Just Leave it at the Door!

We've heard it so many times.

Just leave the flowers at the door, somebody will be home.

Sure...O.K.

But I vividly remember the elderly gentleman calling from Whitehorse wanting something sent to Grand Forks.

We were told to simply leave it at the door. Don't call first. Somebody will surely be home.

Leaving something at the door is not something a florist wants to do. After all, we're dealing with flowers which are perishable. Out of water, they die.

It's not like Canada Post or UPS that simply drop off a package.

We like making arrangements with the recipient to find out when THEY want the flowers delivered.

It's the personal touch that florists are known for.

But sometimes the sender doesn't want to ruin the surprise, so we follow instructions.

In the case of the flowers in Grand Forks?

The recipient went on a holiday for two weeks, and came home to...

The sender had no idea that she was out of the country, and neither did we.

This was not good...not good at all.

And regardless of what the sender wanted, it's a really poor reflection on the florist, don't you think?

Even though in this case, it was no fault of our own...*sigh*...

Why Floral Holidays Suck!

So here's my rant.

Thanksgiving, Christmas, Mother's Day, Valentine's Day.

All major holidays.

Sure it's these special times when we florists make the most money.

But after 20 years of selling flowers in Canada, it's taking its toll.

These so-called "floral holidays" are a time when most people are surrounded by friends, family, & loved ones.

Not florists, and especially not me.

Outside of immediate family, most of my family lives either one or even two provinces away.

I never see them at Christmas or Thanksgiving, unless they come and see me. And that's rare.

Because these floral holidays are when we work the hardest.

Our customers want to celebrate, and we have to be there for them.

When everyone else is relaxing, having a great meal, and taking it easy, florists are running off their feet making flower arrangements, constructing fruit baskets, and getting delivery drivers organized.

No time off for us.

And when we're finished, we're so exhausted that we can't enjoy the holiday.

Yes, it's my choice to be a florist, but I still think floral holidays suck.

Now I can get off my soap box and get back to work...

And the Winner of the Business Integrity Award is...

in·teg·ri·ty/inˈtegritē/

Noun:

The quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness.

Simon Says Roses was recently nominated for a WestShore Chamber of Commerce Community Award for Business Integrity. 

We didn't have high expectations.

Our fellow nominees were excellent candidates, operating very reputable businesses.

To be blunt, we didn't think we had a "snow balls chance in hell"!

But the award ceremonies were held last Friday night, and...

We won!

Shocked, humbled, thrilled, amazed...Dale & I felt all of these emotions & more.

To think that our flower & gift customers felt motivated to nominate us. For the Selection Committee to pick our business. To receive the award in front of over 220 fellow business people.

Wow.

It certainly feels good.

It lets us know that after 20 years of business that we're still on the right path.

And for that we only have one word.

Thanks.

Google search for Toronto florists is useless!

Looking for Toronto florists on Google? How about Vancouver florists? Montreal florists?

You end up with very similar results. Hundreds of possibilities and too much information!

When you are far away, how do you know the best flower shop in Canada? Would you know the best place for flower delivery in Toronto? Do you know the brand name of a Montreal florist? Do you limit your search to the closest Vancouver florist to the recipient's address? That's no guarantee of quality!

That's the problem when do don't have a relationship with florists in Canada.

Chances are you really don't know the best florist for your order. It's a crap shoot.

But at Simon Says Roses, we know the best...and we're not bragging.

From our shop, we send thousands of orders for flowers in Canada every year.

Some shops in major cities get hundreds of orders from us.

We've developed a relationship with florists. It's not just a one shot order. It's a series of orders over many years.

And they're not going to screw it up, because they may lose these orders if problems persist.

That's not to say that problems don't occur, because they do. It's what the shop is willing to do when problems happen that separates good flower shops from bad ones. Shops that phone every day when a customer is not home, to ensure hand delivery. Shops that simply won't leave something at the door with talking to the recipient. Shops that may send out the wrong product, but immediately send the correct product...at no charge.

That's the quality florists in Canada that we deal with every day.

It's what are customers have come to expect...and they should!

What does a live 24/7 order desk REALLY mean?

Do we really answer the phone 24/7 at Simon Says Roses Florists?

Really??

Yup, actually we do.

We created our website in August of 1998. We didn't have a shopping cart to begin with, so our customers couldn't order online. They had to phone to place a flower order.

But we want our customers to have access to us any time, day or night. We want to be TOTALLY dedicated to customer service. The customer decides when they want to place an order, so we better be there.

So we promoted a live 24/7 order desk on every single web page, on our letterhead, and of course on our business cards. And we have the catchy phone number of 1-800-705-ROSE(7673) which is great to have as a florist.

But we didn't realize what 24/7 meant in the internet age.We thought the majority of orders would come between the hours of 9:00 am and 5:00 pm Pacific Time. But that didn't always happen.

The internet is global. So when our customer wants to place an order going at 4:00 pm on Friday from Singapore going to Toronto, it's actually 1:00 in the morning my time. Germany going to Vancouver? They're 9 hours ahead. When it's 5:00 in the afternoon in Berlin, it's 2:00 in the morning for me.

The problem was without any answering service, 24/7 meant me!

For years, calls were forwarded to my cell phone. I had a "mini-desk" next to the bed, which had the phone, pen, order pad, and lap-top.

When the phone rang I had three rings to wake up, give my head a shake, and sound halfways intelligent in the middle of the night.

When I went to the washroom, the phone, pad & pen went with me. The plastic garbage can made a great desk.


I did that for the first seven years, until we finally decided the online shopping cart had to be implemented.

Although the cart did take some pressure off of early morning calls, there were many customers who still preferred a live body to an online order form.

I can remember watching my daughter's softball game. I tethered my smartphone to my laptop for instant wi-fi. Taking calls AND processing orders from the stands. Other parents thought I was nuts.


It was only two years ago that we hired an answering service for "off-peak" times. The lack of sleep was literally killing me, having a heart attack at 43.

I just couldn't do it any more.

So we schedule some down time. Dale & I want to Las Vegas for a week at the end of August. Although the answering service was available to take calls and orders, we still have to process credit cards and verify addresses & card messages.

Up at 7:00 in the morning, process until noon. Only then was there time to relax at the pool.

 Are we still customer responsive? You bet!

But at least now I get a solid six hours of sleep every night, even in Vegas...

3 Ways Oil Prices Affect Flower Delivery

The price of oil seems to go up & down like a yo-yo.

But the TREND with oil prices is on an upward slope.

The Canadian economy, the Middle East, the US economy, and now even the economy in China all impact on prices.

It's a global marketplace in today's world.

But the bottom line is that we're dealing with a finite resource. Prices will continue to increase over time regardless of short term economies.

So oil prices down the road will impact florists in Canada in 3 ways:

1. 85% of flowers consumed in Canada come from South America, mainly Colombia and Ecuador. It takes a lot of gas to fly flowers to Miami, haul them up north in reefer trucks, and then have them delivered by a wholesaler. 
2. The few types of flowers that are still grown in Canada are field crops, and oil prices would have minimal impact. But those flowers that are grown in greenhouses require heat, and that heat is supplied by oil or gas.
3. Those local delivery vehicles don't run on air! "Free delivery" won't be free when the price of a litre of gas hits $1.50.

It would be a simple solution to simply grow more flowers locally. But that requires planning. Two to three years from planting to first harvest. And not every flower can grow in a field here in Canada.

So just like buying food at the grocery store, prices aren't going down.

I guess the price of flowers and flower delivery aren't likely to be decreasing either...

Helium shortage kills balloon industry?

As florists in Canada, we are having trouble getting helium to fill balloons.

Apparently there is a worldwide shortage.

With a limited supply, medical requirements are taking priority.

You see, liquid helium is used to cool MRI scanners. Clinical trials rely on helium as well. It is dispensed into the lungs and tracked on a monitor, allowing researchers to directly measure the impact of different treatments for the first time.

Which means that helium isn't available to florists or party planners for balloons.

So what happened?

Until recently, helium was easy to get a hold of.

Helium is a by-product of drilling for natural gas. Once the drill hits the gas field, the top layer in the field is helium with the natural gas lying below.

It was easy to extract the helium first, and then suck out the natural gas.

But the old ways of natural gas extraction have virtually come to an end.

The new way of natural gas extraction is fracking. It's the technique which involves the injection of millions of litres of water and thousands of litres of unidentified chemicals underground at very high pressure. This process creates fractures in the underlying shale rock formations and they can then extract the natural gas below the surface. 

But using this process dissipates the helium.

It can no longer be captured.

We have to rely on previously extracted helium which is currently stored in underground caverns.

And that supply is limited.

Unless things change, the death of the balloon industry may be coming soon.

And that wouldn't be fun at all...