Keeping Work Afloat Year Round

During the six days between Christmas and New Year’s, Larry Crain’s year-round staff of five swells to 40. Those employees work 16-to-18-hour days, supervising 300 to 600 volunteers who decorate the Rose Parade floats that will glide down Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena on New Year’s Day. But once the last float rolls off the boulevard, how does Charisma Floats--or any seasonal business, for that matter--keep revenue flowing and employees occupied? Payment schedules, organization and picking up additional jobs have been essential to his success, says Crain, who was interviewed by freelance writer Karen E. Klein.

We turn right around after they announce the new parade theme in mid-January and we go to work with our designer, Raul Rodriguez. The designs he comes up with are all registered with the Tournament [of Roses] in February, and we start our sales from then through June. There are five approved float builders who work on the parade, and we’re one of four who have floats in it this year. We have the Rotary International, the city of West Covina and the [Rose] queen’s royal court floats.

After our existing clients decide whether they are going to be in the parade, we discuss their needs and how they fit in with the theme. We have a chance to sell our designs to the four to 12 new parade participants each year. We send presentation materials to them and hope that within two weeks or a month we can give them a sales presentation.

We start work on the Rotary float, which is contracted with us, in April or May. We’re like a construction company in terms of contracts. We will have as few as four payments, or up to 10 payments if that’s necessary, spread throughout the year. We always have a final payment due in January for the prior year, then an initial payment in the spring when the contract for that year is signed. That helps spread the cash flow throughout the year.

We start construction by June for the main structures of the floats that we’ve sold. I have a series of deadlines that has to be met, because the floats take four to six months to complete. With multiple floats, I have to keep them all moving. Most are done by the fall--finished, painted and ready to roll.

In November and December, we have volunteers who come on the weekends to do the prep work, like cutting the dried flowers in time for decoration week, from Dec. 26 to Dec. 31. We move all our operations to Pasadena on the second Sunday of December so we can set up and be ready for decoration time. We have a tent the size of a football field at the Rose Bowl where we work, and an office trailer that we use for feeding our staff and holding meetings.

We also have refrigerator trucks, storage vans and a flower tent where we keep all the flowers and process them as they come in locally and from 12 to 15 different countries. I work with three to five flower brokers to get everything I need, on time. Logistically, it’s a massive undertaking.

Of course, the parade makes up the bulk of my business, but the next biggest thing we have done for the last seven years is the floral production for the Academy Awards in late March. The timing of that event, between the final payments on the parade and the new float contracts being signed, really helps out with our revenue. We use 70,000 blooms, which is equal to about two parade floats, to decorate the red carpet area, all the VIP areas, the stars’ dressing rooms, the press rooms and the production offices.

On the red carpet, we do flower arrangements from 1 foot tall to 12 or 15 feet tall. I bring in a staff of about 50 for that project, 18 of whom are floral designers that come from all over the United States.

Again, we move to the location of the awards show about a week before it takes place, and I have a small office trailer there. We have flower tents and the refrigerator truck. Because it’s the last weekend in March, we hope for cool weather, because a lot of the stuff we do has to sit in full sun all day. It can be 90 degrees in March, or chilly and raining--we never know.

I also have done commercials, prop work for movies and other events. I would love to have one or two other large jobs to bring in more business between May and October.

The key to making all the logistics work is good staff. We have people who have worked for us for years, most of them starting out as volunteers, who love doing this work for a week or a few weeks. They know what they’re doing, they enjoy it and they’re wonderful at it.

My main employee is my floral production manager, who heads up the sourcing and processing of flowers. We go to floral conventions during the year, and we travel to see new products. We’re always looking for new things to use on the floats, because it brings more attention to us. We’ve introduced five new dry materials and three brand-new roses to the parade over the years.

Surround yourself with talented people, and people who are of like mind, and you don’t have to explain everything. The majority of our temporary staff return to the parade and the Academy Awards, thankfully. It would be a massive undertaking to educate new people year after year and try to make them understand the scope and the work that must be done on these large-scale projects.

I think another key is good communication. We keep everybody very well-informed, we organize everything and we try to have all their questions answered ahead of time.

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If your business can provide a lesson to other entrepreneurs, contact Karen E. Klein at the Los Angeles Times, 1333 S. Mayflower Ave., Suite 100, Monrovia, CA 91016 or at kklein6349@aol.com. Include your name, address and telephone number.