As you’ll know from our announcement earlier this year, we’ve been working very closely with the British Heart Foundation (BHF) to get their branded charity flowers website off the ground. But our association with the nation’s heart health charity goes back to the early days of Arena Flowers, as we’ve always been happy to help [...]
Filed under: Ethics & Environment, Flowers, General, Good Causes & Charities, Mega Days, Valentine's Day on December 29th, 2009 | No Comments »
A few months ago, Stan had posted a blog on how Arena Flowers is encouraging people to raise money for Cancer Research by sending out flyers for the Race For Life charity event along with all Cancer Research flower orders. Little did we know then, that we had an in-house participant in Carole, our Accountant [...]
Filed under: Ethics & Environment, Good Causes & Charities on September 23rd, 2009 | No Comments »
It’s been a while since our last blog post while we’ve been working frantically on a whole bunch of exciting new partnership projects behind the scenes – all to be revealed in the coming few weeks. But one such partnership deserves a blog post of it’s own, as we’re proud to announce a new charity [...]
Filed under: Ethics & Environment, General, Good Causes & Charities on August 27th, 2009 | No Comments »
Regular readers of Flowers …uncut will already be well aware of our occasional support of charities and good causes as well as the launch of the Arena-powered Cancer Research UK flower shop earlier this year. Cancer Research UK and flowers make a great fit, especially around Mother’s Day and the “Race For Life” (we’re currently [...]
Filed under: Ethics & Environment, General, Good Causes & Charities on May 29th, 2009 | No Comments »
If you’ve missed Valentine’s Day and forgot to send flowers from our exclusive Valentine’s range, here’s another chance to heal hearts; by supporting British Heart Foundation’s “Red for Heart” Campaign. After all, February is not just a month of romantic messages, but also the National Heart Month.
Like last year, when we did the BHF Valentine’s [...]
Filed under: Ethics & Environment, Good Causes & Charities, Mega Days, Valentine's Day on February 25th, 2009 | 1 Comment »
As trailed a little while ago in our New Year’s resolutions post, I’m pleased to announce that we went live with a new website yesterday, in partnership with Cancer Research UK, the UK’s leading cancer research charity. The website, the Cancer Research Flower Shop, allows flower lovers to send all of our flowers and make [...]
Filed under: Ethics & Environment, Good Causes & Charities on January 20th, 2009 | 3 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 »
Unless you’re living in a cave somewhere, you’ll know it’s Christmas very soon indeed – Google has even added holly and sweets to the ads shown for Christmas related searches. It’s very busy at Flowers HQ right now too, as well wishers send flowers home to loved ones. We’ve even sold out of Father Christmases [...]
Filed under: Christmas Flowers, Ethics & Environment, Marketing, Matters Webby, Mega Days on December 18th, 2008 | 5 Comments »
Yesterday was a busy day for anti-fraud newsflow plus some good old fashioned web fear mongering. Don’t get me wrong – web fraud happens and needs to be combated but there is often something shrill and hysterical about the reporting of online fraud, especially in the UK. “Everyone PANIC!” would seem to summarise the editorial [...]
Filed under: Big Mistakes, Ethics & Environment, Fraud, General, Marketing, Matters Webby on November 18th, 2008 | 11 Comments »
Those of you subscribed to our free flowery newsletters will have seen this morning that Arena is supporting the annual Poppy Appeal. We’re donating 10% of the order value for all orders which include Braveheart, The One or 20 Luxury Red Roses between now and Friday to the Appeal.
We believe this is a very good [...]
Filed under: Ethics & Environment, General, Good Causes & Charities on November 11th, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Something we learnt quite quickly after setting up Arena is that, if you run a business then it seems you’re fair game and people will make up outrageous claims to try and get money out of you. It may be down to the idea that “Well, they’re a company so they won’t bother wasting time [...]
Filed under: Distribution, Ethics & Environment, Fraud, General, Operations on October 24th, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Imitation, they say is the sincerest form of flattery. They also say success breeds imitation. Every now and then we find our competitors ordering flower arrangements from us, which makes us wonder if our bouquets are being copied and sold by other florists. We have regularly battled image and content thievery, where we have had [...]
Filed under: Ethics & Environment, Flowers, General, Marketing, Matters Webby on September 2nd, 2008 | 4 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 »
Our latest guest editor is Alicia, from MOO.com. MOO is one of the darlings of the “web 2.0″ world. Why? Because it tries not only to do the big things right, but all the little things too. MOO helps personalise things through print, and it’s a pretty unique business. At Arena Flowers we love personalisation [...]
Filed under: Ethics & Environment, General, Guest Posts, Setting up on July 10th, 2008 | No Comments »
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 »
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 »
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 | 1 Comment »
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, Good Causes & Charities, 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, Good Causes & Charities, 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 | 7 Comments »
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 »
