Posted by: Pascale - Petal Peddler on August 9th, 2010

Yay! It’s our Birthday!  Arena Flowers is 4 years old and as is becoming tradition, we have asked the florists  to create a Birthday flower arrangement to celebrate the occasion (see our 2nd Birthday arrangement and 3rd Birthday arrangement)

Judith has made this incredible Birthday flower arrangement. The boxing ring is covered with grasses and the stand bursting with roses, gerbera, nutans and hypericum berries.

So to celebrate our 4th Birthday, we thought we’d look back over some of the fun – and the hard work – that has been keeping us busy over the last 12 months.
 
New launch
 
In Autumn 2009, we launched the newest member of the Arena Flowers family – en France –  Arena Fleurs.  Arena Fleurs was particularly busy over Mothers’ Day this year. We were featured on French style website My Best Addressbook; Terrafemina, an online style magazine and we partnered with cosmetic company, Cosmaterra.
 
The feedback about Arena Fleurs in its first year has so far been really good; one particularly romantic customer sent a very lucky recipient 1,000 long-stemmed red roses.
 
New Staff
 
We have welcomed some great new people to the Arena Flowers team over the year.  New florists, including Agatha and Timothy; new customer service staff, Zak; new marketing people Freddie, Maina, Raj and myself.

Remco has also joined this year.  He had a busy first few weeks, joining just prior to Mother’s Day.  Remco works closely with the Dutch flower auctions in Holland, developing our product range, bringing new flower types and bouquets, and ensuring that our buying is as efficient as possible so we get the freshest flowers to you at great value.

 

 Come on, Remco – give us a smile!
 
 

Awards

We were thrilled to win a Smarta 100 award earlier in the year.  This awarded our innovative approach to marketing, development and our personal touch, with social  media apps and other gadgets, such as our event calendar and photo upload service.
 
 

 

Fun things

We’ve been busy keeping you busy with some fun competitions and gadgets on the website.  In February, Flowers & Fun launched – a service to send virtual flowers and messages to your family and friends via Twitter, Facebook and email.

We had a Mother’s Day competition, won by the very deserving Brenda.  We also held a Pol Roger competition to win £200 pounds worth of Vintage Pol Roger champagne, for which Evelyn was the lucky winner.

The Marketing execs also celebrated Holland reaching the World Cup final in a stop motion video.

Development

Development on the site hasn’t all been creating fun tools and gadgets, we have spent a lot of time making the payment system more secure for you.

Our ordering systems have also seen a lot of development to ensure that orders are received by the florists and sent out for delivery as quickly as possible and allowing us to track orders as they go.

Charity Flowers

This time last year saw our very own Carole run in the race for life for Cancer Research UK.  We have had a partnership with Cancer Research UK since January 2009 and were proud of Carole to have run the race for life to raise money for them.  We are looking forward to Breast Cancer Awareness month and have some exciting product development underway for that.

We also started a partnership with charity, Global Giving, who support many grass-root charity projects around the world.  Find out more about our Global Giving partnership.

Weddings  

Wedding season is upon us and the florists have been busy creating beautiful wedding bouquets and arrangements and being on-hand on the day to help ensure the flowers are at their best.  Have a look at some photos from Arena Flowers Weddings in our photo gallery.

Not only do we arrange flowers for weddings – but we seem quite good at encouraging weddings within the Arena Flowers team too.  Arena florists, Paulina and driver Darek, got married this summer. Steve, one of the company’s founders and Elsa, who worked on the Dutch website also tied the knot in Holland in May.

We wish both couples long, happy and flower-filled lives together!

Last but most importantly, our customers

Throughout the year, we have had a newsletter competition winner each month. Contacting the winner and letting them know they’ve won is one of our favourite things to do each month.  If you would like to be in with a chance each month to win a £50 bouquet, all you need to do is sign up to our newsletter.  To have a peak at some of the past newsletter winners see here, and here.

We would never have reached the grand old age of 4 without our customers, so our Birthdays are really a celebration of you.

 

Filed under: Customers, General on August 9th, 2010

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