Posted by: Will – Priority Juggler on February 4th, 2009

The big day is just round the corner and, given the “interesting” economic environment we find ourselves in, we thought we’d share a few top tips to help Valentine’s Day lovers get the most out of their money and avoid some obvious pitfalls.

1. What does she actually want? A survey by a US florist found that 76% of women didn’t want red roses for Valentine’s Day.  The favoured option was a mixed bouquet, apparently.

   

2. Make her look good – send flowers to her at work: Valentine’s Day is on a Saturday this year.  That’s handy for us flower people (less traffic for our drivers) and for couples (as they can spend the whole day together).  On the other hand, part of the the fun of sending Valentine’s flowers is the girl (or boy!) receiving them at their workplace and being the envy of their colleagues.  There are definitely brownie points to be won with a lucky Friday 13th workplace delivery.
3. Save money part 1 – Avoid red flowers: Prices for all red flowers jump for Valentine’s, irrespective of the flower variety.  Pink flowers’ prices also go up, but not by nearly as much.  Other colours are far more reasonable – a white rose bouquet, for instance, symbolises young love so is entirely appropriate to send on Valentine’s and our mass of white roses is far more affordable than the mass of red roses.
4. Be fun – laughter is the best aphrodisiac: Add a photo in our checkout and we’ll print it and send it with your flowers.  You can also record a funny / romantic Valentine’s video message to send to the object of your desire.   Lots of people make their flower deliveries more personal using these low cost but high impact options. After all, they’re trying to outdo the other suitors who are probably just sending champagne, chocolates, balloons, teddies or maybe an “I Love You” card (you can send all such gifts with Arena too, of course).
5. All red roses are not created equal: Our red roses are, frankly, better than 99% of red roses out there. Not boasting, just being honest really.  They are long-stemmed, Grand Prix red roses. They come from one of the top three rose growers in Holland.  They’re not the cheapest.  But they are very very good.  We totally understand that some people don’t want to spend that much on roses, hence suggesting alternative Valentine’s flowers (see next tip) and gifts. But, if you absolutely, positively must have red roses, then ours are the best. We’ve bought a lot fewer this year (60% less than last year) and we agreed a deal way in advance in order to get a great price.  When the stems we’ve bought run out, they’ve run out.  That’s it.  We aren’t going to buy any more.  We expect our red roses to have sold out by by the 11th or 12th Feb after which time, we’ll only be selling other varieties of flowers.
6. Save money part 2 – Avoid roses altogether: Red roses prices go through the roof for Valentine’s, with the price of a red rose stem often increasing by 500%.  Whilst other varieties also rise at this time, you will get a far better deal if you buy an arrangement featuring a different variety, such as a pink lily bouquet or a 100 tulips bouquet (100 tulips for less than 24 red roses makes a lot of economic sense, plus the tulips will grow in the vase and create an amazing effect over the following days).  Alternatively, keep the number of red roses in the arrangement low, as in our Valentine’s The One.
7. You get what you pay for, so be careful: “If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”  If you buy supermarket flowers, you’ll get supermarket flowers.  If one of our competitors sends you an offer for a dozen red roses for £20 including delivery (which some are doing), then read the small print.  They probably won’t guarantee the day of delivery (not ideal for Valentine’s!) and the rose heads are likely to be the size of a half-eaten M&M.  There are lots of other marketing ploys out there plus the big relay companies charge hefty commissions too.  We avoid any of that rubbish and just focus on doing a great job and saving costs for customers wherever we can.

   

8. Wow her in the kitchen: Our friends over at Jamie Oliver’s site have put up loads of good ideas for Valentine’s meals and home cooking and thoughts on how to get round credit crunchiness.  We suspect turkey twizzlers won’t be on the menu though. Or, if you like being all web 2.0 and user-generated, you might want to head over to MyDish.co.uk, a friendly site for food ideas and recipes (you could even win some Arena Flowers there).
9. Bonus 9th tip – Send a hint: If you’re expecting flowers or gifts from someone and don’t want them to send you the usual rubbish, then send them a hint.  There’s a “Send a Hint” button on every product page which allows you to send a snazzy email with a picture of the flowers you want plus your message. You can choose to send the hint anonymously or add your name.  If do send anonymously, be prepared for a nasty surprise – your partner might send the flowers to their other girlfriend/boyfriend!

Hope some of that was helpful and or interesting.  Now it’s up to us to get down to work and get ready for the big day.  It’s going to be unbeliveably busy – here are some pics of Flowers HQ at Valentine’s 2008.  We’ll add some more pics once the big day has been and gone!  Hope Valentine’s goes well for you!

 

Filed under: Floristry, Flowers, Mega Days, Valentine's Day on February 4th, 2009

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