Valentine's Day: please post all offers for flowers/chocs/ gifts here

N_R

elainew wrote: »

I stopped using my local florist when it was my Grans funeral. She sadly got buried around valentines day and the prices the florist wanted for a simply posy of flowers was dreadful as they said the prices were up as it was Valentines day. They refused to budge on prices evn though they knew it was for a funeral.
In the end we paid the prices begrudginly. The flowers were dreadful.
Sadly my dear old aunt died 6 weeks later and we did our own flowers bought from ALDI costing 1/3rd of the price the florist charged. They were fantastic and we were complimented on how great they were.
"SERVES YOU RIGHT" is a horrible statement to make. Not everyone has the extortionate money florists charge

Ivrytwr3 wrote: »

You only have yourselves to blame. How can you justify putting up your prices 50% - 100% just because of an occassion?

I would love to support my local florists, try keeping your prices the same as all year round, or even marginally increasing them and i may come back to you. But if i can get a dozen red roses, champers and a teddy bear delivered for £30 why would i come to a local florist who wants to charge £45 just for the roses?

I think you need to look at good old fashioned supply and demand, and maybe understand how the supply chain works.

If you order 600 red roses from wherever the florist gets them from, thats an order that has to be fulfilled. Most flowers are bought in auction in holland, such as Aalsmeer or Flora Holland. It's a dutch auction so the price starts high (displayed as a clock) and comes down. At some point someone is happy to pay that price for the flowers and presses a button, so the flowers are then theirs to supply to his customers. Come Valentines day there is a huge internaional demand for flowers, especially roses so the buyer in the auction has his orders to fulfill so has to press the button at a higher price to enable him to get sufficient flowers for his orders. He then passes those prices onto the florist, the florist then passes those prices onto you. I know most florists don't put the same margin on the flowers that is usually applied as it would make the too expensive.