Professional Florist Magazine Launches

Professional Florist and Professionalflorist.co.uk is a multiple-channel brand created to serve and support the two billion pound British flower,houseplant and florist giftware industry.

The market has never experienced so much change and so many challenges as it has over the past 12 months. The worst recession in a generation has forced many florists to close, and squeezed profit margins across independents, freelancers, relays, wholesalers, nurseries and other suppliers.

High street florists are under pressure from supermarkets, the internet and myriad non-specialist retailers fighting for a share of the £2.2 billion market, according to Mintel International research.

But challenges do not affect all businesses equally. Those that have embraced new technology; specialised in lucrative niches; developed innovative sales and marketing techniques; and forged unbreakable relationships with customers and suppliers have continued to seize market share and grow their companies.

Weat Professional Florist believe that these new challenges and opportunities make it more important than ever for everybody in the industry to be as informed and educated as possible.

We believe it is time for the 5000 professionals that shape the industry to come together so that they can speak to each other – one-to-one or one-to-many. We believe that information is power, and power is profit in this incredibly competitive world, and it is no longer enough to wait a month or more for a magazine to drop through the letterbox with industry news.

Professional Florist will speak to the expert community of florists every day via the professionalflorist.co.uk web site that you have discovered today.

The web site will include instantly updated industry news; picture galleries of the latest events, flowers, plants, products and services; videos that demonstrate contemporary floristry techniques; a calendar of events; the latest jobs across the country; and expert comment from peers within the florist community.

We love the immediacy of the web. We love the fact that we can cover all of the news all of the time. We love being able to send you news alerts by e-mail so that you never miss an important story. We love its ability to reach across national borders to connect British florists to the rest of the world.

But we also love magazines and know our readers and advertisers do too. So, every month Professional Florist magazine will digest and analyse the news and events that have led the online agenda into a permanent record of each month. The stylish magazine is a perfect environment to present the beauty of the floristry business through both editorial and advertising.

Working step-in-step with each other, the Professional Florist magazine and web site have positioned themselves at the heart of this vibrant and stimulating market. This is why the British Florist Association, with over 3000 members, has chosen to officially support our brand.

This is a brand new, multiple-media, multi-channel brand for a modernising global industry. Above all, Professional Florist is a community where the more you put in, the more you will get out. We hope to see you contributing regularly by voting in spot polls and surveys, commenting on stories or even writing full blown editorial pieces.

Please keep in touch and let us know your thoughts at all times. E-mail the editor at rhys.timson@itp.com or the commercial director at angie.beckett@itp.com.