Flowers insolita Blog

We have expanded our delivery coverage and reduced the delivery fees in many area!

Now our local delivery area ($8.95 delivery charge) includes: Centerport, Cold Spring Harbor, Commack, Dix Hills, Greenlawn, Huntington (Station), Melville, (East) Northport, Oyster Bay, Plainview, Syosset, and Woodbury.

Non-local delivery zone I ($11.95) now includes: Bayville, Deer park, Hicksville, Jericho, Kings Park, Old Bethpage, and Wheatley Heights.

Non-local delivery zone II ($13.95) now includes: Bay Shore, Bethpage, Brentwood, Central Islip, Farmingdale, Hauppauge, Islandia, Locust Valley, Nissequogue, Smithtown, St James, and Wyandach.

Thank you!

Our thanksgiving specials are here!

Thanksgiving centerpieces with candles

Thanksgiving cornucopia

Cornucopia fruit-gourmet basket

Order early!

(Authentic) Rainbow roses from Netherlands

“Rainbow roses”, also known as “Happy Roses” by the original developer, are actually dyed white roses.  Using a patented method, they are dyed in such a way that each petal acquires different coloration, resulting in brillaint “rainbow” colors.

Flowers insolita can obtain these unique roses from Holland for you.  If you are interested, please take a look at our “Rainbow Roses | Happy Roses” page.

For more info, visit:

www.happy-roses.com

This video is from Reuter news.

http://www.reuters.com/news/video/videoStory?videoId=8040

Other videos are here:

http://www.happy-roses.com/videogallery/

Cheap knockoff from South America

Recently, we became aware that knockoffs of rainbow roses from South America started circulating in the market.  They are significantly cheaper than authentic Rainbow roses from Holland.

We have tested this knockoff and found that their quality does not meet our standard.

Their colors are dull (compare the two pictures).  Also, many buds fail to open.

Flowers insolita believes that consumers should stay away from these knockoff.

Don't waste your money on flower-order middle-man!

If you order flower delivery online, chances are that you are placing your order with a middle-man.  And you are paying an unnecessary middle-man’s fee, without realizing it.

For example, when you place your order with a well-known national flower company (the one whose name starts with “1″), you will be charged with $13.99.  They call it “Service Fee” and you will not see this fee till the very last step of ordering.

This $13.99 is NOT a delivery or “Shipping & Handling” fee, which is already included in the merchandise price.  This fee is nothing but a middle-man’s surcharge.

In fact, there’s no need to pay this extra fee at all.  How can you avoid this completely unnecessary fee?

Call a local florist in the destination town directly, that’s how.  Middle-men, including the one that starts with “1″, send your order to one of those local florists anyway.  They earn 20% sales commission from the florist in the process (in addition to the middle-man’s surcharge).

For more info about flower-order middle-men and their deceptive tactics to rip you off,  read Fake “Local Florists”.  For a full explanation, visit Florist Detective.

Last week I was attacked by a Canadian goose.

I was delivering flowers to a house in Lloyd Harbor.  I saw a family of geese sunbathing in the front lawn.

I passed them, careful not to step on their poop all over the place, heading to the front porch.

All the sudden, a big goose started charging at me!  I run for life.  This is a big bird with strong beak, and I wasn’t ready to serve my toes or fingers to him.

I thought of calling 9-11.  However, the last thing I wanted was to end up in a local news as a guy who called the cop because of an attack goose.  That’s not going to help my manhood self-esteem.  Besides, that would give my wife a perfect punchline to humiliate me in front of our mutual friends.

So I decided not to call.  I just run to the side door and rang the bell.  No one came to the door, so I left the flowers there.  It’s quite possible that people in that house was too afraid to come out.

If you have any doubt on how vicious a Canadian goose can be, take a look at the video below.

watch?v=6OStX_wrWGg

Decades ago, if you needed flowers, you went to a local florist.  You had to, because there were no other place to buy flowers.

Not now.  We have so many competitors selling flowers.  As the result, traditional florists have been steadily losing the market share, especially to supermarkets and online retailers.

We would like to be more competitive.  We would like to know why consumers are not buying more flowers from local florists.  Is it because of the price, convenience, products, value, service, all of the above and more?

Please take our survey and let us know what we should be doing to become more competitive.  Thank you!

Survey: Why are you not buying more flowers from local florists?

Whatever your opinion on Mr Obama might be, we’ve got to give this man a credit for buying flowers to his wife from a local florist.

For many men, a local florist can be a confusing, intimidating place to go to.  They don’t know what they are looking at and have no idea what they should be buying.

Yet, if a guy gives a florist’s bouquet to his wife or girl-friend, she knows the man made efforts for her.  She understands that he probably didn’t feel comfortable with going into a florist, and she appreciates it.

Making efforts is what counts here.

Imagine another guy who just picked up a bunch of flowers at a local supermarket and gave it to his wife.  She may not say it, but knows right away that he did this because of convenience and price.  She wonders: Does he care about me?  Am I not even worth the inconvenience of going to a local florist?

Same goes for online flower order.  Convenient.  Is your wife worth more than a few clicks? Of course she is.

Finally, don’t underestimate the power of flowers as a gift.

According to a national survey conducted by SAF (Society of American Florists), a whopping 92% of women remeber the last time they received flowers.

Here’s other results that might interest you.

• 88% of survey respondents say a gift of flowers changes their mood for the better.
• 83% say they like to receive flowers unexpectedly.
• 86% say receiving flowers makes them feel special.
• 99% say that a person who gives flowers is thoughtful.
• 89% believe the giver is sophisticated.

Again, please remember that essence of gift-giving is to show your caring.  We understand it may be inconvenient for a guy to go to a local florist, order a bouquet, and wait for 10 min.  But it’s such a small “price” to pay, if you can make your wife smile, don’t you think?

As in many other traditions, Easter has lost much of its meaning.  People used to be all dressed up going to the church on Easter Sunday, many wearing corsages.  We had zero corsage orders for Easter in the last three years.  People used to enjoy Easter dinner with a nice centerpiece.  Not anymore.

I came across a beautiful story of Easter flowers tradition that I would like to share:

“Hello Mioux Florist.”
“Joe, this is Ed.”
“Hi Ed, do you need a Easter bouquet?”
“Yes, I can’t come up to the shop and drop off of my Easter container this year. Could you fix something up and deliver it to my house?”
“Sure, we will take good care of it for you, bye.”

Ten minutes later, I call Ed back and say “Hey Ed, can I come up and get that container from you and we will fix it up.” He says ‘yes.’

Twenty minutes later I deliver the little Easter bouquet back to Ed and his wife Margie.

This little ceramic Easter Bunny container has been brought to our shop at Easter every year for 60 years. Ed is in his 90’s and he doesn’t drive anymore.

You read that correctly. We have been making flower arrangements in this little container for over 60 years.

I couldn’t let the tradition cease.

There is nothing particularly unique about the flowers or the design. The special thing is the history of this customer and my family.

This florist, Joe Mioux of Mioux Florist and Greenhouses in Carlysle IL, is a fourth generation florist whose business has been in operation since 1876.

According to a Washington Post article, National Funeral Directors Association is trying to get a chunk of the federal bailout money.  From the same article, I quote:

“We recognized that there may be a situation where a lot of folks who were displaced or unemployed might need some help in paying for their funerals,” John Fitch Jr., lobbyist for the National Funeral Directors Association, explained yesterday at the group’s annual gathering, at the Mayflower Hotel. “We had some preliminary discussions about providing some stimulus payments to the states” for funerals, he added.

Interesting.  Florists know that non-essential items like flowers and jewelry are the first to cut when money is tight.  All the florists are having a hard time now, no doubt.  But funerals?

I always thought the funeral industry is recession-proof.  It’s not like people stop dying in recession.  If anything, the death rate would increase, because people can’t afford health care these days.

Apparently, people no longer spend as much money on funerals as they used to.  From the same article, I quote:

Lynch, of Michigan, spoke about the “huge bowl of Bazooka bubble gum” displayed at one visitation. “Didn’t cost a lot of money,” he said. “That’s what we see people doing.”

“Instead of feeding everybody dinner or lunch, we’ve been throwing little, for lack of a better word, cocktail-party type things, cheese and crackers,” added James Olson of Wisconsin. “Also,” he said, “my cremation rate has gone up in the last two years. . . . I’m at 42 percent.”

Lynch turned to the “merchandise” of the funeral. “People, rather than selecting a copper or a bronze casket, may choose a 20-gauge steel casket painted in a copper color,” he said.

Fascinating.  We florists keep complaining that people no longer spend money on funeral flowers.  We thought part of the reason was the ubiquitous use of ‘in lieu of flowers’ phrase in obituary.  Many of us have been lobbying funeral directors to change the wording to a more positive phrase such as “The family suggests memorial contributions be sent to….”

Perhaps we were all wrong.  The reason we are seeing the decline of funeral flowers is because people just don’t want to spend money on funerals any more.

I don’t know… it’s kind of sad…  Instead of spending money on funerals, funeral flowers,  where are they spending money on?

In the previous post, I wrote how yellowpages.com lists numerous bogus florists in their local listing.  What about their main competitor, superpages.com by Verizon?

If you look for ‘florists’ in ‘Huntington NY’ in superpages.com, you will be presented with “only” 73 florists, which is a vast improvement compared to >1,400 “florists” listed in yellowpages.com.

But again, our town doesn’t have 73 florists.  Not even close.

Most of these 73 florists are national floral-order brokers, such as FTD, JustFlowers, etc.

Let’s sort by ‘distance’ again, which is supposed to list only the local florists.  Take a look (Click).

At the top, you will see a business called “Huntington Florists NY – All American Flowers.”

This is a bogus florist that doesn’t exist in Huntington.  In fact they are located in 4201 Church St, suite 2, Mt Laurel, NJ.  They aren’t even a florist.

This bogus “florist” in NJ does this all over the US and Canada.  They are a well-known crook in our industry.

Verizon knows about them and does nothing.  No surprise here.