Next week is September! And we all know that means the events are going to be coming fast and furious. You’re going to need helping hands and lots of them. Enter
Flower Bench, a new website for helping florists in the Philadelphia region find vetted freelancers quickly.
On this mobile-friendly site, you can easily search for freelancers based on their skill set, pay rate, endorsements, and ability to travel. There are links with each freelancer’s profile to their portfolios as well as their phone number and email address. Each freelancer profile is screened prior to being made visible on the site so you can be confident they are a real person with real experience.
You can also post gigs on Flower Bench! Let freelancers know you’re looking for help and they can message you directly through the site to express their interest. Businesses get endorsements too from freelancers so you can build your reputation as a good boss!
Flower Bench was built by Cara from
South Stems, one of PFG’s regulars. Over the years, we have often got asked if we know some good freelancers and we’re stoked to now be able to direct everyone to this handy tool! We asked Cara a few questions about what she’s created and why so we could share them with you here.
Q. What inspired you to create Flower Bench?
I’ve been on both sides of the equation—as a business owner who hires freelancers and as a freelancer myself—so I’ve experienced the pain points on both ends. The goal was to create one place where freelancers can find opportunities and businesses can expand their circle of reliable help. Florists often have their go-to freelancers, but when those people are unavailable, finding someone trustworthy can feel stressful. And for freelancers, gigs are scattered across social media, emails, and texts. Wouldn’t it be nice if all of that lived in one place? That’s Flower Bench.
(Or, more accurately, read as: My solutions-oriented husband got tired of hearing me complain about the broken freelancer process. He’s a software engineer and the one who designed and built the website. Thanks Kerry! He deserves all the flowers here.)
Q. How does it work?
Freelancers make profiles that share more about their experience, location, rate, availability, etc. There’s a place to check off comfort level with certain job skills and upload portfolio images of work. Businesses make profiles and can post freelancer gigs to a job board, which I hope will bring some standardization to the process. As a freelancer, it can be frustrating not knowing anything about the day before showing up on-site. Oftentimes freelancers will just see a post on social media of a date that needs to be filled with no additional information as to what they’re signing up for, not even a location. I think we can all step up our baseline communication a bit to set everyone up for success.
There’s also an endorsement feature so freelancers and businesses can vouch for positive experiences working together. And if you’re both a business owner and freelancer, like me, you can toggle between both profiles from one account.
Q. Is it just for the Philadelphia area or are you hoping to expand it to other regions?
I have strong feelings that the way to introduce a website like this is through very targeted, intentional growth in one geographical footprint to begin. The Philadelphia and South Jersey flower community is the immediate target audience here (because you’re my people!). If 200 people signed up tomorrow who are scattered across the country, that wouldn’t really be of any value for the use case this is trying to solve by helping florists find freelancers who can actually work for them (…manifesting client budgets for you all where you can fly in travel freelancers on every gig, but that’s just not the reality for most of us). Someone in California is welcome to sign up, but they won’t really find any value since Flower Bench is currently loaded with people from the East Coast. Maybe with time that footprint starts to widen, but for now I’m focused on getting it cooking in the Greater Philadelphia Area.
Q. How can we support your work on this handy tool?
My biggest ask is to help spread the word. Text the website link to your flower friends (do it right now while it’s on your mind!). If you see someone posting on Instagram stories looking for freelancer help, suggest they cross-post on Flower Bench. I’m a broken record on this point, but this only becomes a helpful resource if it gets active, ongoing participation. I know that takes time. I know that takes me posting about Flower Bench a whole lot to remind people it exists. I know that unfortunately probably takes me showing my face in videos on the internet to appease the social media content overlords. There are currently 60 freelancers and 46 business owners signed up. If everyone reading this told a handful of their flower pals, I’d be so grateful.
There is a feedback button at the footer of the website. As you explore and start to use its features, please flag anything that you’d like to see added or updated that you think would benefit the experience. It’s a new thing, which means it’s not in its final form by any means. Find a bug? Getting an error message? Send a quick note through that form and Kerry will get it updated ASAP. It’s designed for simplicity—it’s not wrapped in fancy branding. We’re leading here with functionality and trying to make this a super simple tool for you all to plug into and make part of your workflows.
