Business continues to flower for Palmer

FORT COLLINS – Spiro Palmer estimates an average week at Palmer Flowers & Decorating Gallery requires about 1,500 staff hours to operate the business.

In the week leading up to Mothers Day earlier this month, with the help of temporary workers, that figure nearly tripled.

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It’s a rumor that Spiro Palmer was there for every one of those hours.

Just a three weeks earlier Palmer was feted in New Orleans as the 2005 National Retail Florist of the Year. But in the critical days leading up to the biggest day of the year for florists, Palmer was on the floor and answering customer service calls.

“You drop by on the weekend, you drop by in the morning, he’s there a lot,´ said Gerard Nalezny, a Palmer friend and president of the Fort Collins Bank of Commerce. “That matters. It matters in a locally owned business. People want to see the owner when they go to Palmer Flowers. More times than not you can see the owner.”

Palmer, a Greek immigrant who has built the region’s largest flower store – annual sales are about $3 million – was picked from among 25,000 eligible retail florists in the United States and Canada for the national award. The National Florist of the Year program assesses business practices, employee training, community involvement and marketing investments that advance the floral industry.

The record would show that Palmer has certainly advanced his business since he and his wife Angela opened a 1,000-square-foot shop in downtown Fort Collins in 1976.

Risky business

Palmer Flowers outgrew the downtown shop by 1982 and made a bold leap to build a 10,000-square-foot shop on College Avenue south of Horsetooth Road, which was nearly at the southern end of the city at the time.

“We took some big risks,” Palmer acknowledged.

One risk was timing. Colorado was entering a recession, but Palmer pressed on.

“We had to borrow money to build this big building,” he recalled. “Everybody was turning me down.”

The risk paid off. Fort Collins continued to grow, and then boomed in the early 1990s. Now the Palmer shop sits roughly in the middle of the city.

By the late 1990s Palmer rolled the dice again, this time with the opening of the Palmer Design Center, a retail center one block east of College that included his new Palmer Decorating Gallery.

In 2000 Palmer started a floral design school, from which about 160 students have graduated as certified floral designers, while others have attended for less intensive training. The school is one of two floral programs in the state that is eligible for state workforce funding.

The Palmer school has trained some of his own workers, but also some of his competitors.

“I’d rather have good competitors than bad competitors,” Palmer said.

Palmer’s diversification has helped to boost business. For instance, about one-third of the company’s sales now comes from accessories for interior decorations. Artwork, tables, mirrors are some of the top sellers, largely to customers who want to appoint new homes.

Palmer’s latest risk was to leave his 3700 S. College Ave. store with frontage that would make other retailers salivate. He’s consolidated the floral operation with the decorating gallery into a single 25,000-square-foot store at 3710 Mitchell Drive, which Palmer said is more efficient.

“We’re able to control certain costs better,” he said.

Inventory is concentrated in one location, designers are more productive, and he can cross-train sales staff to work in both the floral and decorations sides of the business.

“He’s a strategic guy,” Nalezny said of Palmer’s latest move. “He’s always looking ahead. It’s indicative of what’s made him successful.”

The new facility could accommodate a doubling of business, Palmer said, which he hopes to accomplish within seven years.

The old building has been remodeled and leased to Fort Collins Bank of Commerce, for which Palmer also serves on the board of directors.

The first full year after the consolidation brought slow growth – sales increased last year about 3 percent. But the current year seems promising.

“Our goal is to be up between 8 to 10 percent,” Palmer said.

Honor roll

The retail flower business is tricky proposition for a business owner. About half of the year’s sales are concentrated around a handful of holidays, such as Christmas, Mother’s Day, Easter, Valentine’s Day and Thanksgiving.

Like any florist, Palmer hires temporary help to get through the holiday rushes. But he also keeps his regular employees busy during slow times.

“We start working on Christmas in June and July – pricing, inventory production,” he said.

Palmer thrives at a time when the number of retail florists is shrinking – due in part to competition from grocery stores and the Internet. Nationwide, florists declined from 25,617 in 1998 to 23,094 by 2002, a 10 percent decline. In Colorado, numbers were 8 percent in that same time frame.

Palmer’s approach to doing business captured the attention of Van’s Wholesale Floral Products in Denver, which nominated him for the 2005 National Retail Florist of the Year.

 “I have serviced hundreds of retail florists over the years, but never one quite like Palmer Flowers,´ said Harold Garbe, general manager for Vans Floral. He lauded Palmer as one who “does not ask anyone to do anything that he does not do himself.”

Garbe recalled an encounter with Palmer at his warehouse that made a lasting impression.

“I was in quite early – around 5 a.m. – and I was cleaning the cut-flower processing area when in comes Spiro and without any hesitation, he grabbed a broom and helped me clean.”

Florists’ Review Magazine will highlight Palmer Flowers in its June issue.

That sounds like a good month for Palmer to kick back and read the story – if he can pause from Christmas preparations.