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 on April 25th, 2008 | No Comments »
As consumer demand for sustainable and ethical living grows, people are increasingly buying products that boast strong ethical credentials. This trend is equally true in the flowers industry, but consumers can be confused by the numerous different “ethical” standards for flowers, “Fairtrade” and “Fair Flowers Fair Plants” (FFP) being the two most widespread. In […]
Filed under: Ethics & Environment, Flowers, Guest Posts on April 21st, 2008 | No Comments »
Question: What should you expect from a blog post on a flowers blog on a flowers website?
Answer: A post about blog libel, of course!
Why?!: Arena started blogging about a year ago (to understand why we blog, please see this post). One of the great things about blogging is that it’s a two way communication process; […]
Filed under: Big Mistakes, Ethics & Environment, Matters Webby, Setting up on March 26th, 2008 | No Comments »
This year, we elected to make a donation to the British Heart Foundation’s Valentine’s Campaign for every one of our Tulips Bouquets and our Heart of Chocolates products sold for Valentine’s Day. We’re happy to report that in this way we raised several hundred pounds for the BHF (exact figure and cheque to the […]
Filed under: Ethics & Environment, Flowers, General, Mega Days, Valentine's Day on February 21st, 2008 | No Comments »
We’re delighted to say that we’re supporting the British Heart Foundation’s Valentine’s Appeal this year. In the UK 2.6 million men and women live with coronary heart disease and last year, the BHF Heart Nurses provided 50,000 heart patients with vital support to cope with the trauma and pain of heart disease. The […]
Filed under: Ethics & Environment, Mega Days, Valentine's Day on January 25th, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Recently we were on the receiving end of an attempted hustle by some fake wheel clampers. They’d immobilised one of our vans and were refusing to take the clamp off unless we paid £300 cash there and then. No credit cards allowed because of “possible fraud”. That set our own fraud alarm […]
Filed under: Distribution, Ethics & Environment, Fraud, General on January 17th, 2008 | 1 Comment »
The other day, we were visited by Donatella from Ethical Edibles who was carrying a rucksack full of wine! Oh Joy! But there was a serious side to the visit as I shall explain…
I had originally met Donatella at the ABN World Environment Day trade show and have been in discussions ever since. Ethical Edibles […]
Filed under: Ethics & Environment, General on November 9th, 2007 | 1 Comment »
When we set up Arena, we wanted to ensure that we had a great range of add on gifts to make the perfect complement(s) to the perfect flower arrangement (that’s my personal favourite). Because we buy direct from the flower auctions in Holland, our flowers are incredibly fresh and, because we cut out the […]
Filed under: Ethics & Environment, General, Marketing, Mega Days on November 7th, 2007 | 2 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 »
Today was a fun day at Flowers HQ. One of those days when I reflect how happy I am that our team took the risk and ventured away from our easy(ish) jobs into the uncharted (and scarier) waters of Arena, flowers and building a business for flower lovers. Hooray!
I’ve been out of the office for […]
Filed under: Ethics & Environment, Flowers, General, Marketing, Matters Webby on October 25th, 2007 | 4 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 | 4 Comments »
I received the email below yesterday (no idea why it was written in lurid purple!). Having had a look, I wasn’t initially convinced that Blackle is for real. Both natural and paid search results differ from those returned on conventional Google. It could be that it’s only set up for US searchers. Or […]
Filed under: Ethics & Environment, Marketing, Matters Webby on July 25th, 2007 | 3 Comments »
This June in the UK was recorded as having the highest rainfall level of the last fifty years (ie since records began!). Surprisingly, last year The Met Office issued warnings of high temperatures and continued hot weather during the same period. We had the hottest April on record ever this year. All […]
Filed under: Ethics & Environment on July 5th, 2007 | 1 Comment »
A couple of weeks ago we moved our website to greener pastures; RackSpace. Moving ISPs is not something you want to do on a regular basis and is often associated with fear. The fear of losing something along the way (our website and thus livelihood, for instance!).
This time the process of migration […]
Filed under: Ethics & Environment, Matters Webby on July 2nd, 2007 | 2 Comments »
Tuesday 5th June was an exciting day for Sam (tech and design guru), Ronald (flower buying Dutch masterpiece), Alina (chief flower wrangler) and myself (me!), as we attended ABN Amro’s “World Environment Day” fair in ABN’s offices in the City of London.
ABN Amro is pretty hot on sustainable initiatives and driving ethical, environmental policies through […]
Filed under: Customers, Ethics & Environment, Marketing on June 26th, 2007 | No Comments »
I’ve been cycling to work most days of late, as we no longer have the electric van that we trialled recently so my options have been either extortionate pay as you go tube fares or a fun and healthy bike ride to kick the day off. Not much contest really. However, I clearly […]
Filed under: Distribution, Ethics & Environment, General, Setting up on June 18th, 2007 | 6 Comments »
We got this fine specimen in from Hiremech today, to begin a week’s trial - it’s an electric van. If it does the trick, we’ll get fully Arena-branded ones for all our central London deliveries.
Here’s Mariusz, Arena’s Head of Distribution, plugging her in for the first time.
And this is Tom (on the […]
Filed under: Distribution, Ethics & Environment on May 25th, 2007 | 3 Comments »
