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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The Arena Weddings arm of Arena Flowers has been around for just over a year now, and what a better way to celebrate our first twelve months than to take some examples of our beautiful fresh wedding flowers on the road.

The enquiry from Marika, organiser of the Think Pink Wedding Show came late in the day last week to see whether Arena Flowers may be interested in exhibiting last minute. Apparently, a couple of other London florists had let her down at the eleventh hour, and the show was left conspicuously missing wedding flowers from the burgeoning list of exhibitors for the show in Raynes Park, south west London.

Our florists were more than happy to rise to the challenge, and Judith got her thinking cap on while I started knocking together some promotional literature. With the flowers arriving freshly picked from Holland very early Saturday morning; our wedding florists Judith, Andrzej and Paulina got to work at the crack of dawn to create not one but four beautiful wedding bouquets for the show, as well as three coordinating buttonholes, two table arrangements and a gorgeous cascading tall vase display.

Once completed, the next challenge was to very carefully pack the wedding flowers so they weren’t damaged in delivery. With two drivers and an anxious florist overseeing the operation, it was a real eye-opener to see that as much care and strategic planning go into the delivery as do with the actual creation of wedding flowers!

Leaving just after 9am, it was straight to Raynes Park in the van with our rather lovely driver Jacek who put up with me in the passenger seat as I tried to prepare best I could for the unknown! On the way through Barnes I spotted a heron stalking the Barn Elms football pitches, just a few feet from the busy thoroughfare – wasn’t expecting that…but it kind of reminded me of my mission – a lone stalker, drawing in those brides to my lair of sumptuous wedding flowers!

Met with a huge bottleneck queue of cars and vans outside the venue, we made the decision to quit the extraordinary wait and frantically carry our booty the final 100 yards, heave them up the vast stairs (no lift!!!) and set up our pitch for the day with just an hour to spare before the doors opened to the public.

As soon as the show started, the event was packed with excited brides-to-be, mums, fiancées, bridesmaids and other womenfolk eagerly sourcing wedding garb and accoutrements from start to finish. Located right next to the entertainment, we found ourselves in a prime spot and, although a little deafened by the steel band (!!), the Arena Weddings stand was kept populated by interested parties and potential clients throughout the day. There was also the odd glass of plonk to entice visitors to my side of the ‘pond’…later polished off by me and a few other dry-of-mouth wedding suppliers located nearby.

The event seemed to go quickly and I was particularly pleased with the interest our wedding flowers arrangements generated, especially as this was pretty much new territory for us and a few miles out from the comfort zone of Flowers HQ! With online enquiries already coming in off the back of our first event, I am confident that we may be returning to the London Wedding Show circuit again soon – but perhaps with a bit more advance notice next time!

Interestingly, there were two common questions asked by visitors to the show: ‘Are they real flowers?’ and ‘How can I keep my wedding flowers budget down?’. To answer the first question, yes – all our flowers are real (maybe some of our flowers look just too perfect!), fresh and – wherever possible – ethically sourced. As regards budgeting for your wedding flowers, that’s for my next blog post – coming soon!

The wedding flowers on display at the Think Pink Wedding show last Saturday were: Amnesia roses, Cool water roses, Schwarzwalder calla lilies bridal bouquet (from £65), guest table arrangement (from £50) and buttonhole (from £7.50); Cool water roses, Limbo roses, Sea holly / thistles bridal bouquet (from £65); Sweet Avalanche and Sea holly bridal bouquet (from £65) and buttonhole (£7.50); Orchid cascade bridal bouquet (from £120), vase arrangement (from £26) and buttonhole (£7.50); and large mixed vase display including while lilies, pink mini gerberas, sea holly, sweet avalanche roses, limbo roses, carnations, and completed with soft ruscus and bear grass (from £80 plus vase hire).

Click here for a quick movie of the Arena Flowers stand at the Think Pink Wedding Show

If you enjoyed this post, you may want to check out our recent blog post on Winter Wedding Flowers, or learn more about our team of dedicated Wedding Florists or perhaps see how Arena Weddings began, with Jackie’s original blog post!

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Just three good reasons to mosey on down to the David Lloyd Health & Fitness Club in Raynes Park, South West London today (Saturday 24 January) where yours truly will be exhibiting the floral fineries of our rapidly growing wedding flowers arm Arena Weddings at the Wear It Pink Wedding Show.

On display will be some of Judith (one of our award-winning florists)’s beautiful floral work especially created for this very special wedding fair in aid of Breakthrough Breast Cancer. The arrangements have also been designed with seasonal, ethically sourced flowers and take into consideration today’s tough economic climate, which has had an impact on wedding budgets up and down the country this year.

We at Arena Flowers want to make sure every bride feels like a princess without breaking the bank on their wedding flowers, making us the first choice for wedding planners throughout London and the South East. So it’s no wonder we’re fast becoming one of Cosmo Bride’s favourite stockists!

And talking of princesses and the glossies, come along to the event and you will also get the chance to view a stunning private collection of vintage wedding dresses dating from Victorian times, including a sample from Princess Diana’s iconic wedding gown.

Come join the fun from 11am-4pm. Entry fee is just £1 – which goes direct to Breakthrough Breast Cancer – and kids go free, so no excuses if you’re in town!

Wear It Pink Wedding Show
David Lloyd Health & Fitness Club
Bushey Road,
Raynes Park
London SW20 8TE
Click for directions

Full report with piccies to be posted next week – but if you need an immediate wedding flower fix, check out this post, this post or even this post about sourcing flowers for gothic wedding bouquets. Bride-tastic!

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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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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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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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Regular ‘Flowers …uncut’ readers will be aware of the good causes that ArenaFlowers.com occasionally works with by providing assistance and beautiful blooms and flower arrangements.

So when Help for Heroes, a new charity which aims to help wounded Servicemen and Women, contacted us, we were more than happy to oblige (and we’ve had a fun idea to try to help raise money for them too – see the bottom of the post for more info).

Bespoke table arrangements for their Summer Ball a couple of weeks ago consisted of an array of floral arrangements representing the charity’s brand colours of red, ivory, blue and navy. These included red roses, red gerberas, red tulips, alstromeria and asiatic lilies, as well as blue delphiniums, agapanthus, lisianthus, thistles and freesias.

All this with an additional candle added, representing the ivory detail, which you can see twinkling away in the image above.

Event organiser Tricia Nanovo contacted us to tell us how the ball went, commenting: “Your contribution meant a lot and made so much difference to the beauty of the event and the ambience of the evening.”

Help for Heroes was set up by Bryn Parry, a former Green Jacket Soldier. He was inspired to do something to help and support wounded soldiers after visiting Selly Oak Hospital and Headley Court Tri-service Rehabilitation Centre.

Supported by Chief of General Staff, General Sir Richard Dannatt and working closely with the Army Benevolent Fund, Help for Heroes’ first aim is to raise vital funds to build a new gym and full size swimming pool complex at Headley Court. The new facilities will help wounded soldiers with the long process of rehabilitation and recovery.

The event was a fabulous success with over £11,500 raised from the charity auction and raffle on the night – with a final total estimated to be at least £13,000.

Donate with Arena!  If you type heroes into the discount box on our checkout when you place an order, we’ll track your order and donate 10% of the order value to Help For Heroes.  Simple.

For further information on bespoke flower arrangements or sponsorship and partnerships, contact customer@arenaflowers.com
For further information on Help for Heroes, click the banner below…

Similar posts: If you enjoyed this post, you might also enjoy this post about our fund raising efforts for the British Heart Foundation, this one about our red roses at Amnesty International’s recent demonstration,  this one about us giving away free flowers for charity or maybe this post about the day kids took over Arena Flowers!

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Here at Arena Flowers we get a lot of special orders both large and small – sometimes for a particular birthday where the number of flowers is important or sometimes for the re-creation of a wedding bouquet for an anniversary.

We also receive requests for flower stems to be distributed at special events, such as yellow daffodils for Marie Curie Cancer Care, or pink roses for an end-of-year school ball.

In April we provided five hundred of our FFP red roses to Amnesty International for their national conference in Nottingham, which meant a lot of de-thorning work for Jozsef, our wonderful ‘jack-of-all-trades’.
At the time, this seemed quite a large order…

Then, last month, Karen also from Amnesty, contacted us, requesting a delivery of two thousand red roses to their London office on 4 June.

What could be simpler? Nothing as complicated as sending flowers to Nottingham – or so we thought!

And then Karen called again – this time asking for a further three thousand roses!

Well, having organised 2,000 roses, another 3,000 didn’t seem to present a problem so we were naturally particularly happy to be able to help.

It was only when our distribution manager pointed out quite how many buckets of flowers 5,000 red roses represented, that we were brought down to earth!

So, it was not one but two very full vans that eventually set off for the Amnesty International offices. The effect was amazing, though. Click the image to enlarge.

But we’ve learned our lesson: in future, we’ll warn the distribution manager well in advance when we take such large orders!

We had a snoop online to see just what Amnesty had used our flowers for, and came across their blog post about remembering Tiananmen Square nineteen years on.

It was strangely moving to see images of our beautiful roses commemorating such a tragic event…

PS. To give you a better idea of the scale of this whole operation last week, here is a shot of Judith with one of our rather splendid 100 Red Roses bouquet, freshly arranged today!

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There have been three winners with Arena Flowers this month, in various ways. So, in ascending order of importance, we have:

1. £50 Bouquet Newsletter Winner

Every time we send our main newsletter (once a month), someone wins a free order of value up to £50. This month’s lucky winner was Mark S from Worcestershire. He sent his fiancée a Lovely in Lilac bouquet and a half bottle of champagne – absolutely free!

You don’t have to order to enter. All subscribers to our free newsletter are automatically entered. You can sign up to the newsletter here.

2. £1000 PayPal Winner

£50 bouquet not good enough? In which case, PayPal‘s £1000 per day promo could be for you. Just pay with PayPal in our checkout and you’ll be automatically entered into that day’s £1000 draw. (You’ll speed up your checkout too, as PayPal is very quick and easy to pay with (we haven’t been bribed to say that, by the way. PayPal’s great.).) An Arena customer has won already – Stephen from Preston bought a Freesias Cube for £37.99 recently and won £1000. Not bad! The PayPal offer ends at midnight on 30th April 2008.

3. BHF Raises One Million Pounds In Valentine’s Appeal

Earlier this year we supported the British Heart Foundation’s Valentine’s Appeal, raising £576 for the British Heart Foundation. After Valentine’s we also gave away flowers for free, each with a BHF leaflet and a request to donate. We were a little “Johnny Come Lately” in terms of joining the appeal and next year we hope to be more organised and to raise a lot more for the campaign. Thanks to all our customers who helped us contribute to this great cause. We’re very pleased to report that the BHF hit its target of raising over £1m in the campaign and Ellen Midwood, the BHF’s National Campaigns Manager, had this to say:

“We are delighted to confirm that the British Heart Foundation Valentine Appeal has succeeded in raising its £1 million target. The funds will go towards our vital care services of BHF Heart Nurses and the Heart HelpLine. We are extremely grateful to Arena Flowers for their support of the appeal and look forward to working with them again in 2009.”

So who’s the biggest winner here? The British Heart Foundation, of course, and those that they help every day. Thanks again to all who contributed.

Post from: Arena Flowers - Flower Delivery London & UK

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