**UPDATE: We are pleased to announce that Brenda is the winner of the Arena Flowers Mum of the Year competition**
Thank you for all the entries and for all who voted.
Happy Mother’s Day.
We have had many wonderful entries for the 2010 Arena Flowers Mum of the Year competition. We’d like to thank everyone who nominated [...]
Filed under: Customers, Matters Webby, Mega Days, Mother's Day on March 8th, 2010 | 8 Comments »
Do you know a mum who would love to receive a free luxury Arena hand-tied bouquet plus a selection box of scrummy luxury handmade chocolate, all worth £100?
We’re searching the length and breadth of Great Britain to find Arena Mum of the Year 2010.
Nominate your mum (or someone else’s!) by simply submitting a [...]
Filed under: Customers, General, Mega Days, Mother's Day on March 2nd, 2010 | No Comments »
A few months back, Will wrote a first post about previous newsletter winners and had promised to frequently update the winners on our blog. Since Will’s last post in March, we have sent out Seven more newsletters and we have seven new winners (Some are already updated on Will’s Post) who need a grand mention [...]
Filed under: Customers, Marketing on November 5th, 2009 | No Comments »
A quick ‘Pop Quiz’ for you: What do Jon Bon Jovi, Kate Winslet, Cameron Diaz, Steffi Graf, Jodie Foster and Tiger Woods (pictured, right) all have in common? Apart from probably having a few bob to their names, they are all reported to be famous hay fever sufferers and/or allergic to flowers.
With an estimated 20% [...]
Filed under: Customers, Floristry, Flowers, General, Matters Webby, Operations, Weddings on May 26th, 2009 | No Comments »
We quite often get asked “So, does anyone ever win that free newsletter competition or is it just a fake?”. The answers are “Yes, every month!” and “Absolutely not!”. We typically send one “postcard” email and one full newsletter every month (Mother’s Day flowers edition going out tomorrow). In the newsletter we announce the winner [...]
Filed under: Customers, Marketing on March 9th, 2009 | No Comments »
The Arena Weddings arm of Arena Flowers has been around for just over a year now, and what a better way to celebrate our first twelve months than to take some examples of our beautiful fresh wedding flowers on the road.
The enquiry from Marika, organiser of the Think Pink Wedding Show came late in the [...]
Filed under: Customers, Distribution, Floristry, Flowers, General, Good Causes & Charities, Marketing, Operations, Weddings on January 29th, 2009 | No Comments »
Just three good reasons to mosey on down to the David Lloyd Health & Fitness Club in Raynes Park, South West London today (Saturday 24 January) where yours truly will be exhibiting the floral fineries of our rapidly growing wedding flowers arm Arena Weddings at the Wear It Pink Wedding Show.
On display will be some [...]
Filed under: Customers, Floristry, Flowers, General, Good Causes & Charities, Marketing, Weddings on January 24th, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Fancy a Twitter with Britney?
- The Sun, 10th January 2009
How boring: Celebrities sign up to Twitter to reveal the most mundane aspect of their lives
- Daily Mail, 3rd January 2009
Twitter set for its mainstream telly moment on Jonathan Ross’s comeback show
- Guardian, 7th January 2009
What started as a trickle at the end of last year [...]
Filed under: Customers, Distribution, Floristry, Marketing, Matters Webby, Setting up on January 15th, 2009 | No Comments »
Getting hitched in the chilly months of winter doesn’t mean that you need to compromise on your winter wedding flowers. Although relatively rare compared to summer weddings, winter ceremonies can indeed benefit from all the sparkle and glamour of the party season, with family and friends close to hand for the festive period. Wedding planners [...]
Filed under: Christmas Flowers, Customers, Ethics & Environment, Floristry, Flowers, Setting up, Weddings on January 9th, 2009 | 11 Comments »
Happy New Year to everyone!
We’ve been a bit quiet on the blog of late, what with having to get all our Christmas flower deliveries sorted and having to do some very very last minute Christmas shopping of our own too. We’re back in the saddle now, looking forward to 2009 and will be posting [...]
Filed under: Customers, Ethics & Environment, Finance & Investment, General, Good Causes & Charities, International Flowers, Mega Days, Operations, Valentine's Day on January 5th, 2009 | No Comments »
We love our customers – we really do – and absolutely nothing gives us more pleasure than to make someone’s day by delivering our flowers. But sometimes customers can make life very interesting for us here at Flowers HQ, and they sometimes think we have almost magical powers of divination!
Here, in a light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek [...]
Filed under: Christmas Flowers, Customers, Distribution, General, Mega Days, Mother's Day, Operations, Valentine's Day on August 13th, 2008 | 6 Comments »
Quick intro from Will: We often get asked “So why is Arena Flowers so much better than John Lewis, Marks & Spencers or Interflora then? After all, you only sell a set of standard bouquets, just like them.” Well, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Unlike the bigger players, we do numerous bespoke and [...]
Filed under: Christmas Flowers, Customers, Distribution, Floristry, Flowers, General, Mega Days, Mother's Day, Operations, Valentine's Day, Weddings on August 6th, 2008 | No Comments »
We were surprised and delighted a couple of weeks ago to learn via email that we’d been nominated for the IMRG’s Online Green Awards (affectionately known as the OLGAs), in the small retailers category. So surprised in fact that my first response to the email was to ask Sam if he thought this might be [...]
Filed under: Customers, Ethics & Environment, Floristry, Flowers, General, Mega Days on July 28th, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Regular ‘Flowers …uncut’ readers will be aware of the good causes that ArenaFlowers.com occasionally works with by providing assistance and beautiful blooms and flower arrangements.
So when Help for Heroes, a new charity which aims to help wounded Servicemen and Women, contacted us, we were more than happy to oblige (and we’ve had a fun idea [...]
Filed under: Customers, Ethics & Environment, Floristry, Flowers, General, Good Causes & Charities, Operations on July 25th, 2008 | No Comments »
You always know when summer’s truly here:
Monsoon rains across the UK (not again!)
Tornadoes in the north (eh?)
The RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower Show opens (yay!)
It may be soggy on the grounds of Hampton Court Palace but inside the International Language of Flowers marquee, something bright and warm is emerging from the Flowers & Plants Association [...]
Filed under: Customers, Floristry, Flowers, General, Marketing on July 7th, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Despite being a rampant Chelsea supporter, black is my colour, rather than blue. Look in my wardrobe and you’ll soon get lost. Not because it’s as big as the Flowers HQ fridge but because, apart from the odd red or white Adam Ant t-shirt (!), I just don’t do patterns or colours. [...]
Filed under: Customers, Floristry, Flowers, General, Operations, Valentine's Day, Weddings on July 4th, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Here at Arena Flowers we get a lot of special orders both large and small – sometimes for a particular birthday where the number of flowers is important or sometimes for the re-creation of a wedding bouquet for an anniversary.
We also receive requests for flower stems to be distributed at special events, such as yellow [...]
Filed under: Customers, Distribution, Ethics & Environment, Floristry, Flowers, Good Causes & Charities, Mega Days, Operations, Setting up on June 12th, 2008 | 2 Comments »
The Flowers & Plants Association is the UK’s promotional organisation for all commercially grown cut flowers and indoor plants. The FPA offers expert, unbiased advice on fresh flowers and indoor plants to consumers, press and trade. So we invited Andrea Caldecourt, who runs the Flowers & Plants Association, to write a guest post for us [...]
Filed under: Customers, Flowers, Guest Posts on April 29th, 2008 | No Comments »
There have been three winners with Arena Flowers this month, in various ways. So, in ascending order of importance, we have:
1. £50 Bouquet Newsletter Winner
Every time we send our main newsletter (once a month), someone wins a free order of value up to £50. This month’s lucky winner was Mark S from Worcestershire. [...]
Filed under: Customers, Ethics & Environment, General, Good Causes & Charities on April 25th, 2008 | No Comments »
They all begin with an R! Our red roses are typically sent to woo loved ones (sometimes in truly spectacular fashion). Occasionally, however, they get put to a different use. For instance, Rachel, friend of Arena and occasional adviser on matters ethical, had a leaving party not long ago. Everyone came as [...]
Filed under: Customers, Flowers, General on April 18th, 2008 | No Comments »
We get a lot of compliments about our orchids and they really are the most beautiful, elegant plants. Actually, they are not ordinary plants, they are epiphytic plants; an epiphyte is a plant that grows on another plant without taking food from it and our orchids are grown on pieces of bark with the aerial [...]
Filed under: Customers, Flowers on April 4th, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Hello, everyone. Apologies for the relative blog silence of late. We’ve been super busy at Flowers HQ – not only is Valentine’s Day looming, but we’ve also been hard at work on a top secret, world first feature for our customers – video and voice messages delivered with flowers. Heard of [...]
Filed under: Customers, Marketing, Matters Webby, Mega Days, Setting up, Valentine's Day on February 8th, 2008 | 2 Comments »
It’s hard coming up with a catchy name for a new service that breaks the mould. After much discussion, we settled on Arena for Business. It’s been a while coming, but we’ve grown organically (much like many of our plants and flowers, wines and chocolates) and the clamour for a business proposition has meant we’ve [...]
Filed under: Customers, Marketing, Setting up on November 20th, 2007 | 3 Comments »
We are constantly surprised by the number of people who attempt to make fraudulent orders on our site. Fortunately for us, we have a series of sophisticated security checks which bring most of these to light before we send them out – it is a constant battle and one that we are determined to [...]
Filed under: Customers, Ethics & Environment, Fraud on November 2nd, 2007 | No Comments »
Hot on the heels of Jackie’s post last week about a customer suing his regular florist for the princely sum of £750k (for revealing his infidelities), today we read this headline: “Interflora website ‘rips off’ customers“. For an industry that brings happiness and joy, love and best wishes, it’s certainly been a grim seven [...]
Filed under: Big Mistakes, Customers, Ethics & Environment, Fraud, Matters Webby on August 21st, 2007 | 5 Comments »
Please wait while my tweets load 
