Here is a great little Valentine gift for you, a Valentine video called…The Gift.

Our second little treat for you today is a look around the Dutch Flower Auction.

We hope you enjoyed the videos, you can find more of them here.

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There are many well documented ways to make a girl like you. Unfortunately they are mostly wrong. A fast car, a nice house and fashionable clothes doesn’t project ‘cool guy’, it reeks of ‘organised crime’.

Rule #1: Do Not Be Yourself

Under no circumstances must you be yourself. There’s a reason why you’re single and using the advice of an online flower delivery company to find a mate. Be someone else, but don’t make the mistake of being someone obvious like James Bond or George Clooney. In reality women would be put off by James Bond’s disregard for human life or George Clooney’s busy work schedule.

Nothing says potential boyfriend like ‘former boyfriend’. People are always getting back together with old flames. Find him, follow him, and become him. By mimicking the personality and look of her ex lover you will be tapping into tools which have already proven to work on this specific lady in the past.

Rule #2: Become Best Friends With Her Mother

Nobody has a bigger influence on a woman’s relationship than her mother. Become close to the mother and she’ll be sure to put in a good word for you. It’s easy to befriend a mother by simply turning up at her house unannounced with a bottle of Martini, Casablanca on DVD and a Backgammon board. When she answers the door you must repeat these words exactly: “Hello. I’m a friend of your daughter. I’ve come to be your friend too.” Everyone likes having friends and it will reassure her that you have not come to murder her.

Rule #3: Be Mysterious

All women like mystery. It’s thrilling.

• Change your name often. (Occasionally claim to have no name)
• Lurk in the shadows.
• Give false information.
• Pretend to be confused.

Rule #4: Be Dying

Fake an illness. Sympathy is a powerful motivator of emotions. Even if a woman doesn’t love a man, she might be forced into loving him just in case she believes that one day she could have loved him, but now she might never get that chance. Alternatively, claim to be immortal. This would make you appear quite unique and a good long term investment.

If you missed the beginning of this series of romantic tips, click to read part one of the blog.

Tommorow we’ll have a write up on ‘How To Ask A Girl On A Date’.

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Click here to view the embedded video.

We hope you like our Dubstep Video, we have a competition for this video. If you share it via this page then you could win £100

For more great videos go to our video page here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s our second video of the day, a tour around Arena Flowers.

Don’t forget, to see more videos you just need to visit our video page.

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We like to be helpful and so for this year’s Valentine’s we’ve called on a “specialist” to share his top tips in the dating game. Unfortunately, given one of his most sensible tips is to pretend to be your target’s ex-boyfriend, we’re not sure exactly what he’s a “specialist” in. We’ll share a new post every day this week, addressing a different aspect of love and the wooing game. Without further ado, the first installment: How to tell if a girl likes you. Read on!

The most effective way to discover whether or not a girl likes you is to examine her Amare Saccuss (‘love sack’). This is a small area at the front of the brain which fills with mucus whenever feelings of a romantic nature develop. The mucus can be easily accessed by piercing the skull with a large syringe and drawing the substance out. The redder the mucus the stronger her feelings are likely to be towards you.

However, it is not always appropriate to pierce a lady’s brain with a needle.  In such cases there are a number of ways (although much less effective) to uncover her true feelings:

1. Ask her if she likes you.

This is perhaps the most obvious, but also the most dangerous. You’ll be playing your cards very firmly away from your chest.  She’ll immediately discover your intentions and there’s no guarantee that she’ll give a truthful answer.

However, there is a method you can use to disguise your question and intentions. Walk up to her with a clipboard and ask if she likes Martin (assuming that you both have a mutual acquaintance called Martin).  Pretend to tick something on the clipboard. Then ask her if she likes Peter (again, only if you both know someone called Peter). Continue this with 50 or so names until eventually you ask her “Do you like me?”. If she says yes you might want to try to kiss her, but I would recommend playing it cool by then asking her another 50 or so names.

2. Does she always laugh at your jokes?

If a lady likes a man she will often laugh at his jokes, even if they are not funny. The most important thing is to know whether she laughs at your jokes because she likes you or because you are very, very funny.  I would suggest that you enrol yourself in an open mic comedy night to confirm just how funny you are. If your jokes result in a standing ovation, hysterical laughter and a job as a man who appears in many TV panel shows, then you are probably quite funny and she has no romantic feelings towards you at all. However, if your performance results in heckles, awkward silences and a pint of urine being thrown in your face, then I would strongly urge you to wash your face, run straight to the lady’s house and kiss her.

3. Is she often running her hands through your hair, stroking your neck, holding your hand and asking you out on dates?

It’s possible that she likes you, but it’s more likely to be some kind of trap to humiliate you. You must tell her that you will not stand for her games and you will only agree to a date upon the condition that you gain access to her Amare Saccus for scientific research.

—

We hope this was helpful!

The next installment of our romantic guide will be published here on our blog tomorrow: Part Two – How to get a girl to like you.

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If you’ve ever considered classic fine art to be a bit stuffy and perhaps lacking colour, we have a remedy.  After a recent visit to the International Floriculture Trade Fair in Holland, we’ve found some art with added extras.  We can now see some classic masterpieces with some lovely floral ingredients added.   With artists ranging from Monet, Manet through to De Vinci, we’re going to give you a rundown of our favourites and a little background to each piece.

1) Mona Lisa

This classic painting by Leonardo Da Vinci has had many people wondering; just what is she smiling at as well her relationship to the artist.  Theories have been researched and conjectured upon but no one shall ever truly know (unless Da Vinci kept a secret journal of course).

However the image is a bit bland.  Granted, you could say that the detail is in the background and in the encapsulating smile, but doesn’t it look so much more colourful with Roses? We think it does so we’ve posted the picture here for you.

2) A Bar at the Folies-Bergére

Manet is the next artist we’re about to brighten up.   Created in 1882 this was the last major work by the French maestro.  Showing a scene from a bar in Paris the original painting had an assortment of champagne bottles, glasses and fruit but little in the way of floral design except a small Rose in a glass. Well as you can see the image has been accentuated here to have a full blown Rose in the foreground to bring some much needed colour to the scene. Who doesn’t like pink Roses!?

3) The Milkmaid

Johannes Vermeer is the creator of this masterpiece; you may recognise his style from the more famous piece ‘The Girl with the Pearl Earring’ about which a movie was recently made.  In the original composition there is a rather drab table with some loaves of bread and a few pitchers. Nothing really stands out although it has to be said that there are some striking blue tones for which Vermeer was well known to produce. If we wanted to add a little something extra then what better way to offset the yellow top that the maid is wearing by introducing a yellow bouquet of Roses which makes it even more stunning.  No matter what daily chore the servant is instructed to do, we’re sure that every task would be made that little bit easier if you had a bit of extra colour and this is beautifully demonstrated here with yellow Roses.

4) Café Terrace at Night

This painting of a Café in Arles, France was made by the great Vincent Van Gogh in 1888.  Van Gogh was an inspiration to the great impressionists such as Monet, who were to come later, it is a tragedy that he was never recognised in his time as being the great artist he was.

This painting is of a scene that is still visible today, with Van Gogh’s unmistakable style of sky and foreground with large brush strokes clearly visible.  However, in the original the table is a little drab.  The recreation has added a little colour with some delightful orange and pink Roses which combine with the colour of the wall and floor perfectly. They may be a little out of proportion to the rest of the painting but Van Gogh was never a stickler for perspective himself, so I’m sure he’d understand.

5) Luncheon of the Boating Party

One of France’s truly great artists and an early impressionist, Pierre Renoir mastered his technique with beautiful and subtle brush strokes with an excellent use of light.  Still very much an impressionist but with perhaps a more realistic approach than compared to his contemporaries such as Monet, Renoir’s scenes are often associated with dignified glimpses into everyday life.   Indeed, one part of the manifesto of the impressionist movement was to capture what was before them, rather than creating a false impression or composition.

In this piece we find a group of what we can presume to be well to do friends enjoying a summers’ day.  There are plenty of things to keep the eye occupied across the piece as your eye follows the various gazes of the main characters.  What you may notice is that in the original there are no flowers on the table.  Instead, the flowers are in the hats of the women sitting at the tables.  Something is wrong here, so in this recreation there’s been a bit of a reworking of the table decoration with some beautiful pink Roses to give the scene a bit of added sparkle.  I’m sure you’ll agree that the scene is now set beautifully and this masterpiece is now perfect, though in fairness to Renoir it was pretty good originally.

These paintings are masterpieces but I think it’s fair to say that the additional flowers make the scenes look more striking.  If you’re searching for a bit of extra colour you can’t go wrong with a Rose to brighten up the situation.  Although we believe these paintings do look better for having flowers in them, we don’t condone or encourage anyone to start defacing pieces of fine art, you’ll get arrested and we’d get in trouble.

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Drugs, stress and fire. They all share just one unlikely thing in common, flowers.  Indeed, from bud to bouquet, a flower’s life is not quite as innocent as one would think…
image source | image source

1)      From The Netherlands with drugs

On occasion, the Dutch flower industry has been utilised by criminals as a cover for some of the most lucrative drug smuggling enterprises known to date.

Chrysanthemums and cannabis seems a highly unlikely coupling. Yet on March 10^th 2010, British police unearthed a staggering ten tonnes of skunk with an estimated street value of £30 million in a farm near Swindon. A gang were found to have been purchasing boxes of chrysanthemums at the enormous international flower market at Naaldwijk near The Haig before concealing cannabis inside each and exporting them to Britain.

image source | image source

Cannabis is by no means an isolated drug in its occasional illegal relationship with the Dutch flower trade.  Indeed, on September 15^th 2010, the Spanish National Guard uncovered 120kg of speed masked in a shipment of Dutch flowers. The 400,000 doses of amphetamine sulphate were seized in time to prevent it flooding the market, a strategic move in the preservation of the Spanish population’s aesthetics, as the pictures below of methamphetamine users attests to.

image source | image source

Rest assured, the only drug with which the flower-buying public has any contact is the crucial plant-food used during the growing process to make flowers beautiful and long-lasting.

2)      Dawn duels for the farmers’ jewels

It’s 6.30am and Europe is contemplating a shower over its morning coffee. Meanwhile, a fierce battle is underway in a small town in Holland where everything is at stake for those who dare to partake. The peaceful lakeside town of Aalsmeer boasts the largest flower auction in the world. The daily auction, frenetic, fast-paced and disturbingly competitive, is an event restricted to only the most stout-hearted members of our species.

After rising at an unseemly hour of the morning, 3000 buyers flock to the Aalsmeer auction house to make or break their fortunes in “the New York stock exchange of flowers”. Each morning upon entering an auction room, one will encounter an auditorium of anxious buyers, eyes frantically darting between the thirteen prominent clocks above and the convoy of flower laden carts below.

image source

The clocks, invented by a Dutch cauliflower grower in the 1870’s, rapidly tick down the price of the displayed batch of flowers. In order to buy the flowers, a buyer must press a button on their desk which freezes the price at its point on the fast-moving clock. Press too soon and the price paid will be too high, press too late and the competitor to your side will have beaten you to the bunch. Either way, a mistake will prove costly.

3)      Fiery funeral for a flower

A fiery end awaits those ill-starred flowers which remain unsold at the culmination of the auction. These hapless flowers enter a frightening incinerator, never to grace a table.

image source

As the auction sets a minimum price for each group of flowers, if no buyer stops the clock before it lowers beneath this price, the flowers are deemed unsold and are burnt. Greater numbers of flowers meet this fiery fate during the summer months when the flower yield is greatest yet holiday-making Europe exerts less demand. On a happier note, growers are paid this minimum price by the auction, a Dutch rose earning €0.05 for example.

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Flowers fall in love just as us humans do according to the writer of our new absurdist style Twitter feed. As in real life though, things never run smoothly as you will see in the beautifully sketched drawing below entitled ‘If Roses Could Talk’.

TIP: If you are a flower looking for a holiday romance abroad – do not assume everybody else can speak English.

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When travelling around the web, one comes across lots of funny and bizarre things. The “flowers skeleton sculptures” below from Dutch artist Cedric Laquieze must rank amongst the more bizarre offerings we’ve seen recently though. Not a product  / service we’ll be offering at Flowers HQ anytime soon…

Original source.

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This post is in fact a little overdue as our Birthday was back in July so please excuse the tardiness (what can I say, it was a big party :). Its also been a while since I last wrote a post so seeing both are overdue I thought I would pen this particular post.

Somehow the years have slipped by, summers and winters have come and gone and we have quietly got older and dare I say it, wiser. We celebrated our fifth birthday in July and whilst this may be just a fraction of ones lifetime it is noteworthy as it is a long time in business. Truth is, celebrating our birthday in July is a bit formal as that is based around the paper work of setting up a business and moving into our new warehouse. For me the fun began on the 19th September 2006 when the florists moved in and we made our first sale (so perhaps this post isn’t late, just perfectly timed!). Seeing your hard work come together like that is genuinely priceless.

There have been many exciting times at Arena Flowers, with each year showing growth and innovation in numerous areas of the business. I am lucky enough to have been at Arena from the start and so have watched as we have built upon our foundations and grown up. As a parent I can say this as watching a business evolve is not unlike watching your kids get older, you take pride in each new development and want to tell your family and friends why yours is better than the rest. Will, our MD, may not be a dad (yet) but as the father of our business he will be the first one to talk your ear off about how amazing Arena Flowers is. :)

Much like the pencil marks in my kitchen that show my kids’ growth, I thought I would use this post to highlight some of those moments that have helped grow Arena into the business it is today.

Year One, March 2006 > June 2007

For me the first year starts a little earlier, back in March of 2006, when Will, Steve and I met in my local pub to talk about a website they wanted to build. The plan was to sell flowers, online! That first meeting quickly formed a plan and from there a first draft of a website, this grew and grew until it was something that Will felt confident he could show investors. A short while later, in July, we found ourselves in a board room in Pall Mall signing the incorporation document.

Like any new business our first year was all about setting up. We had set ourselves a significant benchmark, to be the best online florist out there and that required attention to detail in all areas from floristry, customer service, delivery and even our photography. We set about kitting out our new warehouse with a bespoke built fridge for all our flowers, hand made benches for the florists and the necessary phone system and computers.

Will quickly found his feet as MD and was soon immersed in paper work, buying a fleet of vans for our London deliveries and negotiating with suppliers. Steve, who had a background in the flower industry, got to work with the florists getting our ranges together (whilst also working on our SEO and Adwords). With the website up and running (we had finished building it in August 2006) I started work on a long to-do list to add more features to the site with our developer Zach. Having a background in photography and design I also set up a studio upstairs in our warehouse so we could take our own product shots. Jackie was kept very busy building the customer service team which quickly grew to match the increase in orders we were getting. Mariusz our head of distribution, was tasked with managing our London drivers, organising their orders each day and then managing the next day delivery orders. Everyone had their own department to manage and it quickly became evident that there was much to do!

Our first bit of development for the year (enter Henry, developer number 2) was an integration with Parcelforce so that our customers would get instant notifications of the orders being delivered. We also built our own SMS tool to extend this feature. Cool hey! This was followed by adding cross sell to the checkout, so you could add chocolates and balloons etc to your order and our Upload Photo tool which lets you upload a digital photo for us to print out and include with your message card. We had fun building our first Facebook app, Flowers&Fun which lets you send our flowers virtually to your friends on Facebook. As you can see from the links to past posts we also launched our blog. Not a bad start.

Year Two, July 2007 > July 2008

12 months later and with a successful Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day under our belts we felt ready to start building on to the business. We added our International Flower delivery section, allowing our customer to send flowers all over the world. Our chocolate sales impressed our supplier Prestat so much that they asked us to build them their own chocolate website and manage their CS. We also took our first step into Europe, setting up a warehouse and business in Holland and launching ArenaBloemen.nl (which meant a lot of translations and adding Euros to our code base). Hot on the heels of the launch of our Dutch website we set our sights on Germany and armed with our new translations database we set about building ArenaBlumen.de and launched it in April 2008. I had fun branding our vans and my son Luke was born and Will stepped in as Godfather :) A good year all round.

Year Three, July 2008 > July 2009

This year marked our entry into B2B partnerships with our first white label website for Cancer Research UK. We also launched our Arena for Business service which allows approved businesses to order flowers on our website and add them to an invoice rather than getting their credit card out. In July 2008 we were invited to the IMRG online green awards and were delighted to win an OLGA. Enjoying our European expansion we launched our French website ArenaFleurs.fr . With four international websites operational we started building up our bi-lingual marketing team, employing a bright young team each one fluent in their native German, Dutch and French languages, as well as English. Keeping the development ball rolling we released our Calendar Reminder feature allowing our customers to add important dates to their account and we then remind them in time to send flowers next time the Birthday or Anniversary comes around.

Year Four, July 2009 > July 2010

At the end of July 2009 we launched our Dutch language Belgian website ArenaBloemen.be which was followed by the French language Belgian website ArenaFleurs.be. This marked our fourth country in mainland Europe and the realisation that we needed more boots on the ground in Holland. Steve took up the not insignificant task of moving to Holland and learning the language! His dedication to the task at hand and love of the country was confirmed when he married Elsa (who he had met when she joined us to help set up the Dutch website). Meanwhile we completed our API designed to allow larger partners to send us orders through a seamless XML service that manages prices, stock control and delivery dates to name a few. This milestone began some exciting conversations with some very interesting brands, all hush hush as I am sure you can appreciate :) In the later part of 2009 Pascale joined us to head up our marketing team and grow our European roll out. Perhaps the most significant addition to the Arena engine for the year came when Steve set to work planning a new stock control and buying database. Destined to revolutionalise our purchasing and warehouse management in the UK and in Europe the project rapidly expanded and we employed extra developers to help us build this crucial tool. In February 2010 we launched our Twitter app, FlowersFun.co.uk which instantly took off. Winning the Smarta 100 award was a nice way to conclude a very exciting year!

Year Five, July 2010 > July 2011

Seeing the business grow over the past years has caused us all to have to focus on our own specialist tasks. Gone are the days of multitasking, so much so that we hired a Group Financial Controller, Adnan, to manage our group finances < lucky him :) The snow in the winter of 2010 was eye watering to the extent that we are now integrated with 3 full time couriers. Despite this we had a successful Christmas and that was followed by a very slick Valentine’s Day And Mother’s Day. With Steve’s mega database live and monitoring our every step we had complete visibility of all our teams both here and abroad, a system that allowed us to fulfill over five times the number of orders that we delivered over our very first Valentine’s Day. With a larger management team we outgrew our offices in the warehouse and marketing, product and web development and admin moved to shiny new offices opposite BBC Television Centre. Once installed I set to work redesigning our website and in May we released the new design on our UK website and the rest followed shortly after. We also redesigned our product page to better display the photography our new product development team have worked so hard on. Finally, our international focus has caught the attention of the eCommerce Awards for Excellence 2011 and we have been nominated for the International e-Retail Award. The nomination alone is worthy of raising a glass, or two :)

Phew, that wasn’t supposed to be a long post, I guess we had been busier than I though and believe me I left a lot out! As I said at the beginning, five years is a long time in business and knowing we have done all this is testament to the hard work put in by each and every person (past and present) at Arena. To plagiarise Mr Newton we have only come this far today as we stand on the shoulders of giants. Here’s to the next five years.

Good times!

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Will has been busy as a regular contributor to econsultancy’s blog as well as others, so we thought we’d share some of his posts here too.

Having a growing online business can be filled with thousands of individual decisions, each of which in sum can lead to the shape of your business.  We thought we’d summarise some of them here as a guide for anyone making similar decisions.  Enjoy.

Tips for boot strapped startups (try saying that after two pints)

In his post, Six top tips for bootstrapped startups, Will shares his advice about what to expect when starting a new company without piles of VC backing behind you.

1. Employing friends and family at the start of a new company is a good way to get people who believe in you on board – but make sure the relationship can survive the stress.

2. Take the lead, the buck stops with you. Management by committee can lead to poor compromised decisions.

3. Don’t wing it or make rushed decisions. Tell your team exactly what you need to make a decision (data, costs, where assumptions are) then they will come prepared when seeking approval (and more likely to get a “yes”).

4. Don’t let minority investors run the game; this can slow down progress when small share holders dig their heels in because of different expectations.  It’s your business, so make sure you can run it your way.

5. Patience isn’t a virtue, it’s a necessity.   Will gives a rule of thumb that “raise twice as much as you think you need and expect it to take twice as long”.

6. Know your end game. And keep it in mind the whole way along.  There are many reasons to start a business, but once you’re immersed in the detail and the hard slog, don’t forget your reasons and make sure the ship keeps moving in the right direction.

Nothing is normal

If you’re just at the early days of starting your business and feel like your life is a bit all over the place, it’s normal.  Feeling like you’ve done nothing for a week then completely manic the next week, it’s normal.  In Will’s post for Management Today, My Week: Will Wynne of ArenaFlowers, he describes how a day can involve going to meet with a courier company, or getting two hours sleep, or not having lunch, or flying to the US to check out how they do things out there.

Sit in big chair, stroke cat, ponder world domination

In one of Will’s post for econsultancy, he looked at issues regarding international expansion of an online business.  This can be an attractive prospect for business owners – you may have found that you get a lot of traffic from non-UK audiences, or that your product might be attractive for those outside of your current target country.

This is not an insignificant decision to expand your business internationally and there are some tools which can help you work out if or where markets for your products exist.  Will comments in the telegraph on Google’s new export research tool here. Called Global Market Finder, this tool from Google allows you to look at search terms and competition in new countries.  This might give you some ideas if there is demand for your product, or what people are looking for in your particular field.  For example, Marmite appears to be a popular search term in China, as is Marmalade in France.

Will also writes about the potential complications around websites, language, SEO and tax.  Once you determine that there is a market, how you get into that market is a plethora of details.  Will gives you 3 top things to consider in his post International e-commerce: three things to consider.

The first is how you show your content to your new audience.  Targeted, local websites?  Or using your main domain?  There are pros and cons to both; you need it to decide which are most important to you.  Having a local website gives a better customer experience, but takes more resource to build and may be harder to get integrated into your backend systems.  Having localised content on your main website maybe a good way to test the market before you invest in a new site.

Do you need to create a locally registered company?  No, it’s not a legal requirement within Europe (although it can help massively when negotiating with local suppliers.  Again, it’s worth weighing the benefits of a local company against the set up.  Creating one does lead to more admin and accounting costs.

VAT, under the distance selling rules for the EU, are charged at the local VAT rate of the goods-receiving country.  Up to a certain threshold.  And this threshold changes from country to country.  For example, once a UK company has sent 35K Euros of goods to Belgium, the company then has to register for VAT in Belgium and pay the Belgian tax to the local tax office (not the UK one).  Variable tax rates on products can create a development issue too, because different tax rates will need to be applied to products depending on which country they are to be sent.

Socially acceptable marketing

You have things up and running, plans of global domination simmering gently on the stove.  So what’s all this social media marketing malarkey?  Ok, that’s a bit patronising, if you’ve come here to a blog from a twitter link or a facebook post, you probably know.  But knowing how to use it for marketing is not necessarily so straightforward.  We hear a lot of examples from big brands with big bank accounts and what they do with social marketing, but how about young companies decide to use the space is trickier.   Will’s blog post on econsultancy “How should a young company approach social media marketing?” gives insight into our experiences of using social media.  Things that have worked long term (like our twitter application, Flowers and Fun) , things that have some success at key times (our Facebook valentine’s wishes page), and things that we could have done without (our world cup flowers video).

Will gives 6 points of sage advice:

1. Make the idea simple. It should be easy for people to pick up – but then also easy for you to put down if it falls flat.

2. Be realistic. Converting sales from social media campaign may disappoint you, but focus more on getting your name out.

3. Make it non-commercial. People don’t want to be marketed at, they want to be entertained.  If your marketing message is obviously selling something, people are less likely to engage, in our experience.

4. Don’t hashtag spam. There are plenty of examples of this going wrong (Habitat being the first example, although they’ve since gone into administration – not due to the hashtag spam, though!)

5. Have fun with it (if you post robotically, people won’t be very inclined to read it or respond)

6. Track what you can (traffic, use referral tags)

Staying on the right side of right

You may be on the right side of your customers – but are you on the right side of the law?  The Advertising Standards Agency released a new extension to its remit in March 2011, which includes content on websites, twitter feeds and Facebook walls.   There are some grey areas which we identified in the new remit and Will’s blog post on the new ASA online regulations, gave some examples of where companies had gone wron and some of the trickier issues.  We thought we’d summarise some of the grey areas and how to avoid getting an ASA complaint upheld:

1.  It’s all about context: Editorial content on a website is not within the remit.  Unless it’s used for marketing purposes.  The example Will gives is the Tanning Shop using a Daily Mail article about tanning being good for you in one of their marketing emails.  Complaints were upheld because although the article was published by the Daily Mail, that wasn’t enough for the Tanning Shop to substantiate the claims.  Similar with customer reviews.  You can’t control what people post on your wall, or how they review products on your website.  But you are responsible if you use those reviews for marketing purposes.

2. Familiarise yourself, your marketing team, your content team and your design team with the new regulations.

3. Respond if the ASA contact you.  From what we’ve read about complaints, the ASA don’t take kindly if you do not respond and you are very likely to have a complain upheld.

4. Be cautious on social media.  If you retweet a tweet from your company which has erroneous information about your company or products, that could lead to an upheld complaint.

5. Question any agency you use to write content about you to make sure they know the new regulations.  Put processes in place so that claims the write about you can be substantiated.  This means more editorial time.

There we go. Quite a few tips all in all! Hopefully helpful / of interest.

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Mother’s day can be tricky.  Sometimes it’s not so easy to choose what to send… Mother’s day flowers are a traditional gift.  But what type of flowers?   What style of arrangement?  Does she want a flower basket?  Or a traditional bouquet?  Lilies or roses?  And what colour?  Argh!

Don’t worry.

This year you can win the perfect prize.  A prize which blows the others out of the water (we think).  You can win flowers. Each month.  Every month.  For a whole year.

That’s right.  This Mother’s Day, up for grabs is this wonderful prize worth £370.  With the first bunch of flowers and vase sent on Mother’s Day itself (it’s on Sunday 3rd April) and a bunch of flowers worth £30, each month, for 12 months.  Needless to say, she will be delighted!

For your chance to win it could not be simpler:

1. Follow @ArenaFlowers on Twitter

2. Retweet

RT @ArenaFlowers RT & Follow for a chance to #win £370 of flowers this Mother’s Day http://bit.ly/uryd Our flowers: http://bit.ly/lovemum ❀

You can copy and paste the text as a tweet or click here and it will tweet it for you:

3. We will pick a random follower who has retweeted our competition on Thursday 31st of March at midday.

What are you waiting for? Go tweet!

(If you want want to have a look at the Terms and Conditions for the competition you can find them here).

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Post from: Arena Flowers - Flower Delivery London & UK

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Dating.  A veritable minefield and as Valentine’s day approaches on the horizon, you may be wishing you could find someone perfect for you.  Whoever you are.

And whoever you are, there is probably a dating website which will suit you.

We have trawled the internet for the best of the unusual dating sites out there:

1. Muddy Matches

What: A website for people who are more paddock than pavement.   All rosy cheeks and tweed, this is a great site if you know your thoroughbreds and don’t mind plucking your Sunday lunch before you cook it.

Pick up line: “Are you a chicken? Because you’re impeccable.”

Things to do on a first date: Clay pigeon shooting and country walks.  Make sure to bring your wellies.

2. Date Doctors

What: This is a dating site for “doctors, physicians and the women who love them.”  (That’s what the website says anyway; someone forgot to let them know that women can be doctors too).

Pick up line: “Dial 999, I think my heart just stopped”

Things to do on a first date: Visit the Wellcome Trust collection and view all the creepy medical and scientific specimens collected by Henry Wellcome.

3. Love at first serve

What: Dating site for tennis players and tennis lovers.  For courting on the courts, the website advises you wear pro-style tennis wear or hang out at the club house with a jug of lemonade to refresh weary players.

Pick up line: “Love one?”

Things to do on a first date: Try a game of real tennis (an indoor game played on a court with sloping roofs and buttresses; the forerunner for modern day tennis) for a bit of a laugh.

4. Cupidtino

What: A dating site for Mac lovers.  Mac fans are a passionate bunch, get two together and the results could be very heated indeed.  What a great way to meet a future partner by sharing in your passion for iPads (that is until the iPad becomes fully sentient and capable of love)?

Pick up line: “iDate?”

Things to do on a first date: Mac lovers seem to be happy anywhere, doing anything, as long as they are talking about Macs.  So, cinema or a loud bar might not be a good idea.

5. The Altas Sphere

What: A dating site to get together people who really – really – like the work of Ayn Rand.  I’d say this is fairly niche, I personally enjoyed The Fountainhead, but perhaps not ‘that’ much.  There are, however, around 12,000 dating profiles on the site, though.  So if you do like Ayn Rand a lot you certainly have a good chance of finding someone compatible.

Pick up line: “Feeling Randy?”

Things to do on a first date: Visit the Ayn Rand institute for details on up-coming talks and essay competitions you could enter together.

6. Crew Dating

What: Date aviators; pilots, flight attendants, air traffic controllers with the thought that you ‘never fly solo again’.   Hailed as the ‘Facebook of aviation’, it’s a one stop dating site for people who understand the busy and long hours of people in our aviation industry.

Pick up line: “Cabin crew, prepare for take off; my heart is about to soar.”

Things to do on a first date: With all the wining and dining options available in most departure lounges, you’re spoilt for choice.

7. A sound match

What: Based on the idea that the music you listen to defines your personality, this site matches you with suitable partners.  If you like A-ha, you won’t be sent on a date with an AC/DC fan.  You can complete the free 3 minute music personality test, pick your genre and off you go.

Pick up line:  “I want to be on your most-played list.”

Things to do on a first date: How about some impromptu busking in the park?  You can use your earnings to go for a romantic meal afterwards.

8. Gamer Dating

What: As the name suggests, here you can share your love of gaming.  You can select your potential partner by the game they like the most.  Be warned, the potential date partners have profile names like The_reaper and NeonDragon etc.  Not the most romantic, but then I don’t think I’m the target market.

Pick up line: “Do you want to see my special moves?  Left, left, down, up, up…..”

Things to do on a first date: Make sure your avatar is dressed appropriately for the date, don’t bring weapons.

9. Sober and Single

What: A lot of dates involve meeting for a drink, but this doesn’t have to be an alcoholic drink, and for those who don’t drink, it can be an awkward moment when you order sparkling water in a cocktail bar.  This is the website for people who want a drink- and drug-free relationship.

Pick up line: “I’m intoxicated but only by you”

Things to do on a first date: There are lots of places where drinking isn’t allowed; libraries, public transport, many museums.  How about hopping in the car and driving out into the country side for a brisk walk and a hot chocolate?

10. 420 Dating

What: With the slogan “Why toke alone?”, this site is in stark comparison to number 9, and is a dating site dedicated to people who perhaps do dabble in drug-taking.  They don’t say what people smoke and the site doesn’t advocate the use of illegal substances, however, looking at the featured smokers you can have a pretty safe guess.

Pick up line: “You’re smokin’”

Things to do on a first date: Go to the local shop, pick up some snacks and you two are good to go…

11. Shy Dating

What: A dating site for people without immediate confidence meeting new people.  Shyness could rather get in the way of dating, since dating is all about meeting new people.  This allows similarly terrified men and women to meet potential partners.  I imagine the dates would start off pretty quiet, but it’s a good choice if you take time to come out of your shell.

Pick up line: “…”

Things to do on a first date: Watch something; cinema, theatre.  Takes the pressure off the conversation.

12. Love and Mate

What: Looking for the purrfect partner, for you and your pet?  This may be the place.  Sadly, they don’t allow you to browse by pet type. If you are an ardent chinchilla lover, you’ll have to trawl manually through potential matches to find a fellow ‘chilla enthusiast.

Pick up line: “If this were Crufts, you’d get Best in Breed”

Things to do on a first date: Walk in the park.  With the pets.  Bring snacks to feed your love interest’s pet furtively. It’s important to get their pet on your side.

13. Geek 2 Geek

What: Geeks looking for love; whatever your flavour of geekery.  Create your perfect dating pool by selecting  geeks who like comics, Dr Who, Hitchhiker’s Guide, Star Trek, Simpsons, Zombies, Super Heroes or Society of Creative Anachronism.

Pick up line: “You had me at “Hello World”.”

Things to do on a first date: No matter what your geek streak, most geeks (and non-geeks) love a visit to a Science museum, or how about a clue-based treasure hunt using all your GPS gadgets and tweeting clues to your desired.

14. Asexualitic

What: As with any type of dating, online dating throws up a fair number of people “just looking for one thing” (if you know what I mean).  This is a dating site for people definitely not looking for that thing.  It’s a website for people who don’t want sex – for whatever reason.

Pick up line: “You can leave your hat on.  And your coat and dress”

Things to do on a first date: Since the bedroom is out of bounds, time to take to the great outdoors.

15. Clown Dating Agency

What: The clown dating agency for clowns and others in the circus profession.  The site is no longer active but they say lonely clowns can still email and they will see what they can do. So paint on a happy face and get emailing.

Pick up line: “My love is like a red, red nose.”

Things to do on a first date: Go for a romantic drive in the country in a tiny, tiny car.

The best of the rest

Tee Fore Two – Golfers unite

The Ugly Bug Ball – Ugly love

Horsey Lover – Saddle up

Marry Your Pet – Why date humans, when you can marry your dog?

Mullet Passions – No need to mullet over

Embrace your individualism and go and find love this Valentine’s (and don’t forget to send that love some beautiful Valentine’s day flowers to show your affection).

Post from: Arena Flowers - Flower Delivery London & UK

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**Voting now closed. Many congratulations to our winner, Yasmin B who chose the name “Mistletoe Blush”.  We have sent out her order and hope she enjoys the flowers and treats! Congratulations, Yasmin.**

We’ve had a huge number of responses to the competition and thank you to everyone who entered.  It has been no easy feat to decide on the finalists, all the ideas were great, festive and fun and a fair amount of punning.  We loved them.

We did, however, have to whittle it down to 15 finalists and now we turn it over to you all to vote for your winner.  Just to remind you (so you consider carefully where you cast your vote).  The winner is to receive a gorgeous Christmas gift set with a deluxe version of the bouquet, some delicious gift-wrapped Belgian chocolates and a Christmas teddy bear from our Christmas flowers range.

Please vote for your winner below.  Voting closes on the 15th of December and the winner shall be announced shortly thereafter.

Post from: Arena Flowers - Flower Delivery London & UK

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