Arena Flowers were excited about being shortlisted for the Mayor’s Responsible Procurement Awards in December 2010.  We had a great evening at City Hall and thought we’d take a moment to tell you about it.

What are the Responsible Procurement Awards?

The Responsible Procurement awards themselves are there to recognise contributions made by suppliers to and staff of the Greater London Authority (GLA) group towards procurement delivering significant social and environmental benefits.  A bit of a mouthful but essentially, responsible procurement within the GLA group is a policy to ensure that procurement delivers environmental benefits, social benefits and economic efficiency.  This stimulates the GLA group internally and also external suppliers to work on meeting environmental, social and economic objectives.  The award ceremony itself is to recognise those internally, or external suppliers who’ve successfully gone the extra mile to make their business or area more environmental, socially responsible and efficient.

For example, the winner of the Ethical Sourcing internal award was Phil Roddy, who has worked with London Underground’s uniform procurement.  Phil won his award as a result of his work with uniform manufacturers, meaning that London Underground staff’s fleece jackets are made from recycled plastic bottles.

Arena Flowers' Will and Pascale with London Deputy Mayor, Richard Barnes

Why were we shortlisted?

Arena Flowers was entered into the environmental sustainability category of the awards. We deliver flowers to individuals across the UK and we also supply Transport For London with a flower and gift delivery service.  Our environmental credentials are strong; being the first UK florist to sell “Fair Flowers Fair Plants” flowers, we are the only florist in the Good Shopping Guide’s ethical supplier directory and we won an Online Green Award from the IMRG in 2008.

We have an unusual buying process for our flowers. We buy our flowers directly (one of the Arena Flowers buyers is at the flower auctions in Holland at 5am each morning), meaning that we cut out extra cost and extra time getting flowers from growers to the customer – this means the flowers spend less time in expensive energy-consuming fridges (and also last longer for the recipients).  Buying directly and selecting stems ourselves ensures not only the quality of the flowers but it also means we can buy exactly what we need, so wastage is reduced.

But it’s not just the flowers, we also use carbon neutral hosting of our website and print our cards on paper from sustainable sources (and where possible, with vegetable-base inks!).  Flowers couriered in boxes are in boxes made from recycled paper. We also recycle all our paper, printer cartridges, cardboard and green waste.  And we sell organic wines to add to orders too.

Awards night

The award ceremony itself was held at City Hall in London – an amazing building with fantastic views and it was very nice to meet London Deputy Mayor, Richard Barnes.  Richard is also a member of the London Assembly for Ealing and Hillingdon, so we hope to see him at Flowers HQ some time soon.

Although we didn’t win the award, it was a great evening to find out what other suppliers and GLA staff are up to.  The award trophies themselves were made from waste timber from New Scotland Yard.  For us this reinforced the message that it’s not just the big things that matter to ensure an environmentally responsible business, but also the small things we can do day to day.  Something which we are constantly mindful of at Arena Flowers.

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We’ve been pretty quiet on the blog recently. Don’t worry, we’re still here and up to lots of things as usual but there was one thing we’ve been getting involved in and I wanted to give it a bit of a thumbs up here on the blog.

Friendship Works is a registered charity in the UK which has been providing mentoring and support for children for over 30 years. The charity relies on volunteer mentors who support a child on a long-term basis by meeting up with them weekly, for a trip to the park, or the zoo – or whatever they decide to do. All of the children supported are from vulnerable backgrounds and facing difficulties such as low incomes, domestic violence, bereavement or long-term illness.

It seems the simplest of concepts, but it gives the child a reliable respite from their problems at home. For the volunteers, it gives them a chance to make a small difference to a young person who needs some better times.

Friendship Works takes an unusual approach, as it requires the volunteers to commit to 2 years of mentoring. The charity believes this type of long-term stability is exactly what these children need. It also provides a chance for the volunteers to really get to know their ward and let the relationship develop.

Arena Flowers are involved because we like to support charities when we can, and this year we’ll be providing gifts to be auctioned at their charity evening this month (28th November). If winning some Arena Flowers’ flowers and gifts isn’t reason enough to be interested, the event: “An Evening with the Stars” features support from Sir Ian McKellen, Kevin Spacey, Bill Paterson, Richard Stilgoe, Tim Pigott-Smith, Dame Eileen Atkins and friends who are all supporting Friendship Works for this one-off event. Each star will perform their personal choice of theatre, poetry or music on the theme of childhood. There is a cocktail reception before the show and a private dinner with the stars afterwards. For more information and to purchase tickets: http://www.friendshipworks.org.uk/support_us/events.html

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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 promote their annual National Heart Month events each February.

2010 is no different as the BHF recently launched their fund-raising pack for Red for Heart campaign, which includes  National Wear It Red Day on 26 February,  and – if you’ve received a delivery from us over the past week or so – you may well have noticed their flyer distributed with our flowers & gifts.

In the New Year we’ll be revealing our special BHF Valentine’s Day bouquets, exclusively available from the BHF Flowers website. But Arena Flowers aren’t the only ones going Red for Heart for National Heart Month this February, so don’t be surprised if you see people sky diving in top-to-toe red.  Or wearing their red pyjamas to school. It’s all in aid of the British Heart Foundation. And we’d love you to join in as National Heart Month is the time to think about your heart and help us fight the UK’s biggest killer.

Be part of Red for Heart by doing anything you like to raise money. Challenge your office to wear to a wear red day – the boldest outfit wins! Bake red cakes. Paint your face red. The only rule is, you’ve got to have fun. So apply for your free fund-raising kit, full of great ideas, by clicking the banner below or call 0845 241 0976 and be part of Red for Heart.

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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 and keeper of the books.

Carole is taking part in the 10k Race for Life run at Hampton Court on 27th September 2009 in memory of her friend, Janie Cassie who was her colleague at Raven Roofing & Building Supplies in Twickenham. Janie battled breast cancer for five and half years and passed away in December 2008. Carole is keen to raise as much money as possible to help fund research at Cancer Research and she is joined by her ex-colleagues and their families from her former company. Every pound raised through Race for Life counts and with Carole and entourage from her previous company participating in the event, we are certain that they will contribute enough to the charity to help them buy vital equipment used for research into cancer.

Now in its 16th year, Race for life is the UK’s largest women only fund-raising event, where women come together to raise money in support of Cancer Research UK. Hundreds of thousands of women of all ages walk, jog, run and have fun at the charity events across the UK, to help raise money to beat cancer. The event, held annually across the UK since 1994 has raised nearly £240 million and for 2009, an estimated 735, 000 women are expected to raise £60 million.

At Arena Flowers, we work with two of the biggest charities in the UK, British Heart Foundation and Cancer Research UK and have also extended our support to other charitable organisations such as Global Giving. We are extremely proud to support Cancer Research UK through our flowers site and with Carole being a part of the event this year, we have a greater sense of accomplishment in being truly committed to supporting social causes. If you are interested in sponsoring Carole’s great cause, please feel free to donate by visiting here.

To learn more about our work with charities, please see our posts on good causes and fund raising.

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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 tie-in with our good friends (and all-round nice chaps) at GlobalGiving.co.uk.

They have been working hard to develop their new website to support charities and good causes by putting them in one handy place where individuals or organisations can donate to vetted grassroots charity projects in over 70 countries directly, while staying in touch with their progress through a range of handy web2.0 tools – truly bringing fund-raising into the 21st century.

By visiting their portal on ArenaFlowers.com, we will donate 15% of your order of flowers, gifts, drinks and chocolate towards the work of GlobalGiving.co.uk – with donations divided equally between three featured charity projects which will be rotated each month to give a range of projects – large and small – a fair chance. Most of the projects on GlobalGiving.co.uk are in the developing world where a small amount of money usually goes a long way.

We will be supporting a variety of charity projects, so browse our current supported projects and track your direct impact on communities by sending your flowers and gifts with Global Giving in partnership with ArenaFlowers.com.

If you would like to learn more about our work with charities, you might like to see our posts about good causes and fund raising and you might also enjoy our posts about ethics and the environment.

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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 sending out flyers for the Race with all Arena and Cancer Research UK orders and you should all join in!).

No sooner had we announced the Cancer Research UK site than we received a call from the UK’s favourite heart charity, the British Heart Foundation, which had been on the look-out for something similar to support its own fund raising efforts.

We were more than happy to oblige, especially given our previous happy experiences working with the BHF around Valentine’s Day and the good fit of hearts and romantic flowers.  So we put our creative hats on and got to work with the lovely ladies in the BHF marketing team to create a BHF Flowers website that reflects the established brand and messaging of this popular charity.

As with our Cancer Research UK partnership, 20% of the gross order value (excluding any delivery costs, which we seldom charge anyway) is donated to the British Heart Foundation, plus 100% of any donation amount (you can add a donation in checkout).  We’re working on ways to allow gift aid too.   To find out more about how we work with the UK’s leading charities, and how we can afford to donate a such a significant amount from each order, check out our blog post announcing our work with Cancer Research UK.

And in the future? Whilst we could do loads and loads of these partner charity sites, we’d prefer to keep the offer narrow and relevant to our flower and gifting business so there are unlikely to be many more (if any!).  But what is certain is that we’re very proud to be working with two of the UK’s most worthwhile charities.  Please show them your support too!

If you found this post interesting, you might also enjoy our other posts about good causes and fund raising and you might also enjoy our posts about ethics and the environment.

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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 Appeal, we are keen on giving our customers an opportunity to support BHF, the nation’s heart charity, dedicated to saving lives through pioneering research, patient care, campaigning for change and by providing vital information.

Every year, approximately 200, 000 lives are lost to heart and circulatory diseases. BHF is aiming to raise funds to prevent lives being devastated from heart diseases and relies entirely on charity to make a difference to people’s lives.

You have a couple of days more to go red this month and show your support for the British Heart Foundation’s Red for Heart Campaign by visiting here. They have plenty of information on how you could go red and help them fight heart diseases.

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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 a donation to UK’s favourite charity at the same time.  In an “FAQ” format, here are the key points:

How Does It Work?

It’s pretty simple really.  Customers go to the Cancer Research UK flower shop and order, just as they would on Arena.  The site has been rebranded to fit with Cancer Research UK’s branding etc, but operates exactly the same as the Arena Flowers website.   There should be no discernible difference in user experience and all prices etc will be exactly the same as on the Arena Flowers site.  Customer services will also be handled by Arena’s customer services team.

The main differences are that two categories of gift items (chocolates and wines/champagnes) are not available (in order to comply with Cancer Research UK’s policies) and recipients will receive a message card with the Cancer Research UK branding letting them know that a donation was made as part of the purchase.  Another difference is that the flower shop will offer UK deliveries only to begin with (ie no international flowers).

How Much Is Donated to Cancer Research UK?

A whopping 20% of the gross order value (excluding any delivery costs, though we seldom charge for delivery anyway) is donated to Cancer Research UK.  At the end of each month, we’ll tot up all the orders through the site and send a cheque to Cancer Research UK for the amount raised.  We’ll keep you posted about how much is raised over time (subject to confidentiality requirements, obviously).  It should be a good amount as Cancer Research UK will be promoting the shop through its own channels and driving flower buyers to the site.

Isn’t It Bad For Arena’s Business To Give Away 20%?

No, we don’t think so.  Firstly, we won’t spend any money marketing the site as, legally, we are just a supplier  to Cancer Research UK.  Cancer Research UK are the ones who will be marketing the site.  So, given we are not paying for any marketing, we can afford to give our “marketing budget per order” back as a donation.  Having said that, our marketing budget is nowhere near as high as 20% so we are not going to be making a huge amount of money out of sales through this site.

However, we are not going to be losing money and we believe that this is a very worthy cause and we’re absolutely delighted to be supporting it.  Plus, of course, we will also benefit from things like building more scale into our own business, possibly some nice PR and feeling like good eggs when we go to sleep at night.

Will Arena Marketing and Promo Codes Cross Over With The Cancer Research UK Flower Shop?

No, not regularly, apart from the odd post like this one.  There is a reason for this; customers who place orders through the Cancer Research UK flower shop will become customers of Cancer Research UK and all the marketing opt ins etc will be with Cancer Research UK and not with Arena.  The two entities (Arena Flowers and the Cancer Research UK flower shop) are separate and will operate independently from each other.  This will apply to any promo codes or incentives offered too; promo codes for Arena Flowers will not necessarily work on the Cancer Research UK site and vice versa.

What About Gift Aid?

We’re working on gift aid.  Watch this space!  You can already add a donation to your basket in the Cancer Research UK checkout, to top up the donation to Cancer Research UK.  The full donation amount, net of costs (eg credit card charges), will be passed to Cancer Research UK.

So that’s it.  Hopefully all very straightforward.  We’re very pleased with this initiative as it works well for all concerned and helps raise money to combat one of the UK’s biggest killers, whilst happily spreading great flowers at great prices even wider.  Please let us know what you think or if you have any other suggestions.

Thanks!

UPDATE:

We got a nice quote in from Simon Ledsham, trading director Cancer Research UK, who said:

“We’re delighted to be working with Arena Flowers.  Not only will you be giving beautiful flowers with each purchase, but you will be helping us to beat cancer at the same time.  Thank you for your support.”

If you found this post interesting, you might also enjoy our other posts about good causes and fund raising and you might also enjoy our posts about ethics and the environment.

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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 will normally recommend against sourcing for the low season as flowers can be much more expensive, and less available. However, if you’re all set for marriage in December, January or February – Arena is here to guide you in making the most of your winter wedding.

If you look out into the garden, it may seem that the selection of winter flowers is limited, but many varieties are available all year round. For instance, roses, lilies and carnations – the nation’s favourite wedding flowers – may traditionally be known as summer flowers but they can be found in virtually any colour throughout the year. Winter weddings may also be brightened by using lilies or chrysanthemums. Again both of these are a popular choice and are available all year round so you will not have to worry about breaking the bank when it comes to choosing your wedding flowers.

While the prices for winter wedding flower bouquets may run a bit on the high side, there are some great seasonal bargains to be found. For a real festive touch, what better than red or white amaryllis for an extra showy effect (as illustrated by our bridal bouquets above), or perhaps even poinsettia, holly or winter berries – mixing with winter evergreens such as firs and spruce.

Alternatively, there are also many varieties of lilies or orchids that make beautifully exotic winter wedding flower arrangements (as illustrated by our bridal bouquets below) and won’t necessarily cost you an arm and a leg. An exotic or tropical themed wedding in the bleak midwinter can make a lovely break from the cold.

Fire & Ice – Decorating Your Winter Wedding Flowers

Winter Bridal Bouquets
Winter white or very light ivory flatter any bride’s skin tone, and make the perfect canvas for bright, bold colours – bringing life to an otherwise monochromatic winter hues. When selecting a theme for your winter wedding flowers, a favourite choice is to opt for shades of white, rich greens and tones of copper or red and burgundy.

Buttonholes, Boutonnieres & Corsages
Continue a seasonal theme with spray roses coupled with holly and/or berries, or alternatively take the low season as an opportunity to experiment with exotic flowers such as orchids or asiatic lilies.

Flowers for the Ceremony & Reception
If opting for a ceremony in December or early January, it is likely that the wedding or reception venue will already be decorated in red and green for seasonal events however you do not need to feel constricted by these colour schemes. Metallics and whites will complement your festive setting, while extra colour can be added by lightly spraying petals with glitter to add that little extra winter sparkle.

Candles are highly recommended for adding warmth and glow to any venue, and decorating your winter wedding flowers with light or crystal embellishments also brightening your scheme. Mirrors, glass pebbles and baubles will add a glamorous touch to table decorations for your wedding reception. Wax apples, pine cones or cinnamon sticks will also add an extra festive feel to your centrepiece arrangements. For more ideas and inspiration for your wedding flowers visit our online portfolio.

Seasonal Availability & Christmas Flower Prices

In this day and age of under soil heating and imports from as far afield as Africa and Asia, most flowers are available to buy in the UK all seasons. However, the more ethically aware bride may have issues with the perceived carbon emissions associated with their availability – as well as inflated marketed prices over the Christmas period! Sadly, it is likely that wholesale prices for some flowers are set at a much higher market price then at other times of the year because of the increased demand for them for festive flower arrangements – something florists cannot control.

However, here’s a list of winter and all-year-round availability without the need for vastly inflated prices or air miles: Agapanthus, Alstromeria, Amaryllis, Anemone, Anthurium, Aster, Bouvardia, Calla Lily, Carnation, Chrysanthemum, Craspedia, Cymbidium Orchid, Euphorbia, Freesia, Gerbera, Gloriosa, Gypsophila, Heliconia, Hyacinth, Iris, Leucospermum, Lily (Asiatic & Oriental), Lisianthus, Muscari, Narcissus (Daffodil), Nymphaea, Ornithogalum, Phalaenopsis Orchid, Phlox, Poinsettia, Ranunculus, Rose, Sunflower, Strelitzia, Tulip, Veronica.

If you enjoyed this post, you may also enjoy this one about about our family summer wedding, or perhaps this post about spring wedding flowers or even this one about getting the best from your wedding photography.

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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 more regularly going forward. Meantime, here are five random New Year’s resolutions (in no particular order):

1. More charitable initiatives: We’ve supported a number of charitable initiatives in the past, but haven’t been that organised in our approach.  Hopefully in the next week or two, we’ll go live with a very cool new initiative.  Watch this space.
2. Focus Focus Focus for Valentine’s Day: Everyone thinks florists make a fortune selling Valentine’s flowers.  Sadly not; it’s the flower growers that really rake it in, as flower prices can quadruple (or more) for the big day.   Getting Valentine’s right is a real head ache for florists as so much can go wrong and cause disaster.  All rather stressful.  Still, Valentine’s Day is on a Saturday this year so it should be quieter, with less traffic on the roads.  Hooray!
3. Keep building our international businesses: The team also runs Arena Bloemen and Arena Blumen, fulfilling from our base in Holland and delivering the same experience for Benelux and German flower lovers as we do for UK flower lovers.  This year, we’ll focus on building up our international businesses and optimising the operating model to deliver great value and quality across Europe.
4. Green initiatives and FFP: We were the first florists to sell Fair Flowers Fair Plants flowers and we want to expand our FFP range as it’s not broad enough.  We also want to be more transparent about improvements in the green areas of our business, like recycling and green waste.  Adarsh has done some great work here recently, but just hasn’t had time to write up what he’s been up to.
5. The customer is king: Last but not least! We’ve got no business without happy customers, so our top resolution for this year, as with every other, is to keep making sure we do the best job we possibly can and delight our customers.  If you have any suggestions of how we can improve, please send them to feedback(at)arenaflowers.com or leave a comment below.
6. Fun!: A bonus 6th resolution is to remember life is fun and not to be taken too seriously.  In that vein, and for those that didn’t see it in our Arena Flowers Twitter feed, here’s an alternative take on the phrase “Arena Flowers” that we found on the web through our Google Alerts. The artist named the piece “Arena Flowers” entirely coincidentally and described it thus:

Batch of for-fun character designs! The concept is a group of young ladies with no predisposition towards this activity for various reasons find themselves involved in wizardly pit fights.

See his Arena Flowers in full here.

Happy New Year, Everyone!

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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 (though Steve got all sentimental and decided to keep the last one as a memento).

Given the economic environment and the weakness of the pound, we’ve spent an awful lot of our time recently trimming unnecessary costs to make sure that our customers continue to get great value for money out of every pound they spend with Arena.  We try very hard to deliver a great product at a great price and we hate wasting money.

One example of where we’ve trimmed cost is in our marketing.  Like other online businesses, we always look at our marketing channels in peak periods to see how we can bring in new visitors and orders cost effectively.  This Christmas we have been amazed how much some of our competitors are willing to pay to buy traffic and orders, especially given it’s “credit crunch Christmas”.  One might expect marketing budgets to go down in this environment, but in fact some companies are being extremely aggressive and, frankly, throwing their customers’ money away.  Who pays? The customer of course, with a substandard product being delivered as there’s no money left for flowers because of the inflated marketing spend.

Here’s a concrete example from one of our competitors, to illustrate the crazy commission deals currently on offer and some of the tricks they’re using to try to claw some of that cost back.

Here’s what they are paying for their affiliate marketing:

• 20% commission to affiliates who send them orders
• 6% to the affiliate network
• 10% off for the customer, through a promo code given out by the affiliates

That’s 26% marketing cost plus a 10% reduction in sale value.  But that’s not all.  The commissions are all payable on the gross sale price, including VAT.  But sales are only recognised ex VAT.  So for a bouquet listed at £40 on their website:

• The gross value of the sale is actually recognised at £36 because of the 10% discount
• The net value of the order once VAT is deducted is £31.31 (£36/1.15)
• Marketing cost is £9.36 (26% of £36), fully 30% of the ex VAT value of the order!

Believe it or not, it gets worse.  Given this competitor runs a relay service, there will also be a hefty relay charge in there, at least 20% but probably more, taken by the competitor as a fee for passing the order to a local florist.  I don’t know the exact relay cost % because we don’t use the relay model, as we believe it’s a waste of money to pay middle men plus relay means you can’t control the quality of the end product.

But I digress.  The point is that with this huge marketing spend and the relay fees, over 50% of a customer’s money is spent on, erm, not a lot! With 10% knocked off the overall sale value of the bouquet anyway, one has to wonder how much is actually spent on  flowers and floristry once the order makes its way to the local florist.  It must be virtually nothing, otherwise this would be a heavily loss making offer.

Or so it would seem. But the competitor has pulled some pretty Machiavellian tricks to mitigate the impact of its marketing largesse.  For example, there’s a £4 standard delivery charge on top of the bouquet price.  The 10% discount doesn’t apply to the £4 delivery charge, only the £40 bouquet price.  There’s also a minimum £40 spend (excluding delivery charge) for the promo code to work.  Yet the lowest priced bouquet over £40 is actually priced at £44 so if your original budget was £40, after the promo code you’re back to where you started (plus have the £4 delivery charge on top). Try to find a bouquet at £40, £41, £42 or even £43 and you’ll come up empty handed.

We saw this offer and didn’t even consider matching it.  Our marketing spend percentage is way way lower than those figures as we like to put our customers’ money into flowers rather than to blow it on middle men.  We don’t sneak a delivery charge in (we offer free standard delivery) and we don’t use clever tricks to get ourselves out of tight spots created by our marketing, as we think that that will just annoy visitors and customers.  If people want to get really good discounts and special offers from Arena, the only real way to do so is to sign up to our free newsletters or to become an Arena Flowers follower on Facebook.

I guess the fact that we refuse to offer such sky high commissions means that less affiliates will want to promote Arena and we’ll grow a little more slowly.  But on the other hand, we’ll deliver a high quality product with transparent pricing and we’ll wow and retain our customers (hopefully) so that the next time they want to send flowers they’ll (hopefully) come straight back to us. And for that second order, we’ll spend exactly nothing on marketing and our customer will continue to get great service from us because we haven’t blown all their money on relay fees and marketing – everyone’s a winner.  With 40% of our orders coming from repeat customers we feel that this strategy is working out pretty well so far and that’s exactly what we’re going to keep on doing.

On that note, “Bah, Humbug!” to wasting customer’s hard earned money, thanks to all our readers and customers, and Merry Christmas to everyone!

PS If you want to send Christmas flowers with no hidden costs or jiggery pokery, click here. :)

If you enjoyed this post, you may also enjoy our other marketing posts.

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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 style of quite a few media channels.  Before people lock up their PCs or throw them in the river, they should remember that they are significantly more likely to be a victim of crime and fraud when venturing into the real world than they are when venturing online.

There’s no doubt that education is key in battling web spam and other forms of online fraud and Get Safe Online in particular does a fantastic job of putting out clear, moderate and easy to understand information on how to take care of oneself online.  Common sense recommendations include running regular updates for your browser and operating system, having up to date antivirus, antispyware and firewall software and not responding to unsolicited emails or giving away key personal and account information online.  Often, sites like Get Safe Online recommend third party software vendors, such as AVG or McAffee.

Understandably, reputable online businesses recognise the challenge of building trust and at Arena we work very hard to address potential trust concerns of visitors, such as payment methods and checkout integrity, site security, quality / value / freshness of product, and data protection and privacy policies.  After all, if we’re asking customers to hand over their money without ever having met us face to face, then they will need to be convinced that we are who we say we are and that we’ll deliver on our promises.  We try as much as we can to be clear and transparent about what we do (posting to our blog regularly is part of that…I hope it’s clear that this post isn’t being written by a scammer in Eastern Europe!).  The key is not to slip up as, as they say, “trust is hard to win and very easy to lose”.  Once you have it, do your very best to hold on to it.

It’s therefore incredibly frustrating when a lot of hard work is potentially undone by a company that really should know better – MessageLabs (who were, incidentally, purchased for a whopping $700m by Symantec yesterday).  To explain, last week we sent out one of our regular marketing emails to our subscriber base.  So far so good.  But soon after the send, we started receiving emails from concerned customers.  They had received the following email from their mail client, Message Labs:

Subject: WARNING. Someone tried to send you a potential virus or unauthorised code

Body of email included the following: The MessageLabs Email Security System discovered a possible virus or unauthorised code (such as a Trojan) in an email sent to you.

Possible MalWare ‘Exploit/Phishing-paypal-1054′ found in ’7782603_2X_PM3_EMQ_MH__message.htm’. Heuristics score: 202

Now, I don’t know what you think, but if I received an email like that from my firewall supplier, I’d look very hard at any future communications from Arena and quite possibly unsubscribe immediately. After all, MessageLabs are a $700m company so they must be right, yeah?  Surely, they wouldn’t send out an email that slams a genuine business’s legitimate, opt-in marketing activity so thunderously by mistake?  Big boys like MessageLabs are bound to have complicated checks and balances in place to avoid accidentally torpedoing the legitimate marketing efforts of other organisations.  A web security firm in particular would understand the importance of online reputation and the hard work that goes into building trust.  And in any case, Arena has been sending regular marketing emails every other week for over two years, so no doubt MessageLabs would be able to use characteristics of our mail sends, such as previous send frequency, an unchanged IP address, subject lines etc etc to double check the validity of the send.

Nope.  It was a complete, 100% misdiagnosis by MessageLabs, as they subsequently confirmed.  We learnt that the reason that our email got hammered is that we put the word “PayPal” into the subject line yet we are not PayPal.  Blimey.  Sophisticated stuff.  We had PayPal in our subject line to let our customers know that they could win £10k cash if they paid for any order with PayPal during PayPal’s very generous 10th birthday promotion.

Obviously, customers of large online companies and banks, such as PayPal, can be targeted by spoof emails. However, our marketing email prior to this email also had PayPal in the subject line and email body and there was no backlash.  Also, I find it hard to understand how the word PayPal appearing in our mail can lead someone to imply we’re sending “viruses or unauthorised code”.  A virus would typically be an attachment of some kind, not a word in a subject line. I feel bad for PayPal too – we get way way more fraud from people who pay with credit cards than we do from people who pay with PayPal.  Fraud on orders paid with PayPal is virtually nil.  We much prefer people to pay with PayPal.

One of the first emails we received was in fact from a MessageLabs sales rep (who’d previously bought from Arena and who’d therefore received the MessageLabs warning email direct). His mail:

Please remove me from all your mailing list right away as you are sending viruses.
I can assist you with possible solutions however I was unable to reach your IT department.
MessageLabs Anti-virus solution has a SLA of 100% protection from all known and unknown viruses, phishing, trojans and other forms of malware.

http://www.messagelabs.co.uk/products/

Thank you

10/10 for being a pushy sales rep but frankly this mail was not terribly well received as you can imagine.  You wouldn’t want this guy consoling you if you broke up with your partner. “I’m afraid you’ve been dumped but I’m a pimp – have you considered paying for sex?”.  You’d then be even more upset when you found out that it was this guy that had caused the break up with your partner in the first place.

We also noted that, unlike the careful wording of the automated email sent by MessageLabs’ system, his email did not talk about “possible” viruses but came straight out and said “you are sending viruses” which was patently untrue. A rather terse email exchange followed, as you might expect, though not litigation as might have been the case with our American cousins (we’re too British for that).

In any case, I eventually spoke to the UK’s head of corporate sales who unsurprisingly was more reasonable and sort of / nearly / just about apologetic (although he too did suggest we bought their software, admittedly more tongue in cheek that his sales chasing colleague).  He gave me some spiel about how great MessageLabs is and how they use  complicated predictive algorithms to filter mail which all sounded good but didn’t stand up very well to “very nice, but it was just the word PayPal in the subject line that triggered this mess and you misdiagnosed it as a virus anyway”.

The frustrating thing about this is that MessageLabs has several million installed users in the UK, particularly in big, wealthy organisations, such as the government and banks etc.  These are obviously valuable potential customers and exactly the kind of people we’d love to retain.  Unfortunately we have no way of knowing how many such customers have now had their hard won trust in Arena dented or destroyed by MessageLabs’ misdiagnosis and there is no real way for us to fix this (bar writing this cathartic blog post!).  The chap at MessageLabs said “Sorry” but it’s not going to make any difference.  It’s clearly no coincidence that this email performed far worse than any other we’ve ever sent; it can realistically only be down to our MessageLabs mishap.

Maybe to add insult to injury MessageLabs will read this post and then use some of their freshly coined $700m to blast us right off the face of the earth and have done with it.  Ah well, you live and learn.  They didn’t do it on purpose but it certainly hurt.  I guess no matter how careful you are, there will always factors beyond your control, coming from any and all directions, that might disrupt your business.  The best laid plans of mice and men and all that…

Update: Following the post, we were featured on Mail on Sunday and other popular news channels. Read Mail on Sunday’s article on Arena Flowers here. The Register, one of the UK’s leading technology publishers picked up on our concerns and featured an article about Arena Flowers here. The article also featured on Softpedia, a leading technology related online publisher. Read the article on Arena Flowers here.

Post from: Arena Flowers - Flower Delivery London & UK

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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 cause and we’re very happy to help our customers lend their support, to commemorate past sacrifices and to support those still on the front line today.  Rather than waffle on, I’ll share an explanatory paragraph on the Appeal (from Wikipedia):

The charity [The Royal British Legion] organises a fund-raising drive each year during which artificial poppies, meant to be worn on clothing, are offered to the public in return for a charitable donation. Over the course of the preceding year disabled people are employed making the poppies. The idea of poppies dates back to the poem In Flanders’ Fields about the First World War, after which the Legion was founded. The idea is that the poppies are worn from November to Remembrance Day to remember the fallen of the First World War, and implicitly the dead of other wars. The Poppy Appeal has without doubt a higher profile than any other charity appeal in the UK, with the poppies ubiquitous from late October until mid-November every year and worn by the general public, politicians and other public figures and television presenters.

Useful links: The Royal British Legion | The Poppy Appeal

We’re always happy to help good causes where appropriate and feasible. Please get in touch if you feel we may be able to help your campaign.  If you enjoyed this post, you might also enjoy this post on Help for Heroes, this one about Amnesty International, this one about our support of this year’s British Heart Foundation Valentine’s campaign and this one about us giving away free flowers for charity.

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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 refuting anything and they’ll just let their insurance pay up.”  Or there’s the very real fact that insurance companies tend to want to “settle” in favour of the member of the public, all other things being equal.  At Arena, we totally disagree with the “just pay out” attitude and will do what we can to make sure that spurious personal injury claims don’t get paid out as, at the end of the day, it’s a form of theft and it drives up costs for everyone, which eventually means customers.  And no one wants that!

The reason I chose to write this post up is because a good example came up where a bit of driver training saved us £10k on a claim that was about to be paid out by the insurance company.  A while back one of our drivers, “Little Mariusz”, had a small knock on the left wing of his van from a car that pulled into his lane.  There was no damage to our van and only very minor damage to the other car (see below).  The police came and said there was nothing to report and, as our van wasn’t damaged, we had no issue.  The lady driving the other car was fine and walking about for the 20 mins it took to resolve.  So far so good.

We then received a letter from our insurance agent a few weeks later saying that there was a new claim for £10k and could we please respond to it.  When we realised that it was this same incident we were scratching our heads.  What was the personal injury?  Apparently whiplash.  Impressive, given it was a sideways knock at about about 5mph.  We said that this was clearly absurd, it was not our fault and pointed out that this had been agreed, orally, at the time.  Ah, but the other driver has a witness statement, was the response.  Furthermore, on the basis of this witness statement, your insurance company wants to settle in the other driver’s favour (despite the facts at the time saying something totally different). Erm, can we at least see the witness statement first please, was our reply.

When the witness statement came through, it was from an individual who was not present at the scene (he certainly didn’t speak or make himself known to the police or Mariusz during the 20 mins Mariusz was there).  And then when we read the statement, a brilliant moment – the diagram and description above form the main part of the witness statement.  The statement suggests that the witness was standing right next to our van, which he said was in the left hand lane, and that our van pulled out and hit the car, which he said was in the right hand lane.  However, the photos taken at the scene clearly show that our van was actually on the right hand side of the car, not the left hand side, because the damage is on the right hand side of the car, not the left hand side.  So effectively, the “witness”, who claimed to be standing right next to the incident, actually managed to get his story completely the wrong way round.  One would think that if you’re going to invent a witness statement to try and get a personal injury payout, you could at least get the facts in the hokey statement correct!  Mixing up left and right is pretty basic stuff.

Clearly, in most circumstances, you won’t be so lucky to have a fake claim against you be so clearly falsified.  What to do in these circumstances?  Well, given, as mentioned above, that insurance companies will typically just “settle” unless you can prove that a claim is fake, it pays to follow a few basic steps to in the event of an accident.  Here are the simple things that we ask our drivers to do in the event of any collision (on the basis of advice from our insurers and our own additions) – every driver has a sheet with these instructions in their van at all times:

• Obtain contact, vehicle and insurance details of other driver(s).
• Obtain contact details of any witnesses.  It is important to get witnesses as otherwise fake witnesses can appear at a later date.
• Take lots of photos, of vehicles, witnesses, registrations etc. Lots! Photos don’t cost money and the one you thought might suffice might be blurry.  Take lots!
• Take the name and badge number of any police officer that attends the scene.  Even the suggestion of police involvement can cause chancers to melt away, as we’ve seen before.
• Do not admit responsibility (even if it’s your fault), especially not in writing, as you could then be liable for any subsequent damage to the vehicle in totally unrelated incidents.  Admitting responsibility can be a bit like writing a blank cheque. Just stick to the facts without expressing an opinion. Insurers will determine liability and this can vary depending on circumstances.
• Do not proceed with non-urgent repairs until permission has been granted by insurers.  An inspection of damage may be needed.

Another key is not to be British and say “no harm done, off we go” and neglect to take the above simple steps as your politeness could cost you a lot afterwards.  The above is hardly rocket science but it can save a huge amount of money, for both businesses and individuals.  A small ding on someone else’s car (their fault) could have cost us £10k and very nearly did.  This is not small beer and would undoubtedly have pushed up the insurance premium for every one of our 9 vans when our policy was up for renewal. It would have cost us thousands.  Hopefully, in the unfortunate event that you’re involved in an incident, following the same steps could save you money (and hassle) too.

PS as ever, the disclaimer is that we’re not a legal firm so don’t take the above as watertight legal advice.  They’re just our internal guidelines which we thought might be of interest. :)

Similar Posts: If you liked this post you may find our other post How to Beat Illegal Car Clamping Scammers – And Save £300 and our other posts on fraud and ne’er do wells interesting.

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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 instances of other flower websites using our images to mislead customers for commercial gains. We have also seen a couple of websites clone our web layout completely. But recently, we were quite surprised to see a florist advertise publicly for a developer whose primary job is to copy the design and layout of Arena Flowers. A copy of the advert from the web:

We need our ecommerce site UI to be redesigned and clone www.arenaflowers.com (ours is much simpler). This includes streamlining flows, enhancing the color scheme, and making the pages more appealing and easy for users to comprehend. Our exsiting site has been built on x- cart with Smarty applied. Candidate must have solid working knowledge in Smarty templet aplications. Samples needed. Skills in CSS and Javascript highly desirable. previous experience in Smarty is a must

We are quite proud of our efforts of setting a benchmark among online florists. To imitate a business is to pay the business a genuine, unintended compliment and we gladly accept the compliment. But we are a bit wary of content thieves showing a systematic disregard towards copyright and trademark laws.

The advent of Web 2.0 has spawned a new generation of public domain websites, where users are encouraged to post their views on a variety of online channels including blogging and social networking. The distribution of product images on these channels by content publishers does help in building brand awareness for Arena Flowers, but only when explicit references are made to the source of our fresh flower images. As long as our images or content are not being used for commercial gains we have no objections, although we would be happy if publishers source the images to our site as a polite gesture for copying. However, we get nothing when publishers benefit commercially by using our content and images.

The Intellectual Property Organisation in the UK, states that ownership of content is an automatic right and there’s no need to register for Copyright in the United Kingdom (We are registered trademark owners of our Brand Name and related associations). Secondly, all of our pages are clearly marked with the Copyright symbol. Finally, for violation of Copyright for commercial gains, criminal charges can be brought resulting in severe fines, compensation and jail for violators.  We’re not taking this too seriously, but it’s worth understanding the rules!

Such issues highlight the importance of responsible blogging and publishing in the online world. It is exceedingly important for website publishers to take notice of copyright issues while posting content and media on to their web pages. From our experience, we have realised that it is necessary to identify best practice measures for website publishing to avoid unwanted complications. Our approach:

• Never copy anything from other websites, particularly commercial sites, even if they don’t have a Copyright symbol. In the UK as with many other countries, authors have an automatic right to the content they create. If you are compelled to use an image or content from a commercial website for non-commercial reasons, always provide a link back to the main website from where the image or content was obtained.
• If your post needs a picture to convey the message, your best bet is to get the graphic from one of the royalty free image sites like Foto Search. Also, support the Creative Commons by opting to use images rated under the project. Although, Creative Commons is not the legal entity, it is a non-profit organisation working towards creating a universal copyright license.
• It is a great practice to use public domain news websites, Governmental and authority websites for your posts. If you find an interesting post or an article on another website, and wish to comment upon it on your site or blog, use a short quote and provide a link to that source before adding your thoughts and views for refining the point.

By adopting these simple measures, you should not only assure your legal rights but also help in protecting your own works.

Similar posts: If you enjoyed this post, you may find our other posts on Defamation Advice Tips for Bloggers and Protecting your brand in the Search Engines interesting.

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