Flowers insolita Blog

We will be closed for Labor Day (Sep 4th, Mon) and re-open on Sep 5th Tuesday.  We wish you a happy holiday!

A heated debate has been raging among the insiders of the floral industries about “Promotion Order” Initiative.

Basically the idea is to charge a 5% duty on all the flowers imported from abroad (which constitute about ~70% of the flower trade in the US); and use that money, projected to be about 50 million dollars a year, to promote more flower consumption in North America. Note that flower consumption in the US is way less than that in Europe, so people believe that there is a marketing opportunity.

Virtually no one in our industry opposes the idea of promoting flower consumption per se. The controversy is actually about the people (so-called industry leaders or “big boys”) who are empowered to decide how the promotion should be run. Many small retailers and wholesalers do not trust these people at all. They believe that these “big boys” would use the money just to promote themselves.

At this point, we at Flowers insolita remains neutral, until we get all the facts. Stay tuned.

For further info, you can visit the following forum:

Why the promotional initiative should be opposed.

Promotion Order thoughts 

Trying to answer each question on promotion order

As you know, we obtain some of our flowers from Holland auction.  We were notified by a wolesaler today that some of our flower shipment from Holland auction (not all of them, but some) was stopped at the US custom inspection.

They discovered some kind of insect in one of the Kenyan Hypericum boxes.  Kenyan bug!  Apparently this is a big deal for them.  So the US Custom Inspection halted ALL the flower boxes from Holland that contained Kenyan hypericums, which unfortunately included ours.  Duh….

So today, we didn’t get some of the Holland flowers, including lilies, roses, ornithogalum, lisianthus, hypericum, and irises.  We will get them from other sources tomorrow.  Thank you for your understanding.

Have you felt that florists’ delivery charge seems a little too much, especially because most Chinese take-out or pizza shops offer “free” deliveries?  We have a FAQ (Frequently Answered Question) entry to address this issue: Why are florists’ delivery charge so expensive?

Please note: our policy is that we cannot discount our delivery charge. This policy is based on the fact that delivery charge is our actual expense to provide this service, from which we make absolutely no profit. There is no “room” for discount. If we still offered a discount for some customer, other customers would have to pay more for delivery. That is not fair.

Because of the rising delivery charge by retail florists, many customers these days choose to deliver the flowers by themselves. We at Flowers insolita encourage this. It not only saves you money; it is your gift after all, and bringing flowers to your recipient by your own hand is indeed the ideal way to express your feelings.

Click http://www.flowers-insolita.com/info.html

Scroll down to “Awesome florist websites.”  They are so cool.

I AM NOT A YELLER OR A SCREAMER NOR DO I USUALLY RANT AT THE TOP OF MY LUNGS. HOWEVER, I JUST FOUND OUT THAT IF YOU WRITE IN ALL CAPITALS YOU ARE YELLING. SOOOOOOOOOOOOO,  I must stop being lazy and type using the shift key. Which to me is a pain, but at least I won’t be yelling! 

Yesterday I noticed that our pigeons are back in our backyard.  So I fed them.  This morning, they are back again.  I fed them again…

This is no good.  Wild animals should not be fed.  By feeding them, I’m not only spoiling them, but actually reducing their chance of survival in the wild.  In theory I know that, but it’s difficult for me to ignore them.

According to a news report, more than 50% of adult kids in Long Island are still living with and fed by their parents.  What would be their chance of survival?

We are pleased to announce that we have developed a new product called Double Decker.  In this basket arrangement, we use two small baskets in a staggered height, to create an interesting dynamic.

To order on-line, please go to our on-line store.  Or call us at 631-421-4410.

Our pigeons finally flied away.  They are now members of the Huntington Pigeon Club.  Hope they remember me and someday will visit us again.

I found an interesting article about local florists in Kentucky complaining about deceptive Internet “florists”.

“When sending flowers to loved ones, many customers enjoy the convenience of dialing numbers like 1-800-flowers or logging onto Bloomstoday.com or other similar Web sites to place their orders, but a group of local florists want the public to know how these companies are impacting local businesses – and customers’ wallets.”

To read more: click local florists say online, 1-800 companies deceive customers.

We at Flowers insolita do not support the “order-gathering” practices by some of the Internet florists if we believe they are deceptive. Specifically, we refuse to take any orders from those Internet “florists” who pretend to be located in Huntington.