Best choices for Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day is in February and the subject comes up every year: Why do roses cost so much? Why is the price higher now than the rest of the year? Why does it cost more for a rose at a florist than it does at a mass marketer? Why not buy roses on line from an internet company?


The first thing to understand here is "Supply and demand".

At Valentine's Day, roses are in demand. The supply is somewhat limited. Retail florists have to place their orders well in advance so that growers, wholesalers, & brokers know how many roses to supply. Roses are by far the most in demand flower for V Day, no matter how hard florists try to encourage their customers to buy something different. The growers take this opportunity to raise the price for their roses because they know that retail florists will pay their price in order to get their product and, in turn, sell the roses to their customers who are demanding the roses.

Let me say one thing in defense of the rose growers- they do work very, very hard to time their crops so that there are enough roses to cut in time for V Day. It takes a lot of planning and a lot of people working together to get all those roses where they need to go on time.

I hope you are starting to understand that retail florists have no choice but to raise their price on roses on Valentine's Day. Otherwise the florist would take a loss and there is no point to being in business if you take a loss.

Roses are deemed the most romantic flower choice for V Day. More women expect to get roses than any other flower and most men don't even consider buying their gal anything but a rose. If women wished for a different flower such as tulips, gerbera daisies, or lilies, and made that desire known to their significant other, then perhaps the demand for roses would eventually shrink and so would the price. Unfortunately, I don't think that will ever happen!!

Now, to that other burning question-Why do roses cost less at mass marketers?

There are three grades of cut roses- the first being the mass marketer cut, the second being the cut used by retail florists. The third cut doesn't matter in this particular story.

The mass marketer cut is made when the roses are still in tighter bud and the stem length is short. The next cut is made at a later time, so the rose is not as tight a bud, has more petals, and has a longer stem length. The first cut naturally costs less than the later cut. The first cut roses do not last as long because of having fewer petals and shorter stems. All this means that a rose that is sold to you by a professional florist will last longer because of the better quality rose, will be a bigger rose, will look prettier because it has been arranged by a professional floral designer, and will be delivered to your loved one, if you desire. Would you rather buy a rose at the store that changes the oil in your car, sells cans of beans and DVDs, or would you rather buy a rose from a trained professional who took proper care of your rose because that's what they DO!

Please let me warn you that you will be a much happier consumer if you steer clear of on line flower ads for flower arrangements. Many of these "dot com" companies are order gatherers- not florists. The price may sound great, but you will probably pay a big service fee and a delivery fee. Especially watch out for the ones who say "free vase" is included. Order that bouquet of roses and your girlfriend will find a cardboard box on her doorstep with unarranged, dry flowers with that free vase packed beside it. And it will probably not arrive when you expected. Sound like a romantic Valentine's Day?

Your best results when buying flowers for that special someone on Valentine's Day will come from calling a professional, local florist. Best quality and best service will be found when you trust your local florist with your Valentine's Day flower order.

Call your local florist-avoid dot coms

I tested this myself: yesterday I followed a Teleflora.com link on a website to see how much it would cost to order from them instead of ordering the same thing from Ravenna Florist & Greenhouse (we are a Telefora member).  TF offered  $10 off the order.  I picked an arrangement that sells for $79.99 on our website and on Teleflora's website.  Teleflora charged $14.95 for delivery and $5 for wire service fee, then applied the $10 advertised discount and tax.  The total came to $86.95.  If you had called us and said "I want you to deliver this $79.99 arrangement to my friend in Irvine",  it would have cost  $86.89.  The catch is that we would have made you a $79.99 arrangement and delivered it for  $1.99 plus tax.  If you had placed the order on Teleflora.com, they would have sent it to us for $69.99 and given us $5 for delivery.  You would have gotten an arrangement of less value.  Teleflora would have kept the extra $14.95 that they got from you, plus the 20% of the order that they keep from us.  We would have kept $60 of the amount you paid Teleflora.
This is how ordering from a dot com online works.  You as a customer will get a lot more for your money if you call a florist you know directly.  You may argue that we are not convenient like a dot com is, but, we also have a website that you can order from 24/7.  If you want to send something out of town, you can call us to do it for you, but there will be an additional $3.50 wire service fee.  We have the lowest wire service fee around.  In other towns, florists charge $5 or $7.50 or even $10 wire fee for sending oders for you.  The cheapest way to send out of town is to Google florists in that town and call them directly and place the order yourself.  Many people feel unsure of themselves when it comes to ordering flowers and feel better if they call us and have us do it for them.
Sometime in the near future I predict there will be no more wire services.  It is already a common occurance that we have to google a town to find a florist to send an order to because there are no florists in a wire service in thoses towns.  Also many florists have gone out of business in the last two years and there are some towns who don't have a florist at all now.
On a similar note, FTD.com is also out there soliciting orders like Teleflora, but the difference is that FTD is drop shipping flowers in a box to customers instead of sending the order to an FTD florist in your town for same day delivery.  So, if you order from FTD, you have to be sure it is sent to a florist that day instead of shipping the parts of an arrangement in a box that will arrive in one or two days.  And the same issues of high fees and the value of your arrangement by the time it is completed still apply.
The real thorn in my side is proflowers.com and bloomstoday.com and wesleyberryflowers.com.  These companies are order gatherers-they never see a flower-they never make a flower arrangement.  These people don't know the difference between a rose and a carnation.  Proflowers call us every week and ask us to deliver to Stanton, Clay City, Beattyville, and Booneville because there are no wire service florists in those towns.   Their operators do not speak English well and do not understand when we tell them we don't have specific high end flowers in stock that they are asking for.  They will call back repeatedly and ask for the same thing we just told them we couldn't do.
I have to say in defense of 1800flowers that I learned on Undercover Boss that they started out as a florist with a storefront and they still operate a lot of shops.  They do also have a huge business as order gatherers and they own a candle company, a pottery company, a candy company, and Bloomnet, which is a wire service like FTD or Teleflora.

Tha gist of my ranting here is that floral customers should talk to a local florist when they want to send flowers.  Don't be sucked in to online ads for saving money on flowers!!

The Calendar

We narrowly avoided disaster this week!!  We forgot to order plant plugs a few months ago for this coming spring.  Apparently our salesperson called on a busy day & I didn't return her call & she didn't try again.  Result: We need plugs in 2 weeks and they were not ordered.
Let me explain what a plug is:  Greenhouse growers plant seeds in trays & grow 50, 100, or 200 little plants in the tray, depending on the size of the tray.  When each plant has a healthy mat of roots, it is time to pop each little plant out of its little space in the tray & plant it into a larger pot, usually the pot it will eventually be sold in.  There are greenhouses who make a business of growing thousands of plugs for little greenhouses like ours to buy.  When orders are placed in the fall and before the first of the year, the growers know what they need to grow.  At this time of year, it is difficult to find the plants that you  want if you didn't place your order ahead of time.  After a desparate search through several availability lists of some of the major growers, we finally located everything we need!!  Yah!!

Devious plans for the new year.

My devious little mind is hard at work formulating plans for 2011.  Number one plan of the week: removing the office from the flower shop.  I would like to take out the old cooler that hasn't worked for 20 years and then take out the walls of the office.  We'll then remove the old sales counters and replace them with new, shorter counters and butt them up to a new desk for Melanie.  Mel can then work at her desk with her computer while being able to see the whole front room of the shop.  I will be getting an estimate for this in a few days.
The problem is that I should be getting a new roof instead!