2026
CHRISTMAS SUCCESS GUIDE TREND REPORTS
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ASK A FLORIST
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TELEFLORA’S EVERGREEN GLOW BOUQUET T26X600
TOP 10 BEST SELLERS
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FLO R I S T FE AT U R E
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OCTOBER
CALENDAR
03 STANDING ORDERS Now is the perfect time to lock in next year’s flower prices! Sign up for standing order shipments on Flowerbuyer.com today.
12 THANKSGIVING (CANADA) 16 OPEN MARKET Holiday seasonal products and colors are available on Flowerbuyer.com via Open Market. 27 BUY THE BUNCH Need fewer stems? Order using Flowerbuyer’s Buy the Bunch program to customize your own box and get exactly what you need.
NOVEMBER 04 FLOWERBUYER CHRISTMAS AUCTIONS Additional Christmas holiday auctions are underway! Join us five days a week at 2 p.m. ET to secure your favorite holiday florals.
06 AUTOBID Place your Autobids on Flowerbuyer.com to automatically bid on a great selection of quality holiday products at the prices you choose.
18 PROJECTED BEST SELLERS Finalize your lineup. See Teleflora’s projected best sellers on page 8. 26 THANKSGIVING (U.S.)
DECEMBER 01 CHRISTMAS TEMPS Confirm Christmas temperatures and delivery drivers. 09 CHRISTMAS SKUs Upload Christmas SKUs on your eFlorist site. 15 OVERNIGHT Order last-minute flowers with Flowerbuyer’s Overnight service to complete your Christmas bouquets. 23 FLOWERBUYER VALENTINE’S AUCTIONS Additional holiday auctions are underway for Valentine’s Day! Join us five days a week at 2 p.m. ET to source your favorite holiday florals.
25 MERRY CHRISTMAS 31 NEW YEAR’S EVE
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CONTENTS 04
TREND REPORTS Merchandising Ideas for Fall and Christmas
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BEST SELLERS Christmas 2026 Projected Best Sellers
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ASK A FLORIST Art Conforti
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FLORIST FEATURE Surroundings Events and Floral
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NEW FROM EFLORIST Message Manager
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FALL TREND REPORTS BOUNTIFUL BEAUTY
Teleflora’s Rustic Ember Centerpiece T26T100
MERCHANDISING TIP: Bringing earthy tones indoors, this centerpiece embodies the changing of seasons. Complete the look with gold brushed serveware and textured linens to add rustic charm to your fall table.
EARTHY & ELEGANT
Teleflora’s Modern Sage Bouquet T26T200
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2026 CHRISTMAS SUCCESS GUIDE
MERCHANDISING TIP: With a mix of autumn’s best colors, this bouquet brings comfort and elegance. Best paired with a lovely card or warm accent pieces, this pitcher can be used to bring autumn colors to any setting.
ENCHANTING EMBER
Teleflora’s Amber Glow Bouquet T26T300
MERCHANDISING TIP: With deep shades of orange and a bit of rich greenery, this bouquet brings effortless beauty. Create a stylish space by pairing this stunning container with a few books and a candle.
SPOOKY & SPIRITED
Teleflora’s Haunted Harvest Bouquet T26H400
MERCHANDISING TIP: Presenting vibrant seasonal hues, this container offers a hauntingly beautiful arrangement. A lively addition to any accent table, it can be paired with mini pumpkins and fall leaves to achieve a playful, spooky vibe! 5
CHRISTMAS TREND REPORTS HOLLY & BRIGHT
Teleflora’s Holly Season Centerpiece T26X100
MERCHANDISING TIP: Celebrate with a centerpiece that blends festive reds and greens to bring endless joy! Make your table statement complete with linens and gold accents to bring this season to life.
ALL SPRUCED UP
Teleflora’s Woodland Cardinal Bouquet T26X200
MERCHANDISING TIP: Holiday season is taking flight, led by our wonderful cardinal container. Place this arrangement on a shelf with a holiday card to send season’s greetings.
TIMELESS TIDINGS
Thomas Kinkade’s Charming Sleigh Bouquet T26X700
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2026 CHRISTMAS SUCCESS GUIDE
MERCHANDISING TIP: This bouquet evokes joy through it’s old-fashioned, timeless scene. Bring cheer to your mantle by styling it with seasonal garlands and family photos for a heartwarming display.
SEASONAL SPLENDOR
Teleflora’s Silver Sparkle Bouquet T26X400
MERCHANDISING TIP: A dazzling display of red roses and cheer, this ornament container brings true holiday spirit. Decorate this sparkling piece alongside some tea light candles for a display that shines!
YULETIDE CHEER
Teleflora’s Send A Hug Frosty Magic Bouquet T26X500
MERCHANDISING TIP: There’s nothing cuter than a frosty friend with a holly jolly smile! Showcase this adorable snowman among whimsical red and white décor for a festive family celebration.
WINTER WOODLAND
Teleflora’s Evergreen Glow Bouquet T26X600
MERCHANDISING TIP: The magic of the holidays is upon us! Find the colors of the season in this gorgeous woodland container. This assortment works perfectly placed among wood-like texture and red décor for some holiday charm. 7
CHRISTMAS 2026 PROJECTED BEST SELLERS
Teleflora’s North Pole Sleigh Bouquet T26X300
Teleflora’s Holly Season Centerpiece T26X100
Teleflora’s Woodland Cardinal Bouquet T26X200
Teleflora’s Evergreen Dreams Tree T26X610
Teleflora’s Silver Sparkle Bouquet T26X400
Teleflora’s Sparkling Wishes Bouquet T25X410
Teleflora’s Frosted Blue Bouquet TWR18-2
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2026 CHRISTMAS SUCCESS GUIDE
Teleflora’s Yuletide Elegance Bouquet TWR18-1
Teleflora’s Send A Hug Frosty Magic Bouquet T26X500
Thomas Kinkade’s Charming Sleigh Bouquet T26X700
FLORAL SUPPLIES: STOCK UP FOR THE CHRISTMAS RUSH WITH FLOWERBUYER Did you know you can easily order your holiday Floral Care & Supplies from Flowerbuyer along with your fresh-cut flowers and Christmas greens? Shop for everything online in one convenient place, helping you save time and make holiday planning easier than ever. Here are some of the Floral Care & Supplies available on Flowerbuyer this holiday season from industry brands like Chrysal and Oasis:
NEW HOLIDAY SUPPLIES AVAILABLE Add festive color, sparkle, and texture to Christmas arrangements, wreaths, and centerpieces with seasonal favorites: FLORAL PAINT – Available in green, red, white, gold, and silver for adding a custom holiday finish to floral designs. PLASTIC-FREE GLITTER SPRAY – Gold, silver, and multicolor options add seasonal sparkle to greenery, branches, wreaths, and more. MACHE WREATHS & WREATH BASES – Start with a ready-to-design foundation and customize it with fresh greenery, flowers, ribbon, ornaments, and other holiday accents.
FLORAL SHOP ESSENTIALS Keep the design room stocked with the supplies you reach for throughout the holiday rush at competitive prices: ASSORTED FLORAL FOAM BRICKS – A versatile staple for supporting and hydrating fresh flowers in centerpieces and arrangements. TRANSPORTER FIVE-TO EIGHT-HOLE BLOCK – Helps keep multiple vases secure and organized during holiday deliveries. FLORAL SOLUTION POWDER – An everyday flower care essential to have on hand for fresh-cut flowers.
Are you are ready to add Floral Care & Supplies to your next Flowerbuyer order? Visit www.flowerbuyer.com or call 877.625.3243 ext. 2 to speak to a sales representative.
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ASK A FLORIST ART CONFORTI
WHAT IS ONE QUICK-WIN TIP FOR A FLOWER SHOP? Start by looking at last December. Pull your sales and orders from the same period last year. Don’t just look at total sales. Look at what you actually sold and what it took to produce those orders. How many arrangements required certain containers? Which flowers did you use the most? Which products sold repeatedly? Were there items you ran short on? Did you have products you could have substituted but didn’t? Then look at staffing. How many people did you need on your busiest days, and when did you have more people than you really needed? Last December already gave you a roadmap for this December. Use it.
WHAT IS ONE OF THE MOST COMMON MISTAKES YOU SEE FLOWER SHOPS MAKE? Not recognizing waste. Use a dump sheet and track what gets thrown away. If you paid for something, the goal should be to sell it, not dump it. When something is thrown away, there should be a reasonable explanation for why. Was too much purchased? Was it improperly rotated? Was it never promoted? Could it have been substituted into another arrangement? Could it have been sold from the floor? One bunch of flowers or one container may not seem important, but multiply those small losses over 365 days. The little things create the big things.
WHEN YOU GREW YOUR SHOP, WHAT HABITS, DECISIONS, OR CHANGES MADE THE BIGGEST DIFFERENCE? Knowing what it cost me to operate my business. Every florist should understand where every sales dollar goes. As a simple example, let’s say payroll is $10,000 per week. If you operate six days, that is approximately $1,667 per day in payroll.
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2026 CHRISTMAS SUCCESS GUIDE
If payroll represents roughly 30% of sales and your flowers and product costs represent another 30%, approximately 60% of your sales are already spoken for. Then you still have rent, marketing, vehicles, fuel, insurance, electricity, technology and all the other expenses involved in operating a flower shop. That is why profitable sales matter so much. Increasing sales without controlling costs doesn’t necessarily improve your business. The objective is to create more profitable transactions. Here are some places I would look: ADD-ONS – Chocolates, balloons, plush, candles, and other add-ons can increase the value of an order without dramatically increasing labor. LEFTOVER CONTAINERS – You may have containers that have already been purchased and expensed. Find creative ways to turn them back into cash. SELL FROM THE FLOOR – Product sitting in your store isn’t making you money. Get it sold. WORD OF MOUTH – A referral from a happy customer is one of the best sales you can get. Give customers a reason to tell other people about you. DESIGNER’S CHOICE – This may be one of the most overlooked opportunities in the flower shop.
TAKE DESIGNER’S CHOICE MORE SERIOUSLY I believe many florists have misunderstood the purpose of Designer’s Choice. Designer’s Choice shouldn’t only be a $100, $125, or $150 arrangement. At those price points, many customers expect choices, and they should have them. Designer’s Choice is especially valuable for the customer who simply wants to buy flowers and trusts the florist to create something beautiful. Why wouldn’t we offer a $25 or even $20 Designer’s Choice for pickup when appropriate? If someone walked into your flower shop with $25 to spend, would you tell them to leave? Of course not. Maybe the designer creates a beautiful wrapped bouquet using flowers already available in the shop. The customer receives value, you make a sale, and product moves instead of potentially becoming waste. If the customer wants it delivered and is willing to pay your delivery charge, that’s another transaction. Make it easy for people to buy flowers from you. The more welcome people feel shopping at the local florist, the more likely they are to come back. Every time we make it difficult to buy at the flower shop, we risk handing another transaction to the supermarket, grocery store, or another competitor. Designer’s Choice was created to capture the customer who says: “I have $30 to spend. Make me something beautiful.” That’s a customer we should want.
THE DECEMBER PROFIT MINDSET December isn’t only about selling more. It’s about planning better, reducing waste, controlling labor, moving inventory, increasing add-ons, and capturing transactions you might otherwise lose. You already paid for the flowers. You already paid for the containers. You already paid for the building. You already scheduled the staff. Now the question becomes:
How many profitable transactions can you create with what you already have?
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FLORIST FEATURE
SURROUNDINGS EVENTS AND FLORAL John Hosek is the owner, CEO, and lead designer at Surroundings Events and Floral, but his career started in a very different industry. An engineer by degree, John worked for Buick Cadillac, where he began creating permanent botanical arrangements as a hobby. “The principles and elements of design are similar whether it’s building a car or a bouquet,” John says. “Line, space, form, pattern, texture, fragrance— all of those principles matter. There is a lot of engineering when it comes to floral design.” Despite his engineering background, flowers had always been part of John’s life. He grew up playing in his parents’ garden and began landscaping when he was 11 or 12 years old. While working at Buick, he started making 20 to 30 arrangements at a time and hosting parties to sell them. The hobby eventually grew into a career. John opened his first flower shop in East Lansing, Michigan, in 1992. Twenty years later, he moved to Verona, Wisconsin, where he grew Surroundings Events and Floral into a full-service flower and event business that also offers furniture, art, landscaping, and plantscaping. After opening his shop, John became involved with the state floral associations and AIFD, where he met designer Betty Lou Barker. That connection eventually led to an opportunity to work on the floral team for the Oscars. “When I started, I got my feet wet,” John recalls. “I wasn’t afraid to wash the buckets and clean the flowers.” John went on to work with the Oscars team for 12 years, even walking the red carpet in a tuxedo. His accomplishments also include winning the Sylvia Cup in 2011, one of the floral industry’s premier design competitions. 12
2026 CHRISTMAS SUCCESS GUIDE
Education has also played an important role throughout John’s floral career. He became a Teleflora florist almost immediately after opening his first shop and credits Teleflora’s commitment to education and working with florists on their businesses as an important part of his growth. He later became a Teleflora Education Specialist himself. John continues to teach the next generation inside Surroundings. The shop has 42 employees, including more than 30 part-time team members, and he regularly hires local high school students to process flowers and clean buckets. Many learn the business and return during college to work as delivery drivers. For John, the best part of the floral business is still seeing the customer’s reaction. He loves transforming an event space and watching a bride see it for the first time, or asking a customer to close their eyes before presenting them with a bouquet. At Christmas, John brings that focus on the customer experience into his shop. Surroundings hosts an annual Christmas open house promoted to an email list of approximately 10,000 customers. The shop has built that list over the years by asking customers who visit the store for their email addresses. Some regulars even come in the week before the open house just to watch the store transform for the holidays. During the open house, customers can enjoy hot cider, mulled wine, and candy while exploring the shop. Surroundings also brands its ribbons, bags, and wrapping paper to keep the shop top of mind after customers leave.
“Little things go a long way,” John says. Whether he is designing for a major event or welcoming customers into Surroundings around the holidays, John wants every visit to be memorable. "I want people to leave here having had an experience." 13
WHY YELP MATTERS MORE THAN EVER Consumers aren’t just searching online anymore, they’re asking AI for recommendations. And when AI tools look for trusted local business information, Yelp is one of the sources they turn to most often. In fact, approximately one in five AI-generated answers cite Yelp, thanks to its combination of trusted business information and authentic customer reviews. For florists, that’s a big opportunity. Yelp continues to be an impactful channel for connecting with customers who are actively looking for flowers and gifts. During this past Mother’s Day, Yelp reported a 40% year-over-year increase in florist searches, helping drive more orders for participating shops. The good news? A few simple profile updates can help your shop stand out. Make sure your business information is current, add fresh photos of your best designs, respond to customer reviews, and update your business description to highlight what makes your shop unique. These enhancements help both consumers and AI platforms better understand your business. Looking to take your visibility even further? Yelp Premium Profiles offer additional customization options, including enhanced business descriptions, photo galleries, and promotional content that can provide even more information for AI tools and customers to discover. Given that most customers on Yelp are ready to buy flowers but just don’t know who to purchase from, more content and more ways to showcase your expertise can help your shop stand apart from the competition. As AI-powered discovery continues to grow, a strong Yelp presence plays an integral part in helping new customers find your shop when they’re ready to buy.
Be sure to leverage your eFlorist team for help! For assistance with any of these tasks or to learn more about our Premium Profiles, call us at 866.983.3932 (option 2) or email us at emarketing@teleflora.com.
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2026 CHRISTMAS SUCCESS GUIDE
ENHANCE YOUR FLORAL POINT OF SALE WITH TEXT MESSAGING USING EFLORIST MESSAGE MANAGER In today’s always-connected world, customers appreciate reliable and convenient communication from the businesses they support. Whether ordering flowers online, checking on a recent purchase, or tracking a delivery online, customers want answers quickly—preferably without ever making a call. Customers increasingly prefer quick digital conversations—such as texting—that fit into their busy schedules. Keeping up with these text message inquiries across multiple channels can be challenging, especially during busy floral holidays. That’s where the Teleflora eFlorist Message Manager comes in.
WHAT IS MESSAGE MANAGER? Message Manager is a customer communication platform that enables flower shops to send, receive, and manage customer conversations through text messaging and other supported messaging channels. It is one part of Teleflora’s larger technology ecosystem.
BENEFITS OF MESSAGE MANAGER: CENTRALIZE CUSTOMER COMMUNICATIONS WITH A UNIFIED INBOX One of Message Manager’s most valuable features is its unified messaging inbox. Instead of bouncing between multiple communication tools, conversations are consolidated into one location. AUTOMATE ROUTINE CUSTOMER COMMUNICATIONS Sometimes, multiple customers may have the same inquiries. That’s where automation comes into play. Message Manager automation helps streamline text conversations, saving your employees and customers time. IMPROVE VISIBILITY WITH REAL-TIME NOTIFICATIONS Message Manager allows shops to configure notifications for incoming text messages and new conversations. These alerts can be configured to match your business needs through real-time delivery or scheduled summaries. Implementing Message Manager alongside a comprehensive floral point of sale solution from Teleflora is the most effective way to fit customer text communication into your daily workflow, especially during peak floral holidays. This helps florists deliver a defining overall customer experience.
Contact us today to schedule a free demo!
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HELPFUL CONTACT NUMBERS Customer Service: 800.421.2815 U.S. and Canada eFlorist: 866.983.3932 Monday – Friday: 8 a.m. DovePlus: – 7 p.m. (CT) 800.720.9410 Saturday: 8 a.m. – 2 p.m. Products: (CT) 800.333.0205 Flowerbuyer.com: 877.625.3243