**UPDATE: We are pleased to announce that Brenda is the winner of the Arena Flowers Mum of the Year competition**
Thank you for all the entries and for all who voted.
Happy Mother’s Day.
We have had many wonderful entries for the 2010 Arena Flowers Mum of the Year competition. We’d like to thank everyone who nominated [...]
Filed under: Customers, Matters Webby, Mega Days, Mother's Day on March 8th, 2010 | 8 Comments »
Do you know a mum who would love to receive a free luxury Arena hand-tied bouquet plus a selection box of scrummy luxury handmade chocolate, all worth £100?
We’re searching the length and breadth of Great Britain to find Arena Mum of the Year 2010.
Nominate your mum (or someone else’s!) by simply submitting a [...]
Filed under: Customers, General, Mega Days, Mother's Day on March 2nd, 2010 | No Comments »
As you’ll know from our announcement earlier this year, we’ve been working very closely with the British Heart Foundation (BHF) to get their branded charity flowers website off the ground. But our association with the nation’s heart health charity goes back to the early days of Arena Flowers, as we’ve always been happy to help [...]
Filed under: Ethics & Environment, Flowers, General, Good Causes & Charities, Mega Days, Valentine's Day on December 29th, 2009 | No Comments »
This is my third post on Flowers…uncut, but my first as an Arena Flowers employee. I’ve been a friend of the company since the early days and have written some guest posts on brand reputation and making the most of off-line advertising.
The temperature in London has dropped; it’s started snowing, however things are definitely hotting-up at Flowers [...]
Filed under: Christmas Flowers, Flowers, General on December 17th, 2009 | No Comments »
I like gadgets and as such love our Arena ‘toys’. As the subject for this post is centered around our latest toy I have been charged with telling the story.
Something that I think I should clarify at this juncture is the definition of a ‘toy’. We are a florist not a toy shop so by [...]
Filed under: General, Matters Webby, Mega Days on April 27th, 2009 | 2 Comments »
We’ve been a little quiet on the blog front this past few weeks – call it a little blog break while we recovered from the excitement of serving sumptuous fresh flowers to the nation’s romantics on Valentine’s Day, then just a few weeks later, creating the perfect Mother’s Day bouquet arrangements for mums, grandmas and [...]
Filed under: General, International Flowers, Marketing, Mega Days, Mother's Day on April 23rd, 2009 | 3 Comments »
If you’ve missed Valentine’s Day and forgot to send flowers from our exclusive Valentine’s range, here’s another chance to heal hearts; by supporting British Heart Foundation’s “Red for Heart” Campaign. After all, February is not just a month of romantic messages, but also the National Heart Month.
Like last year, when we did the BHF Valentine’s [...]
Filed under: Ethics & Environment, Good Causes & Charities, Mega Days, Valentine's Day on February 25th, 2009 | 1 Comment »
It’s nearly a week since Valentine’s Day and like previous years, this year too was manic with customers rushing to send flowers to their loved ones. Despite all the economic gloom and the discomforting worries about how we would compare our sales to previous years, sales were surprisingly strong adding to the notion that love [...]
Filed under: Distribution, Floristry, Flowers, Mega Days, Operations, Valentine's Day on February 19th, 2009 | 1 Comment »
The big day is just round the corner and, given the “interesting” economic environment we find ourselves in, we thought we’d share a few top tips to help Valentine’s Day lovers get the most out of their money and avoid some obvious pitfalls.
What does she actually want? A survey by a US florist found [...]
Filed under: Floristry, Flowers, Mega Days, Valentine's Day on February 4th, 2009 | 5 Comments »
I’m off on another trip to chilly Holland tomorrow (though it won’t be quite as cold as it has been) for more Valentine’s related floweriness. So I had a lot to finish up this evening and I was last to leave the office. As I went to lock up, something sitting on the corner of [...]
Filed under: General, Valentine's Day on January 21st, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Getting hitched in the chilly months of winter doesn’t mean that you need to compromise on your winter wedding flowers. Although relatively rare compared to summer weddings, winter ceremonies can indeed benefit from all the sparkle and glamour of the party season, with family and friends close to hand for the festive period. Wedding planners [...]
Filed under: Christmas Flowers, Customers, Ethics & Environment, Floristry, Flowers, Setting up, Weddings on January 9th, 2009 | 11 Comments »
Happy New Year to everyone!
We’ve been a bit quiet on the blog of late, what with having to get all our Christmas flower deliveries sorted and having to do some very very last minute Christmas shopping of our own too. We’re back in the saddle now, looking forward to 2009 and will be posting [...]
Filed under: Customers, Ethics & Environment, Finance & Investment, General, Good Causes & Charities, International Flowers, Mega Days, Operations, Valentine's Day on January 5th, 2009 | No Comments »
Unless you’re living in a cave somewhere, you’ll know it’s Christmas very soon indeed – Google has even added holly and sweets to the ads shown for Christmas related searches. It’s very busy at Flowers HQ right now too, as well wishers send flowers home to loved ones. We’ve even sold out of Father Christmases [...]
Filed under: Christmas Flowers, Ethics & Environment, Marketing, Matters Webby, Mega Days on December 18th, 2008 | 5 Comments »
It’s my birthday today. Hooray! Birthday flowers, birthday balloons, birthday greetings cards all round! Oh, and I’ll have some “healthy” chocolate too – I am getting old after all. Right – that’s the search engine optimisation bit out of the way. I’m 33 today. Ouch! 11 years til my next symmetrical birthday. Best enjoy this [...]
Filed under: Christmas Flowers, Distribution, General on December 2nd, 2008 | 9 Comments »
We love our customers – we really do – and absolutely nothing gives us more pleasure than to make someone’s day by delivering our flowers. But sometimes customers can make life very interesting for us here at Flowers HQ, and they sometimes think we have almost magical powers of divination!
Here, in a light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek [...]
Filed under: Christmas Flowers, Customers, Distribution, General, Mega Days, Mother's Day, Operations, Valentine's Day on August 13th, 2008 | 6 Comments »
Quick intro from Will: We often get asked “So why is Arena Flowers so much better than John Lewis, Marks & Spencers or Interflora then? After all, you only sell a set of standard bouquets, just like them.” Well, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Unlike the bigger players, we do numerous bespoke and [...]
Filed under: Christmas Flowers, Customers, Distribution, Floristry, Flowers, General, Mega Days, Mother's Day, Operations, Valentine's Day, Weddings on August 6th, 2008 | No Comments »
We were surprised and delighted a couple of weeks ago to learn via email that we’d been nominated for the IMRG’s Online Green Awards (affectionately known as the OLGAs), in the small retailers category. So surprised in fact that my first response to the email was to ask Sam if he thought this might be [...]
Filed under: Customers, Ethics & Environment, Floristry, Flowers, General, Mega Days on July 28th, 2008 | 2 Comments »
It’s two years since our little flower company was born. To celebrate our birthday, Judith made an amazing birthday cake made out of flowers. If you’re signed up to receive our free newsletters, you’ll have seen it already, but if not, see below. If you get our newsletters, you’ll also have the secret [...]
Filed under: Floristry, Flowers, General, Mega Days on July 17th, 2008 | No Comments »
Despite being a rampant Chelsea supporter, black is my colour, rather than blue. Look in my wardrobe and you’ll soon get lost. Not because it’s as big as the Flowers HQ fridge but because, apart from the odd red or white Adam Ant t-shirt (!), I just don’t do patterns or colours. [...]
Filed under: Customers, Floristry, Flowers, General, Operations, Valentine's Day, Weddings on July 4th, 2008 | 1 Comment »
The last 12 months have been pretty, erm, interesting for young businesses such as our own (although not as bad as the ancient Chinese curse might suggest). We now get asked almost daily “how are sales holding up?”, “are you doing better because you’re online (or worse?)?”, “are visitors converting to customers?” and so on. The [...]
Filed under: Finance & Investment, Floristry, General, Matters Webby, Mega Days, Mother's Day, Valentine's Day on July 1st, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Here at Arena Flowers we get a lot of special orders both large and small – sometimes for a particular birthday where the number of flowers is important or sometimes for the re-creation of a wedding bouquet for an anniversary.
We also receive requests for flower stems to be distributed at special events, such as yellow [...]
Filed under: Customers, Distribution, Ethics & Environment, Floristry, Flowers, Good Causes & Charities, Mega Days, Operations, Setting up on June 12th, 2008 | 2 Comments »
My name is Sarah, I work for the Flowers & Plants Association, and I’m here to offer hot tips and advice every few weeks on flower fashion trends, quick arrangement tips, and to answer any questions you may have about flowers or plants – care tips, what to have for your wedding day, what your [...]
Filed under: Floristry, Flowers, Guest Posts, Valentine's Day, Weddings on May 20th, 2008 | No Comments »
Answer? It was taken at 0410 in Harwich ferry port, on the East coast of the UK when Ronald and myself should have been sound asleep in our beds in Noordwijkerhout, NL and London, UK respectively.
Why? A consignment of box lids that was due to come over during Mother’s Day week didn’t materialise and we [...]
Filed under: Big Mistakes, Distribution, Mega Days, Mother's Day, Operations on March 6th, 2008 | 2 Comments »
It’s this Sunday! If you’ve forgotten, best dash off to our Mother’s Day flowers category and buy your beloved Mother some flowers and gifts while you still have time. We promise this post will still be here when you get back and you can then discover at your leisure the arcane way in which [...]
Filed under: General, Mega Days, Mother's Day on February 27th, 2008 | 1 Comment »
This year, we elected to make a donation to the British Heart Foundation’s Valentine’s Campaign for every one of our Tulips Bouquets and our Heart of Chocolates products sold for Valentine’s Day. We’re happy to report that in this way we raised several hundred pounds for the BHF (exact figure and cheque to the [...]
Filed under: Ethics & Environment, Flowers, General, Good Causes & Charities, Mega Days, Valentine's Day on February 21st, 2008 | No Comments »