You've Come a Long Way, Baby!

If you're a rose, you've come a long way baby!

Especially considering that over 80% of flowers purchased in North America come from South America.

That's a long way to travel, for a huge number of flowers!

Let's examine how a rose gets shipped from the farm to your home.

First, the blooms are cut at the farm level in Colombia. Each individual stem is manually cut; pruned from the bush one at a time. They are then bundled into groups of 25 stems, 10 bundles per box for a total of 250 stems per box.

Each box is then trucked to the airport in Bogota. The planes are loaded with 2200 boxes or 550,000 stems, for shipment to Miami. And that's just one plane...they come into Miami about once every hour.

Once arriving in the U.S., the boxes are then inspected to ensure the contents actually contain flowers...no "extras" (remember what Colombia is known for?)

The boxes are then trucked to local Miami warehouses, and segregated with boxes of other flowers for trans-continental shipment. Roses from Colombia, carnations from Ecuador, leather leaf from Costa Rica, and hundreds of other types of flowers loaded into refrigerated semi-trailers.

Then the real trip begins...

 

According to Google Maps, the trip from Miami to Vancouver should take over 56 hours driving non-stop.

 That's less than 3 days...but who is going to drive continuously for that long?

It takes two drivers, each driving 12 hour shifts while the other is snoozing in the sleeper compartment. Not an easy way to make a living!

From Miami to Atlanta, to St. Louis, to Kansas City, to Salt Lake City, up to Seattle and finally with flower delivery in Vancouver at a local wholesaler. It's pretty easy for local florists in Surrey, New Westminster, Burnaby, Langley, White Rock, Richmond, North Vancouver & West Vancouver to pick up their roses.

But often the trip doesn't end in Greater Vancouver, as local couriers must then pick-up and deliver to Victoria, Kelowna, Castlegar, Prince George, and even Prince Rupert which can add another travel day.

Let's say your roses have finally arrived at Simon Says Roses Florists in Victoria.

Now what happens?

Well, the "fun" has just begun to get your blooms into shape for retail sale.

Check out our next blog entry for flower processing done by a professional florist.

Things Go Better With...Coke?

I'm convinced nobody likes me.

At least they don't like me as much as they like Coke (the soda, not the drug).

It's pretty obvious. I only have 93 people liking me on my Simon Says Roses facebook page.

Coca-Cola has 36,479,028 likes as of this morning.

Now I know I'm not that popular, but this is ridiculous.

We have got to start catching-up.

So we are going to run a contest.

Our goal is simple.

We're going to try and increase the number of "Likes" on our facebook business page.

 

And we are going to give away a $100.00 account credit in the process.

 Contest rules are simple:

Go to our facebook page at Simon Says Roses Florists & Gifts

Click the Like button.

Voila...you're entered.

Contest closes at midnight on January 31st, 2012.

For the process of picking a winner, every "like" that we have will be assigned a number...from 1 to whatever number of "likes" we end up with.

And to keep the contest perfectly fair, I'm going to go to Mrs.Glosser's Math Goodies which is a random number generator.

The software will generate a number within the range we select.

Whatever number selected will be matched to our "Like" number, the winner will be declared, and a $100.00 credit will go on your account.

Easy peasy.

Not saying we are going to match Coke...but it's a start!

Beware of Stalkers Bearing Flowers

Stalkers are cowards.

I hate them.

They think they're funny...cute...hilarious.

THEY'RE NOT!

All they succeed in doing is scaring the recipient.

They use flowers for revenge.

We see it all the time...online flower orders where there is no sender's name on the greeting card.

Can you imagine getting flowers, & not knowing who they came from?

Talk about freaking out!

That is why we have a policy.

Our policy at Simon Says Roses Florists is that YES, you can send a gift with an unsigned card...

BUT...if she specifically asks who they came from, we reveal the sender's name.

We're not going to be party to a joke, a lark, or for vengeance.

Our job as florists is to convey emotions. There are only two. Happiness or sadness.

If the gift doesn't fall into those two categories, we're outta' there.

Not going to do it. Don't care how much you pay us. It's OUR reputation on the line as well, and we've spent too many years to have it ruined by some prankster.

Common sense is that having to guess who sent the flowers isn't going to make anybody happy.

So why do it?

As always, comments appreciated.