Ever have a bad day? Like a really bad day? In 2021, I had a lot of really bad days.

Then I discovered flowers.

Flowers, it turns out, aren’t just for good days. We live in a culture where we receive flowers for the good days—birthdays, graduations, anniversaries. Sometimes, though, it’s the bad days that we need flowers the most. Sometimes we don’t need to receive them but give them to ourselves. This idea is the basis for my floral business.

I had a solid idea, but how do I turn this into a business? I looked at different models, markets, and other floral businesses in my hometown. That’s when I found Kickstarter.

Launching with Kickstarter is way more than just creating a page and pressing “Publish.” It requires a lot of backend work before you decide to launch your campaign.

If you’ve ever considered crowdsourcing for your floral business, here are some tips on how you can be successful at reaching your goals.

How Kickstarter Works

Kickstarter is a crowdsourcing platform that allows people to invest in creative companies, ideas, and products.

When launching a Kickstarter campaign for your business, you’ll fill out some personal information, tell your story, put in some payment details, and your page will either be approved or denied based on your idea.

Creative ideas for products or companies with a lot of backend work are more likely to be approved than those who throw together a campaign in an afternoon.

Kickstarter is not a GoFundMe for businesses. It’s a platform for real investors to invest dollars into companies and ideas with a promise of return on their investment.

However, the one important caveat is that you will only receive your investment funds if you meet your entire goal. You will not receive partial funds. So, it’s essential to have a solid idea and meet all the requirements of an excellent campaign.

Kickstarter also offers a rewards platform, which gives investors a chance to sample products and become a part of your creative process. The higher the investment, the larger the reward.

Tangible rewards are great, but rewards such as experiences or chances to be involved in a part of your company are exciting for investors. Knowing the ins and outs of Kickstarter should be the first tool in your toolbox to launch your campaign.

Start with a Solid Floral Business Idea

Start with a solid idea for your launch. Know your business personality and brand. Investors on Kickstarter want to see and know who you are with one click. What’s your brand like? Who is your target market? What kind of work are you looking to do? Know this fundamentally before you take any other steps.

Have a business idea that is full of personality. Is your target market customers like yourself? Someone else? What kind of design are you looking to do? If you’re looking to do wedding work, incorporate that into the personality of your business. If you’re only looking to do personals, make sure that’s clear to your customers from the get-go.

When it comes to investors, convey a solid idea, strong personality, and your research into a substantial target market in the first 150 words of your Kickstarter page.

Make sure you’re clear on who your business is and what it represents before you post.

Scope Out Your Business (Start Small)

Are you just launching your business? The scope is everything!

When selecting your business model, remember to start small. If you’re using a platform like Kickstarter to launch your business, most of us start from the bottom.

Scope out your business potential when selecting your business model. Do you have the ability to open a storefront? Are you going to be working out of your home and selling on Etsy or Instagram? Keep your scope reasonable so that you can keep your cost analysis and pricing as accurate as possible for investors.

Starting small gives you the advantage to keep your investment ask as low as possible, which provides you with a more significant likelihood of reaching your Kickstarter goal.

Create a Business Plan for your Kickstarter Launch

Here comes the hard part. Creating your business plan can be a challenging but necessary process. (But it can also be really fun!)

Here’s what you will want to include: 

• Executive Summary: A short primer outlining the details of your business

• Company Description: A description of what your company does and how it stands out amongst the competition

• Market Analysis: An analysis of the existing market in your area and how you plan to position yourself within it

• Organization Management: How will your company be organized? How many people are you planning to employ, and what will their responsibilities be?

• Product and Service: A detailed dive into what products and services you will provide

• Marketing: What is your proposed marketing plan? (For example, will you use social media, traditional media, or a combination of both?)

• Funding Request: A detailed look at funding needs

• Financial Projections: What is your expected income from the business? Projections are crucial to investors.

• Appendix: Any clarifying documents, supporting information, and notes.

It’s not recommend that you post your entire business plan to your Kickstarter page, but you should have it on hand and ready to present to investors if they request to see it. So make sure it’s in presentable shape and ready to share!

Define Your Business Mission and Core Values

Every business needs a mission statement. A good mission statement defines your company’s purpose, audience, and core values.

Look for examples of excellent mission statements from companies you connect with when crafting your own.

Do Your Research

Research is critical to your campaign and developing your initial business plan. You need to research your local market, the potential for investors, the best rewards structure to offer, your potential business model, scoping out your business, and the hows and whats of pricing out your resources.

Tell Your Flower Story on Kickstarter

This is the fun part of your campaign. You now have the opportunity to tell your own story. How did your start? Where did the idea for your business originate? What kind of floral techniques and designs are you specializing in or most skilled at? Be specific!

Telling your story on Kickstarter should include the following:

• Strategically placed, high-resolution photos of your work

• A video introducing yourself and your business

• High-resolution graphics illustrating break-downs of pricing and rewards.

Use images to help tell your story, but don’t overdo it. Make sure your page is pleasing to the eye. If you need help, consult with someone who works in graphic design.

Price Out Your Needs for Investors

This is where the benefit of your research comes in. Pricing out precisely what you need for your campaign helps investors understand where their money is going. This also creates transparency in your campaign.

No resource is too small to price out. Need that bucket of Quick Dip? A pack of bouquet wrap? Five-gallon buckets? These things are small, but they are a part of your budget, so make sure to price them out for transparency.

Create a Rewards Structure

Rewards are everything on Kickstarter. They aren’t just fun prizes investors get at the end of a campaign.

Instead, rewards are the introduction to the price level that investors can begin investing at. Therefore, it’s essential to understand your rewards structure, rewards type, price levels, and rewards timelines.

Rewards are offered as an incentive to investors to invest in your campaign. A well-thought-out rewards structure is a crucial part of your campaign. This brings together your market research, your knowledge of your target audience, and your understanding of your potential investors.

Here are a few things to think through before creating your rewards structure:

Brainstorm rewards

It’s good to have a mix of rewards and reward types on the table before you select your rewards.

Create an investor profile

• What does your ideal investor look like?

• What drives them to invest?

• What kind of reward would they be most interested in?

Create a customer profile

• On Kickstarter, your investors are also potential customers.

• What kind of product is your customer interested in purchasing?

• What would be an exciting/enjoyable experience for your customer to be a part of?

Once you have brainstormed your rewards, created an investor profile, and made a customer profile, your next step is to set up your rewards structure.

Step 1: Tangible, Virtual, and Experiential Rewards

Kickstarter can offer three different types of rewards: tangible, virtual, and experiential.

Tangible rewards are things such as t-shirts and stickers.

Virtual rewards are received via the internet and could be something like a digital album.

Finally, experiential rewards allow investors to become a part of a business process, offer a service or experience to the investor, or enable them to become a part of a company’s creative process.

Choose which category your rewards fit into best. Each reward type has specific parameters to meet to fulfill commitments made to investors.

Tangible

• Requires acquiring a physical item

• Requires packing and shipping

• Requires filling orders by a specified date

• Requires personal investment up-front

Virtual

• Requires providing virtual product

• Requires filling orders by a specified date

• May need personal investment up-front

Experiential

• Requires providing an experience/involves investors in creative decisions

• Requires filling orders by a specified date

• May require a personal investment upfront

• Requires business/investor interaction

Step 2: Price Out Rewards

The next step is to price out your rewards for investors. Since this dictates the level of dollars they’ll invest in, you’ll want to price out your rewards accordingly.

Asking too much or too little for a reward could send an investor packing. When setting up your pricing structure, make sure you’re referring back to your investor and customer profiles.

To set up your pricing structure:

• Start small. What is the lowest level of investment you’re willing to offer in conjunction with your lowest level of reward? $10? $25? If, for instance, you are selling a sticker, you have to take into account what it costs to print the sticker, have the sticker shipped to you, then send the sticker out to your investor. Knowing this, what is the lowest amount of investment you’re willing to accept for a sticker? You might initially think “$10,” but when you price it out, $10 doesn’t leave you with much at the end of the day.

• Build-in rewards costs as part of your campaign pricing. How will you pay for your rewards? Build-in costs as part of your campaign! This is done with virtually all product launches on Kickstarter and businesses. When pricing out your business needs, do not forget to include rewards costs.

• Think big. What is the most significant opportunity for the investment you offer, meaning, what is your highest reward? Use caution when offering tangible rewards as your highest offering if you are not launching a product. Realistically, in the floristry industry, no investor will pay $2,500 for a bouquet, but they may pay $5,000 or more for you to do flowers for their wedding. These are both experiential AND tangible offerings. However, you’ll have to track that in your pricing and make sure you can offer $5,000 in wedding services before you commit to such a project.

Step 3: Create Timelines

Rewards timelines are perhaps some of the biggest downfalls of successful Kickstarter campaigns.

A campaign gets funded, and a product is launched, but investors have to wait months or even years past their initial promised reward window to reap the benefits of their investment.

Think of timelines based on the type of your reward:

Tangible

• Requires production and shipping

• It may need a longer timeline

Virtual

• Requires quick access to a product

• Requires a short timeline for investors

Experiential

• Requires business/investor interaction

• May require and shorter or longer timeline due to scheduling

• May involve tangible rewards

Stacking Rewards

Most Kickstarters will stack rewards. If an investor invests at one level, they will receive their reward and all the rewards at the level below them.

If you plan on providing anything tangible, you must consider this when planning and pricing out your rewards.

If you plan to stack your rewards, as most campaigns do, you must keep in mind that you will need to fulfill all your rewards within the same timeline.

Edit, Edit, Edit!

Most of us don’t take this seriously enough, but your Kickstarter should never see the light of day until it has gone through hundreds of editing sessions.

You don’t just want to once-over your campaign for typos or run your page through Word. You’re not only editing for simple mistakes, but you’re editing for content, for flow, clarity, and redundancy.

Are you concise with your ideas? Are you telling your story well? Is there too much story and not enough business?

Get fifty pairs of eyes to take a look and tell you what they think. Fifty different opinions will go a long way in telling you what people first think when they land on your campaign page.

If you’re stuck on things such as spelling and grammar, programs like Grammarly are great for making you sound like you got your Ph.D. in English.

Evaluate Risk Before Your Launch

What are the risks and challenges that your business presents to your investors?

This is where you need to get honest with yourself and take an inventory of all the potential risks of opening a small business in your particular market in your specific area.

Start by looking at specific risks of all small businesses: What percentage of small businesses succeed within the first year of operations? You can go to your local Small Business Administration or Chamber of Commerce websites to find these statistics and more.

Then think about risks that are relative to the floral industry. For example, the supply chain is one. The floral industry sometimes experiences supply chain difficulties causing fresh flowers to be in short supply. These are the kinds of risks that are unique to the floral industry.

Finally, you’ll want to think of risks that are unique to you as a person. Are you a first-time business owner? Are you an inexperienced florist? What should investors know before pulling the trigger?

When it comes to challenges, evaluate them much as you would with risks. Think about them in a general sense, in an industry sense, and a personal sense. What challenges can you expect to face as you start up a business? This is another good use of statistics.

Next, what are some current challenges for florists in your area? It may be a good idea to talk to other people in the flower community in your town to find out the answer to this question. Finally, what are some personal challenges for you? These are all important to note.

Don’t Push Publish on Your Kickstarter Campaign …Yet

The most important thing to remember is not to launch your campaign until you are 100% ready.

This article has gone through a lot of information, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg where Kickstarter is concerned.

You’ll want to do as much research as possible, be firm in your business plans and ideas, and ensure that Kickstarter is the right platform for you. Crowdsourcing isn’t for everyone, and it’s a non-traditional way of funding a floral business.

We’re used to dealing with storefronts or, more recently, Etsy shops. But Kickstarter is a whole different beast. Give yourself the time you and your campaign deserve to make something great and worthwhile before you press that publish button.

You’ll thank yourself for it later. And don’t forget: You have to get past those Kickstarter gremlins before they publish your page, so a good, solid, reputable foundation is the best jumping-off point you can give yourself.