Hello Everyone!

I'm very new to cakecentral and this is my very first post .

I've done several dozen cakes on the side and I've figured out that I very much prefer the decorating part to the baking, icing, stacking, frosting part of the job.

Now, I've decided to focus my work on gumpaste flowers and other decorations. Can you please provide input on which flowers you'd rather buy than take the time and trouble to make? A poster on another thread said hydrangeas. Any other flowers?

I would be concentrating on making them very realistic (so they may be quite delicate) but I figured since I'll be concentrating on local sales, shipping won't be so much of an issue...

thanks in advance for your feedback!

I love making any g/p flower. I wish i had a job making them all day!!! lol!! I love the idea of making them realistic looking.

I agree with you TOTALLY! I love making the flowers all of them. I think if you buy a hydrangea mold which at one time I looked into they would be much faster. They looked real too. So no I can't say there is a flower I don't like making yet, but I'll let you know. :)
 

I enjoy making them, and actually make them in large batches in white, so that I always have a huge stash. That said, I will order the little filler flowers if I need a lot. I still colour them myself, but that can save me hours and hours of work if I need a ton.

I enjoy making them as well, but because they take so much of my time, it isn't always the best choice, for me anyway.  I saw this website from someone here.  I haven't tried them yet, but I'm thinking I'm going to.  Things are just getting too busy! 

http://www.wholesalesugarflowers.com/

I gave up making them pretty fast.  It's just too time consuming.  I bought from www.AvalonDeco.com.  David is a small biz like me, and I like to support other small businesses.

I buy them!! I only make ones I can't buy and that's really rare. So start looking at what is available wholesale. 

• Then consider making them larger or smaller then what what's available.
• Make 'cool' flowers, ones that are being shown by top decorators.
• You've got to get your prices down which means getting your production HIGH. So you can be competitively/reasonably priced. There are a lot of people selling gum paste flowers but their pricing is way too high for me to buy from them.

thank you for your responses, everyone.

@stitches , thanks for your specific suggestions. 

Follow-up questions:

• what are your price ranges for the non-filler flowers? (I'm trying to see how much is too much to charge)
• what factors would make you buy from a wholesale place versus a local custom flower maker?
• if you couldn't find a flower online, would you consider custom ordering one?

Sorry my price chart didn't post that well. But I think you can still understand it. That's what it costs me to buy those flowers. I'd love to buy better looking ones that were already colored. I'm now discovering I don't enjoy coloring the white flowers..........or I should say, I still haven't figured out how to do so well.

Your math is off... these are the largest error differences:

Should be $6.51 ea.

and $3.78 ea.

Thanks for finding that! Sheesh I must have done those numbers myself...

I take the cost of the flowers to me X 3 = retail price.

If the flowers were already colored nicely, than I'd be good with X2 pricing.

If they were really well done (not thick and detail-less) with great coloring THEN I'm totally interested and price becomes less of a factor. I'd love to be able to buy LARGE showy flowers.

leah_s: when you say cost, do you only take into account your material cost and then multiply by 3 to come out with what you would pay retail for?

stitiches: yes, large, showy flowers are what I wanted to make. I'd definitely stay away from the generic ones that the large gumpaste and royal icing flower makers make (can't compete with their volume pricing). 

By custom making, I meant more like made-to-order ... I don't expect to keep a large stock of ready made flowers for same day orders... more like how you would order a cake with lead time ... I'd expect cakers to order from me at least a week or two in advance, in the colors, tones, finish that they want. Do you think this is a good way to go about it? Or do bakers usually expect the product to come right away? I'm sooo new to business-to-business sales and I don't know what established bakers like all of you expect.

Also, when would be a good time to visit a bakery to let them know about my business? I don't want to cold call or just drop a brochure but I expect that bakeries would prefer to keep their days open for cake consultations and not people looking to sell to them. How many of you set aside time for vendors and what are your pet peeves?

I know I've been expanding the scope of this thread... please bear with me. I really appreciate the feedback <3    <3