"New Covent Garden Flower Market led the way on the first ever National Florist Day on June 8th as more than 1,000 florists across the country got involved."
According to New Covent Garden Market, the Flower Market was among the patrons of this inaugural celebration of the florist industry and a series of Flower Demonstrations in the Market causes quite the stir on social media.
Five florists, all long-time customers at NCGM, took it in turns to demonstrate their skills to a live audience, hosted by NFD organiser Caroline Marshall-Foster. Elaine of Pesh Flowers, Ahmed of Paul Thomas Flowers, Warren of London Event Florist, Alan of Hybrid Flowers and Simon of Simon Lycett created a variety of floral designs while also providing expert commentary liberally punctuated with positive and supportive comments about the Flower Market.
"The event was live-streamed and watched by no fewer than 1,490 people – not bad at all between 6am and 9am on a Saturday morning. The real measurement though is the reel that was posted as soon as the live stream finished. That has so far been played 31,600 times, with a total watch time of 175 hours. The average watch time was 1 minute and 10 seconds - the instagram average is 7-15 seconds - and, of course, lots of people watched for a lot longer."
If you haven't seen the livestream, it is still available in its entirety on the @marketflowers feed.
New Covent Garden Market states that the National Florist Day activity reached 11,500 accounts and got 36,500 impressions. The Flower Market was been mentioned in well over 100 stories on other insta accounts and, interestingly more than 1,200 visits to the @marketflowers feed were registered in the last week from people who had searched for the Flower Market through Google and other search engines. That's a huge uplift.
"For all of the patrons who co-funded the project, it was a unique opportunity to interact in a totally different way with their customers both current and future. We were able to engage and connect with the industry in a way that not only showed our support for the industry as a whole but generated interest in the market and made us part of the whole buzz and feelgood factor."
Creating that feelgood factor was one of the key reasons the event was launched, said founder and host Caroline Marshall-Foster, pictured below. She explained: "The last couple of years have been challenging. We've had to deal with rising costs, flat sales, increased competition, staff shortages … all things that have dented confidence and added to the pressures. I wanted to create a buzz, generate a sense of pride and, under an official banner, enable everyone to show off just how wonderful the flower industry is and how it touches every part of life. That's why I set myself and the project three goals. To create Pride, Awareness and Sales.
"Having seen the interaction, the camaraderie, the friendships formed, and the support given, coupled with the amazing feedback and astonishing reach, we clearly achieved all three in a way I never thought possible for year one."
New Covent Garden Market