herself. So from Little A's perspective, what is the role of Little B? It can be said that it is of no use at all. : ) However, since Little B is a partner and holds 50% of the share, she should get 50% of the profit of this order. To be more extreme, if Little B never shows up, theoretically, she only loses the 3,000 yuan given as salary but can still get 50% of all the profits.

If you were Little A, then facing such an irresponsible partner like Little B, you might be angry? If you were Little B, having such a capable partner like Little A, you might secretly feel good? This is where the problem lies.

The formulation of the partnership system should fundamentally not have such a serious loophole. If you take the partnership seriously, this system must be able to adapt to most situations. Both sides of the system formulation need to deliberate on various situations and then find and fill the loopholes until this partnership system can satisfy both sides and be within expectations. Instead of having situations that make partners "angry" or "secretly feel good", which are beyond expectations.

2. Solve the problem

After careful deliberation, we can find that the biggest problem of these two florist friends partnering to open a flower shop is that they did not make the distribution system well in advance but very generally used "Each person gets 3,000 yuan per month as salary income" to deal with it. Now that we have found the root of the problem, let's start with improving this system. First and foremost, we change the fixed salary system to any of the following forms:

- Low fixed salary + high commission

- Pure commission

For example, we take 30% of each order's sales as personal commission (this ratio is only for example. It needs to be analyzed based on specific circumstances or determined after trial and error). Why is it sales rather than net profit? This is because it is convenient for calculation. The system needs to be simple, easy to operate to last long.

However, this 30% is not necessarily given to the same person. It depends on the situation. Because when an order is completed, it involves three parts: sales, floral creation, and after-sales service. Here we simply divide these three parts equally, each accounting for 1/3, that is, each part accounts for 10% of the order's sales (If you or your partner think that one of the parts should not be 1/3, then you need to give specific evidence or reasons. This is also part of the system deliberation process to make the distribution more and more reasonable). Finally, whoever is responsible for which part can get the commission for this part. Settlement is made on the same day or the next day.

The remaining 70% of the order will be put into the common account as the store's income. From the funds in the common account, after deducting the operating costs of the current month, a part is taken out for dividend distribution according to the partnership ratio of everyone, and another part can be used as development funds (Here you can refer to another article [Hua11.com · Flower Shop Startup Series 3] Discover the 'rolling' internal investment strategy for your flower shop or floral studio).

After the system is modified, another distribution problem will be involved: Since there is a commission, will the two partners compete for orders? Competing to receive orders, competing to produce, competing to do after-sales... This is to some extent a good thing, bringing out everyone's enthusiasm. But we still have to continue to improve. For fairness, we can adopt the method of taking turns to receive orders. Here are two methods.

Method 1:

Take turns to receive guests. When a guest enters the store, Little A receives first and takes the priority to follow up the subsequent services, including the production after the transaction and after-sales. Then the next guest is received by Little B. And so on.

Method 2:

Adopt the shift system. Everyone comes to work at a fixed time. To avoid the situation where the business is particularly good in a certain period of time and the business is not so good in other periods of time, resulting in unfair distribution, the shift time can be changed once a week. All the performances of the current shift belong to the person on duty.

3. Summary

The above is the specific solution we provided for the topic of "Two florists partnering." However, it needs to be noted that this is a relatively theoretical solution and may require more in-depth testing to be fully validated.

We are not very optimistic about this form of partnership, as it may present more problems. The partners of Hua11.com complement each other in ability and resources, and the operation structure is stable and effective. Therefore, we have not needed to practice the situation described in this article. Thus, this solution is for reference only.

The partnership method we recommend is the combination of "Full-time marketer + florist" mentioned in another article [Hua11.com · Marketing Pro Series 1] Avoid selling. Of course, it is relatively difficult to find a suitable partner in this way. Alternatively, both people can act as pure investors (not involved in specific operational affairs) and then adopt the form of "salary + commission" to hire a florist externally.

Another option is to cooperate first rather than partner immediately (i.e., one person invests and hires the other). This allows both parties to see if they are suitable for partnership. This requires careful consideration of all aspects before making a decision.

Returning to the story at the beginning, there is another detail: partner Little A voluntarily gave a 10% discount to Xiao Wang (without informing the other partner, Little B, in advance). This, strictly speaking, is also a system loophole. Can you come up with an expected and controllable solution?

Copyright Statement:

This article is an original creation by Hua11.com and is included in the “How to Run a Flower Shop and Floral Studio” Ebook. The content of this article may be periodically updated and is initially published on the Hua11.com official website blog. You can find the article at this link: https://hua11.com/blog/4683.html.

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