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MEETING MINUTES
Friday, January 30,
2009
Volume 16; Issue 4
Treasurer Report
The quarterly dues
billing was e-mailed on 12/1. THEY ARE NOW
PAST DUE! Please contact
Melissa Matthews if you
do not receive your e-invoice.
Location Change
Why are we here today?
The new manager at Dobson Ranch called Chris on Wednesday to
tell him that the price of our breakfast was doubling and
they were going to start charging us a $250 room fee,
effective immediately. The board will talk to TC
Eggington about their willingness to take us every week.
The board is open to other suggestions. We will plan
on meeting here next week.
Temporary Solutions to Help Members
These are tough economic times and members' have expressed
concerns about paying dues. The board has been
considering different ideas to help with the situation.
One suggestion was to temporarily change the format of
meetings to coffee, juice and donuts. Members would
need to eat breakfast on their own before or after the
meeting. This would enable us to lower dues, at least
until the economic forecast brightens a little bit.
Another suggestion, to make it easier to continue to bring
in new members, is to suspend the $150 initiation fee and
only charge for the cost of the picture. Do you have
strong feeling regarding these ideas? Please let a
board member know.
Board Elections
We will start the nomination process next week.
The schedule is as follows...
February 6 - Nominations
February 13 - Continue Nominations
February 20 - Speeches
February 27 - Elections
March 6 - New Board Begins
Chris Curran encourages members to
consider joining the board. The terms run 18 months.
The board typically meets once a month. The commitment
is what you make it.
Question of the Day
What do you pay in credit card fees?
- I found it is around 2% of sales
- American Express is 2.7%
- 1.5%
- We purchased the equipment - don't
recommend it
- They gave me my equipment
- It is such a changing industry and
they all lie about each other.
- A local tire company stopped taking
American Express because they raised rates to over 4%.
- We do ours through Costco and it
somewhere around 1.5% and we rent the terminal.
- It cost me about $10K to install
upgrades but we have nice rates.
- There are a lot of issues coming up
with credit card security these days. If your
employee steals credit card information because you
didn't secure it, the initial fine is $150K and it get
worse. You basically are put out of business.
- The consumer has always had the
power.
- The rules have recently changed to
allow attorneys to accept credit card payments.
- We don't take credit cards but we use
credit cards a lot. We recently had our line
reduced, not because our company isn't strong, but
because our industry is weak.
Main Speaker - Jana Greene
I'm a California girl! I had a starter
marriage out of college. I was together with my second husband
25 years until he passed away. It was a crisis that MABE
helped me with. One of the benefits of membership.
My first job was as a phone answering
operator. I sucked at it. It was the only job I
was fired from. I then went to work for a
community newspaper (my major was in journalism). I
didn't enjoy it. Believe it or not, I used to be shy
and didn't like asking people questions. Being a
florist was a good fit for me. You are on my turf!
I dread Valentine's Day! It is the
worst day of the year for a florist. You are dealing
with thousands of roses. Your hands are shredded from
thorns. And you are dealing with desperate, horny
people.
People think we stick it to the public on
Valentine's Day. Truthfully, we don't make money.
We are paying overtime, extra truck rental fees, etc.
Consider an arrangement that doesn't
include roses. If you are sending flowers out of town,
do it in advance. Know things like the address of
where the flowers should be delivered, the recipients last
name, etc. Try to get as much information as you can.
Due to the economy, I figured my holiday
business would be down considerably. For the first
time ever, my distributor came to me and recommended a lower
preorder percentage. That scared me. They
usually expect you to preorder. But due to the
economy and weather issues, many growers have gone out of
business. The growers still in business are not
budging on prices.
For a florist, the best day of the week
for Valentine's Day is Friday. Saturday is the worst.
Easter used to be the biggest floral holiday of all.
Now Easter is a total non-holiday for us. It is
because you can get Easter Lilies cheaper at the grocery
stores than the florist pay for them. Roses are
getting to be the same way. People just don't care
about quality. My favorite holiday would be Halloween
followed by St. Patrick's Day. It is fun to decorate
the arrangements for those days.
My industry is one of the ways to stay
upbeat and positive. An inexpensive wrap bouquet as an
"Atta boy" will go along way. Saying thank you to some
of your clients is good right now too.
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