For the LOVE of roses .... five tips for florists preparing for a successful Valentine's Day
Over the past 50 years Pearsons has seen Valentine’s Day grow in popularity … with a dozen sexy long stemmed roses remaining the most popular gift.
With many people still working from home our team of floral designers and couriers will be working to deliver five-times as many bouquets as a normal day.
So what does Pearsons Florist do to ensure that every rose is delivered beautifully?
One: Talk to our local FLOWER GROWERS and rose importers to see what will be best in Bloom
Our preference is always to buy local and then supplement with the best roses grown in Ecuador and Kenya.
Our Director Bernard with meet with all our key suppliers well in advance, visiting the farms when possible. He prefers to hand-pick our range to ensure quality and variety and looks to use what's best in season.
Two: Set a budget.
How many bouquets can our team actually create? How many deliveries can we do in one day?
It is better to set a limit to what is physically possible rather than take on more than you can do really well.
Three: Design our Valentine's Day Collection
Our creative team design our Valentine's Day collection and we take orders strictly from this range. Each bouquet not only has to look beautiful but be practical and sustainable for delivery on a hot summers day.
Roses are always the feature, with mixed bouquets and dried florals for the non-traditional lovers out there!
Four: Create a Flower Recipe and Shopping List
Now we know what we are designing and how many we plan to deliver; we can calculate what we need to order from our wonderful flower growers. They need our flower order in January.
For every design in our Valentine's Day Collection we create a Flower RECIPE. How many stems of roses, orchids, anthuriums and foliage for each design, then multiply by the number of designs budgeted.
And it is not just flowers: we need the rose boxes, champagne, ribbons, vases, wrapping, gift cards, chocolates and water vials too.
The more detailed the better.
Five: Sharing the range with our clients
So we know what's in season and how many deliveries will do: we must to educate our customers.
Apart from Florists .... most people don't know that Valentine's Day is fast approaching. Our job is to remind them that Valentine's Day is approaching through social media, emails and our website.
The message needs to be brief and consistent, encouraging clients to ORDER early as we will sell out.
Everything FEBRUARY 1 to FEBRUARY 14 is coming up RED ROSES.
So do how our flower farmers get all the red roses to bloom just in time for Valentine’s Day? And what was the impact of climate extremes on our local Flower Farms?
It’s all to do with Timing and Sacrifice.
Flower growers time the growth of the flowers, heavily cutting all the rose plants back in December and January, whether they are in bloom or not. They let the rose bushes re-grow and bloom all at once in time for Valentine’s Day. Effectively the growers’ sacrifice crops from late December through January to ensure they are in full bloom for February.
Where do Pearsons roses come from?
Pearsons source our roses both locally and internationally, road-testing different varieties before selecting the best roses for our Valentine’s bouquets. Many of our roses will be imported from South America or Kenya while the majority of our other cut flowers are Australian grown. 90%.
Luckily for Pearsons’ customers we have over 50 years’ experience and strong relationships with our growers to ensure that we can provide beautiful roses on our busiest day of the year. Pearsons owner Bernard Pollak personally visits local farms on a regular basis to ensure our customers get the best quality available.
Roses and the climate
The challenge has been so much greater this year with local flower growers struggling with humidity and water. Having been through the big dry our local rose growers aren't complaining, but they do have to be careful to avoid botrytis damaging the rose blooms.