FlowerShopDeals Blog – Floral Mashup

Halloween Flowers are a great way to celebrate this spooky time of year. From scary costumes, decorated homes with spooky effects, horror movie marathons and the hordes of trick-or-treaters knocking on your door, even flowers can play a roll in this festive holiday.

If you are having a Halloween party or celebrating a Halloween birthdays, or you just need to add some extra pizazz to your indoor Halloween decorations check out this spooky floral selection.

If you scare easily then maybe these aren’t for you. But if you love the Halloween season these are definitely fun and frightful.

Ghostly Greetings

Spooktacular Spider

Black Cat Bouquet

Best Witches

If these aren’t the best Halloween Flowers around post a link and share it here. These arrangments are from online florist fromyouflowers.com.

K. Nuer Industry News fall flowers, Halloween Flowers, Spooky Flowers

The Thanksgiving holdiay is just around the corner. With Teleflora you can add a touch of elegance to your dinner table with a world famous Lenox bone china accented with 24k gold, along with Lenox flatware and crystal stemware by entering in the Teleflora’s Gather Round the Table Sweepstakes.

There will be 10 grand-prize winners that will be chosen to receive Lenox Fruitiffero China including a 4-piece place setting for twelve, Stemware for twelve and Flatware for twelve. Each grand prize is worth a whopping $3,000.  

In addition, 100 first-prize winners will receive a Thanksgiving Platter worth $200. The best part is that there is no purchase necessary to enter the contest.

If your Thanksgiving diner table  in the past has been a little less than extraordinary give your self a chance to dine in style. If the turkey diner doen’t leave the best impression at least the china set will.

Teleflora also has a Thanksgiving centerpiece to boot that comes with a ceramic sauce boat keepsake, that is a sculpted leaf design, FDA-approved for food.

To enter the Gather Round the Table Sweepstakes you need to be a resident of the US and Canada aged 18 and above. Enter the sweepstakes once before December 11, 2009.

K. Nuer Special Events fall flowers, thanksgiving flowers

Have you noticed! 1-800-flowers.com has revamped it’s website and logo. The new 1-800-flowers features not only a new brand image and redesign but the introduction of the newly intergrated brand of 1-800-baskets.com to complement the floral offerrings.

Martha Stewart was the most recent adjustment to 1-800-flowers.com about a year ago when they – 1-800-flowers and Martha Stewart floral – merged to create a co branded label for Ms. Stewarts designer floral arrangments.

As you can see here 1-800-flowers love to develop and connect consumers with a brand. In this case two recognizable brands.

Most online florist don’t rebrand their line of gift baskets from the floral bouquets but 1-800-flowers has taken the opportunity to actually distinguish its gift basket offerings to complement it’s ubiquitous brand name.  It’s perhaps an ingenious idea to get cutomers to start thinking gift baskets as a seperate entity.

Gifts and gifts baskets is a large consumer market and what better way to establish yourself in the market but by getting consumers to connect with a brand name for that market.  Walmart may sell toys but Toys R’ Us specializes in toys.

The redesign breaks down as many pieces of the total of what 1-800-flowers has to offer consumers. You still get the basic line up of floral bouquets with their steady price point. 

Check it out for yourself and tell me what you think?

K. Nuer Industry News 1-800-flowers, 1800 gift baskets, branding

September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month and you can support CancerCare for kids buy buying, baking or sending cupcakes through www.cupcakesforacause.org.

In 2004 CancerCare launched its Cupcakes for a Cause program to provide free support services to children affected by cancer and their families with the help of a group of bakeries selling specialty decorated cupcakes.

Now a week long event bakeries around the country are selling their specialty cupcakes and donating a portion of sales to the CancerCare for Kids program. This event has had tremendous success but can always do better. The 2008 Cupcakes for a Cause campaign raised nearly $120,000 for CancerCare for Kids.

This year will mark the 6th Annual Cupcakes for a Cause™ Week which will be held September 21–27, 2009. The campaign has expanded to include participating BloomNet florists parent of 1-800-Flowers.com, who will be selling its signature Cupcake in Bloom™ arrangement and donating 10% of net proceeds from its sales. Click below to find out where you can buy cupcakes or the Cupcake in Bloom™ near you. Participating florists   

When you send a virtual cupcake through CupCakes for Cause 1-800-FLOWERS.COM® will donate $1 for each e-cupcake sent,up to a total of $5,000 USD, through 9/30/09. You can also support Cupcakes for a Cause online by shopping the exclusive 1-800-FLOWERS.COM® Cupcakes for a Cause collection from 9/1-9/30/09. 10% of net proceeds from select floral and edible cupcake products and 1-800-FLOWERS.COM best-sellers, benefit CancerCare for Kids.

The Retail Bakers of America (RBA) is also a proud supporter of Cupcakes for a Cause™

K. Nuer Industry News 1800flowers, CancerCare for Kids, Cupcakes

Get Free Flowers from FTD florist. That’s right FREE!

In honor of FTD Good Neighbor Day 2009, taking place on Wednesday, September 9, 2009, hundreds of select FTD florists across the U.S. are celebrating by holding local events, delevoping sponsor relationships and most of all spreading a message of friendship and kindness through the distribution of free flower arrangments. Get a list of particapting florist here or go to FTD® Good Neighbor Day® 2009

FTD florists have celebrated FTD® Good Neighbor Day® since 1994 in effort to encourage people to be give flowers to create a more caring and compassionate world. Customers are encouraged to keep one flower for themselves and give the others away — brightening the day of many other people.

Will you celebrate The FTD Good Neighbor Day?

K. Nuer Industry News free flowers, ftd, send flowers

Where are the Flowers I ordered?   $%#@!

When it comes to ordering flowers, online the floral shops seem to have it all when it comes to selection. The bouquets online are always magnificently displayed and seem to offer the convenience that you are looking for:  price, description,  availability,  and even additional items to add. That all sounds good and more often then not works out well for the consumer.

You can go through the gauntlet of big brand flower shops online and find just about anything you want in an arrangement and have it delivered anywhere in the USA or internationally. But when flower shops fail to deliver an order for a customer, there is hell to pay!

I’ve scoured the complaints on some of the consumer sites and you would think these online floral site don’t have a clue as to how to run a floral business.

With the web anyone can post a complaint and let the retailer no exactly how they feel about a particular service. If you fail to deliver consumers will know about it and your business reputation will take a hit for it.

Responsible retailers will find a way to correct a mistake if they are smart; after all for many online businesses word of mouth marketing is crucial to success.  Research also suggest that many consumers often make purchases based on the recommendation of a friend or peer.

The reviews on my site seemed to back this up:

“Sad in Seattle” with this totally unreliable online florist! Their glitzy Web site promises a good product with reliable delivery, which did NOT happen. SAVE your money, aggravation and disappointment and shop elsewhere!! FromYouFlowers will NOT supply your needs or care when they haven’t. I would have liked to see this review BEFORE ever shopping with them via credit card, which by the way, they charged IMMEDIATELY, and will not refund”

link to review

There is no short supply of bad experiences when it comes to customer flower delivery mishaps. Flower delivery is not a perfect science and mistakes do happen. What’s important is that they are corrected. That’s the least they can do for you.

Online flower shops still thrive because they usually get it right the first time. Sometimes there is a mistake made buy the person ordering the bouquet, submitting inaccurate information. But if an online  flower shop does make a mistake they will here about it for sure from the customer and they will let everyone else know.

Hopefully “Sad in Seattle” has seen some effort by the flower shop to make amends. If not her comments will echo loudly through the echo chamber of the web.

Note to online flower shops: Be prepared!

K. Nuer Articles flower delivery, flowers online

American author, poet, playwright L.Frank Baum started the Oz book series in 1900 with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It quickly became one of the most popular books ever out of the series. After MGM bought the rights to make The Wizard of Oz in 1937, the movie was an instant success after its release in 1939.

The Wizard of Oz  remains a classic film that has thrived for several decades. It’s a timeless theatrical performace that has entertained the young and old a like.

In conjunction with a September 29 release of The Wizard of Oz (70th Anniversary 2-Disc Special Edition) Teleflora, a  leading flower wire service, has created an empressive keepsake gift, The Wizard of Oz Bouquet. The new Teleflora arrangement celebrates the release of the 70th Anniversary Ultimate Collector’s Edition of the film.

There remians a large fan base of Oz enthusiast with hundreds of personal web sites dedicated to everthing Oz. Warner Bros. Entertainment has for the past year been celebrating the 70th anniversary The Wizard of Oz, with a number of spectacular events around the world.

Teleflora’s The Wizard of Oz Bouquet is a hand-painted sculpture of the  characters, the Lion, Scarecrow, Tin Man, Dorothy and little Toto, skipping down the yellow brick road.  

The floral arrangement features the sweet smells of button-spray chrysanthemums, roses and alstroemeria, all in a yellow shade to highlight the bright future ahead. The bouquet is now only available for pre-order only until September 21st, 2009 at Teleflora.

If you love the timeless story of The Wizard of Oz you might like this  collectible.

K. Nuer Industry News, Special Events Teleflora, Wizard of Oz bouquet

We all need advice and we seek it out when necessary. There is nothing better than knowing where to turn to for advice. Advice is also best received when it comes from a trusted an experienced source.

Local florist are always on hand to answer question and give advice when you buy flowers. A florist knowledge is always indispensable for the floral connoisseur.

True to the nature of the web - as the information portal it has come to be – learning a little more about your bouquet of Calla Lilies or how to care for fresh cut roses isn’t to hard to find online.

Yet there is another venue you can turn to at http://Flower.lifetips.com from online floral retailer FTD.com and LifeTips.com.

FTD.com is an Internet and telephone marketer of flowers and specialty gifts and LifeTips offers tip for consumers on  multiple subjects by experts writers in their respective field. 

Sample Flower tip from Flower.LifeTips.com:

Making Cut Flowers Last Longer

To extend the life of your fresh cut flowers, take them out of their vase and trim their stems every couple of days. Then, replace the vase water with fresh warm water.

You can find hundreds more on their site. The one element that you will not find on Flower.LifeTips.com is video.  Video would be a great supplement to some of the tips to illustrate the content you are reading. But perhaps it’s in the works.

How often do you seek out advice and tips for your floral arrangements?

K. Nuer Articles, Industry News flower guide, ftd, life tips