June 2006

We have separated our corporate event business from our wedding business in order to allow our staff to focus on the specific products they deliver.  This change primarily impacts sales and marketing, as the design and delivery teams perform roughly the same activities independent of the type of event.  Our new corporate sales function will be able to handle both corporate events and also corporate delivery accounts, in partnership with our retail division.  Historically, our event and retail divisions have been completely separate, which will remain the case for weddings, but now the corporate group will be able to deliver special day arrangements, gift arrangements, and other non-event products through our retail group, and deliver event services through our weddings group.  We're hoping that this addresses the limitations that have frustrated our corporate customers, while making absolutely sure that our wedding group maintains or increases the quality levels that our customers expect. 

On a website basis, we have made some minor changes to the site layouts and formats, and we have added links to our retail shops.  We have also done a pretty serious reorganization of the site photos in order to make the site a bit more accessible, and to better reflect the quality of our work.  As many of you have pointed out to us (repeatedly) our photographs are one of our major weaknesses.  Hopefully, the new pictures are a step in the right direction, and we will take several more steps before we're done with the latest site revisions.  In the past, our contracts were extremely restrictive to us, in our efforts to assure privacy to our customers and friends.  Our new contracts give our customers the option (certainly not a requirement) of allowing us to photograph their weddings and flowers, and that's why our picture inventory is improving.  Thank you, thank you, thank you to all of the brides who have offered us the privilege of putting their photos on our website, photo books, and promotional brochures.  The impact to our sales has already been wonderful, and we've only started.

We will be expanding our online retail presence significantly over the coming months, so we hope that all of our past customers will choose us for all of their floral needs in the future.  We are retraining the staff members who have joined us via our retail acquisitions in our design and construction techniques, and we are using our event sourcing expertise to upgrade the quality of the component products in the retail environments.  Our policy is to leave the company name and brand intact for our new acquisitions until we have raised them to the quality level we promise our event customers, and then to connect them to our primary brand.  Thus, when you see the Mayumi Miyata logo on one of our retail websites you can be absolutely confident that any locally-delivered arrangements you order will be at the absolutely highest quality levels. 

Upcoming shows include Brideworld Laguna in July, Brideworld Los Angeles in August, with more to be added.  Hopefully you have seen our advertisements in Modern Bride Southern California, and on the Brides.com website.  We are probably going to throttle-back our advertising and trade show participation a bit as we are reaching our maximum capacity levels (until we can finish forming a new team or teams... an EXTREMELY time consuming process for us).  We will never allow our capacity constraints to impact our ability to handle referrals, so please keep them coming.  Referrals are the most important source of business for us, now and forever, and we promise to always treat your referred friends and family members to the highest imaginable service levels.

Thanks for reading.  We welcome any and all feedback, positive and negative.  Constructive suggestions are particularly valuable to us.

March 2006

Our new Irvine facility is fully operational in Orange County.  We have now served several events from that location, with no problems or issues to date.  Our record remains unblemished - we have had no complaints whatsoever throughout our history, including periods of transition when we have moved from one site to another.

We will begin offering home contract service in Orange county beginning in April.  This means that you can sign up for weekly or monthly flowers that we will deliver (and optionally set up) to your home in Orange County.  As our existing residential customers already know, our prices for this service are very attractive - you will get a significantly better deal than what you would expect if you purchased identical arrangements from storefront florists.  Remember, all Mayumi designs are made and delivered locally by us - we do not send or accept wires, nor allow untrained retail florists to attempt to construct Mayumi designs.  You are guaranteed our quality levels, since we won't EVER allow inadequate product to leave our doors.

We are developing an automated appointment scheduling system that we will deploy in May or sooner.  We've always been a lot better at floral design than computer technology, but we're learning!  it is our goal to eventually offer established local accounts the opportunity to place or alter their standing orders through the web site.  While this always feels a bit impersonal to us, it isn't that far from the email method that many of you now use to communicate to us, so it's time for us to accept reality and deploy some enhanced functionality.

On a related note: we have openings for floral designers and floral design assistants in Orange County.  If you have top-notch credentials and talent, please forward a resume to: recruiting@mayumimiyata.com. 

All Mayumi Miyata designers must satisfy a skills-assessment interview, as well as attend an intensive orientation seminar, regardless of initial skill level. 

Copyright © 2005, 2006 Mayumi Miyata Floral Designs
Last modified: 06/23/06