It’s almost Mother’s Day Week and local florists across the US and Canada are getting ready to deliver your fondest wishes to Moms, Grandmas and the women who have been special ‘moms’ in your life.

Today we’re highlighting signature floral designs – across a range of styles and budgets – available exclusively from these independent local flower shops. Each florist has a unique style and the designs displayed are available only ‘as shown’ from these individual companies.  Just like Moms, no two local shops are exactly alike – which makes their flowers and arrangements personal and specialized for their communities and customers.

Casual Garden Style Flowers

Concord Flower Shop in Concord MA is offering a Meadow Basket filled with soft ‘wildflower’ textures in cool blues, greens, yellows and white with hydrangeas, sunflowers, daisies, thistle, hypericum berries and solidater.

Nelson’s Flower Shop in Plattsburgh NY is featuring Adirondack Charm, a bright seasonal, grouped design in a keepsake pink oval pail.  The flower selection include tulips, iris, carnations and spray chrysanthemums.

Martin’s, The Flower People in Toronto ON will be delivering bright spring  Field of Flowers arrangements in keepsake hammered tin pitchers. This casual design includes gerberas,  viburnum, delphinium, alstroemeria, waxflowers and other garden delights. 

McAdams Floral in Victoria TX is offering a sweet  Picket Fence Garden arrangement accented with a decorative bird and designed with sunflowers, larkspur and spray chrysanthemums all in a keepsake hand-painted ceramic cache pot.   

With stores in Eagle River, Minocqua, Rhinelander, Stevens Point and Wausau WI, Trigs Floral will be delivering a unique Arts and Crafts arrangement in a greenware container inspired by the period. The flower selection includes iris, orchids and delphinium in popular shades of blues, purples and fuchsia.  

Flowers With A Gift

Mom’s Night Out from Coleman Florist in Syracuse NY delivers two gifts in one; an arrangement of pink and white hydrangeas, asters, gerberas and roses and a fun keepsake change bank for your mom to stash away some ‘mad money’.  

Who can resist Chocolate Indulgence from Twigs Flowers in Yerington NV?  It features premium flowers like roses and hydrangeas and includes two Godiva chocolate bars. Maybe Mom will share…. or not. 

Vibrant Mother’s Day Mixed Flowers

Central Square Florist in Cambridge MA is wishing Moms a Beautiful Day with a bright seasonal mix of roses, lilies, snapdragons, sunflowers and other seasonal blooms designed in a glass vase.  

Mother’s Wish Bouquet from Chappell’s Florist in Burlington VT plays on the bright colors of a chic, fun ceramic vase and features lilies, gerberas, roses and long-lasting spray chrysanthemums. 

Contemporary Mom

This striking and linear arrangement from Any-Time Flowers of  St. Paul MN – Modular Mom – features blue orchids, liatris and Bells of Ireland and is delivered in a black cube container. Perfect for moms who like structured, unique design. 

Low and Lush Styles

Stems a flower shop of Evergreen CO is showcasing Blue Sky – a glass cube vase lushly filled with blue hydrangeas, yellow roses and bursts of fresh lily grass. 

A luscious and luxurious French Country flower arrangement is being offered by Victoria BC florist Artistry in Bloom. Roses, orchids, lisianthus and berries in shades of pinks and greens will arrive at Mom’s house in a footed hammered tin vase she’s sure to love. 

From Avante Gardens Florist in Anaheim CA you can send mom a Vibrant Spring Garden Vase – a pave’ style arrangement of hydrangeas, tulips, ranunculus, roses, lilacs and other bright  seasonal blooms all designed in a glass pillow-style vase.  

Don’t see your Mom’s favorite flower or style  on your local florist’s website? Pick up the phone and call and they’ll do their best to make sure your special request is delivered prompt and fresh.

Remember to order Mother’s Day flowers  early for the best selection and to trust local flower shops for the best full-service value when it comes to sending flowers to Mom.

Last month the two biggest names in online flowers, 1800FLOWERS.com and FTD.com, were summoned by the US Senate Commerce Committee for records of their participation in post transactional marketing programs labeled “scams,” “robbery” and “theft” by both angry consumers and US Senators.

The congressional report lists both 1-800-Flowers and FTD as having received more than $10 million each in ‘bounties’ for turning shoppers’ credit card numbers over to investigation targets Affinion, Vertrue, and Webloyalty. Another division of FTD’s parent company United Online (UNTD), Classmates.com, raked in more than $70 million in the scheme.

Read CNET News coverage of the hearing here.

The CEO of FTD’s parent company, United Online was featured in a scathing article by Greg Sandoval of CNET News for having the temerity to blame the victims for being tricked by the smoke and mirrors ‘discount’ offers which ended up costing each duped shopper $10 to $20 monthly.

FTD is doubly dubious because they unwittingly enrolled all their thousands of websites hosted for local florist in WebLoyalty’s program and made it an ‘opt out’ – so some of the brick and mortar stores also felt the ire of fooled consumers. According to congressional records, The FTD local florist program, FTD Florists Online, netted the company between $1 and $10 Million in bounties, too.

Note to CEOs of both FTD and 1-800-Flowers: You can’t market the beauty and emotional benefits of flowers in the front of your sites while picking shoppers’ pockets at the back – and earn loyal fans.

It’s not just FTD.com and 1-800-Flowers.com

Another notable national flower seller, ProFlowers.com, has also received myriad complaints about it’s post transactional marketing agreement with a company called EZSVER. EZSVER was not part of the Senate investigations, but the net result is the same – consumers claim to have been unwittingly enrolled in an automatically debited ‘club’ after being offered ‘free shipping’ or a future discount.

Ethical lapses

From The Motley Fool: It’s a Dot-Com Minefield by Rick Aristotle Munarriz -

“The bigger problem, though, is that investors will question the ethics of these online merchants that have no problem handing over billing information in deceptive add-on deals.”

They should.

FTD, especially, used to be the ethical standard bearer of the flower business. The logo was synonymous with trust in flowers and florists. Not anymore.

Too much of the online flower world in the last decade has been built on lapses in ethics by the retail industry leadership, including:

- paying large bounties and commissions to affiliates who use false addresses and deceptive advertising to mislead consumers into believing they are purchasing from legitimate local florists in a community.

- using product photos that show more flowers than the recipes and descriptions they provide to local florists who actually make the deliveries.

- misleading consumers into believing the extra service charges ($12.99-19.99) actually pay for shipping and local delivery. (The companies pocket those fees and by contract, the florists subtract their delivery charges from the prices indicated on the products.)

Whither the ethics indeed… Paging Senator Rockefeller.

More coverage of the Senate hearings:

PC Magazine: Is Your Favorite E-Commerce Site Ripping You Off? by Chloe Albanisius

Information Week: Lawmakers Slam Deceptive Marketers by Thomas Clayburn

The Associated Press: Senators Blast Web sites for Scamming Shoppers by Lolita C./ Baldor

Washington Post: Rockefeller takes on aggressive online sales tactics, report finds firms misleading consumers by Cecilia King

Can you feel it yet?  We do here in Michigan… Fall is in the air!

The hot muggy days of summer have given way to the cooler and dryer days of Fall with their Autumn hues of gold, orange, bronze, yellow and accents of green and purple.  We’re always excited for the seasonal changes in the flower shop as we get to shift into the next season which changes some of the types of flowers we get to use and offers us a refreshing change of scenery in the design room.

As you too begin to move indoors, remember to stop by your local florist for some fresh blooms for the kitchen or to brighten any room in the house!

Remember, every florist listed here on the Real Florist Blog is a local “Real Florist”, not a boiler room full of phones and computers!  Each of our listed florists actually touches fresh flowers everyday and each will have a great selection for you to choose from.  Whether you need a single stem for a bathroom bud vase or centerpieces for a dinner party, they will be glad to assist you with whatever you need.

Enjoy the season!  Winter’s just around the corner.

Blogger Chris took FTD.com up on a offer he’d received via Netflix to purchase a Christmas arrangements for his wife. What he was sold:

What he got:

Chris said “I didn’t know it was supposed to be DIY. I figured as much from the way it came in the box, but my wife–who hadn’t seen the original misleading picture–assumed it was supposed to be like that. Couldn’t find anything on FTD.com to suggest that, “Yeah, you’re gonna have to do some work on these.” “

Buyer beware. Despite what the US Better Business Bureau Code of Advertising says about unassembled merchandise 

Unassembled Merchandise
When advertised merchandise requires partial or complete assembly by the purchaser, the advertising should disclose that fact, e.g., “unassembled,” “partial assembly required.”

flower drop shippers continue to advertise professionally designed ‘arrangements’ which require additional elements, tools & assembly by the recipient. Neither FTD nor its major drop ship competitors – ProFlowers, Calyx Flowers and 1-800-Flowers - clearly states on the product pages or in the ads that tools (knives or scissors) and assembly are required on the applicable products.

The BBB relies on the industry to “self-regulate in the public interest”.  Unfortunately, the industry leadership has remained mute on this issue. Self interest wins out over the public interest? 

We believe this advertising is deceptive and misleading and puts real local florists at a competitive disadvantage.  It’s far easier to offer low prices when a large part of the expense – professional design and hand delivery in water – are omitted.  

In Chris’ case, it was a real annoyance to receive an ‘assembly required’ arrangement, but imagine the reaction and embarrasment when a purchaser sends one of these ‘kits’ to a funeral service where a bereaved family has to put it together – or to a hospital where a patient has to find tools to recut the flowers and make his/her own arrangement from a sick bed.

If you have been mislead by a similar ad, let the BBB know and take Chris’ advice when purchasing flowers in the future: ”Buy flowers locally. You know what you’re getting, and you’re likely supporting a local business.”

This post is 4th in a series of articles about why your flowers don’t look like the picture. See also:

Why Your Flowers Don’t Look Like the Picture – Part 1

Why Your Flowers Don’t Look Like the Picture – Part 2

Why Your Flowers Don’t Look Like the Picture – Part 3

Because according to a 1800Flowers.com customer service rep, pink is out of season.

Blogger, the Trading Goddess, wanted to send pink flowers and ordered a “Florist Select European Hand Tied Bouquet”, relying on the product photo to make her purchasing decision. (It displayed a mixed pink and white bouquet wrapped in pink paper.)  

While the bouquet description mentions “Components will vary”, it’s hardly clear that the colors will be chosen by the delivering local florist, too.

The Trading Goddess summarizes the frustrating conversation with CSR ‘Dora’ during her complaint call to 1-800-Flowers:

“I told her how important the color pink was, and solely due to the photo on their website, was the reason I choose this bouquet. I told Dora that I would have purchased the larger bouquets if they had the pink pic that went along with the description, which it did not. There was only the “small” choice for the color pink.

Well, Dora repeatedly told me that the description says “Florist Select” and that means their choice of color. She repeatedly said that they choose from the flowers that are in season and that the pink was not in season.”

The testy exchange between the shopper and CSR rep is reminiscent of other customer service run-arounds with 1800flowers.com.

I’m guessing that company will fix the product description to make is clear that color choice isn’t an option, but they also need to work on training the CSR’s to stop blaming customers and giving out lame excuses for why the flowers don’t look like the picture.

Honestly, every professional florist knows that pink is only out of season in October.  

This post is third in a series. See Why Your Flowers Don’t Look Like the Picture – Part 1 and Why Your Flowers Don’t Look Like the Picture – Part 2 for more details about avoiding disappointment when ordering flowers online.

This month, Ron Burley of the AARP Magazine showed readers how to fight ‘company policy’ at 1-800-Flowers and get their money back for faulty products and services.  The AARP member’s flower gift had arrived two days after Mother’s Day and was dead on delivery, ”crushed and brown,” and the company has refused to refund the cost or replace the whithered blooms.

Burley described 1-800-Flowers’ customer service as being ‘belligerent’, ‘testy’ and ‘obstinant’ and finally had to resort to contacting senior executives at the company to obtain a refund.

Joseph D. Pititto, vice president of investor relations at 1800flowers.com, finally promised the customer satisfaction and assured that “the company and the partner florist involved have taken measures to ensure that such an episode doesn’t happen again.”

But in this week’s 1-800-Flowers Be Damned, yet another episode of the customer service run-around by 1-800-Flowers is painfully described by a grandmother trying to send flowers to her severely injured granddaughter. The blogger was so infuriated she vowed

“I would sooner bury my own mother with daisies from the back yard than have to deal with this company again.”

Her flowers finally got delivered, but she was aghast that

“on the backside of the lovely note that I had written was an ad for 15% off when you join the Fresh Rewards Club. Since when is it a good practice to advertise on the back of a gift card?”

In response to a comment, blogger Marie said “we have lost those special customer relations that made shopping a personal experience.” 

Sounds nostalgic – but direct customer service without the run-around is plentiful in the flower industry.

Local florists like myself remind all flower buyers that by dealing with a call center instead of direct with the florist that will deliver their flowers, they’ll sacrifice “those special customer relations that made shopping a personal experience”. There is no personal relationship since, as was pointed out in her post, you can’t even speak with the same rep twice.

Numerous commenters recommended the blogger use a local florist next time. We real florists agree.

The discussion about the decrease in florist wire service membership made a few of us ask why and how the latest BloomNet directory only shows 6,978 members yet a 1800flower.com press release from May 2007 pegged the number at “more than 9,500 BloomNet Professional Florists.”
We asked more than one source to check the figures on the electronic directory and got affirmatives on the 6,978 number for North America.
Has BloomNet lost more than 2500 florist members in just a few months? That’s a huge discrepancy…

According to recent florist wire service directory updates, there’s a significant shift in the numbers of member flower shop affiliates in North American. The latest figures, which include both the US and Canada, as of the Oct. 1, 2007 electronic directory releases:
FTD
13,876 records including 313 new and 1151 deleted for a net change of <-6%>
Teleflora
25,913 records including 411 new and 1243 deleted for a net change of <-3.2%>
Bloomnet (1-800-Flowers)
6,978 records – previous records numbers unavailable. Per the annual report from FY 2006: “over 9,000 members as of July 2, 2006″
Membership directories are updated quarterly.
With rising wire service participant costs and decreasing numbers of orders flowing through the systems (primarily due to drop-ship boxed flowers being sold by national marketers like FTD.com and 1800flowers.com) declines in membership aren’t a surprise, but the sheer numbers do not bode well for the floral industry.

Many small businesses are looking to search engine marketing firms (SEMs) to help position them in pay per click campaigns so they’ll appear for relevant keywords in popular sites like Google and Yahoo. Local companies, like florists, often prefer to turn to professional firms rather than undergoing the steep learning curve (and ongoing monitoring) while trying to run their businesses.
Based on what I spotted today, I wonder if some these flower shops are making a wise investment.
While checking out a Google SERP, all I could think was ‘huh?’ Not because of the natural listings, but from seeing florists – some of them long-time friends – appearing in Adwords with our city name beneath their ads.
The funny thing is, none of the 5 flower shops are located in this town. In fact, the nearest one is 17 miles away and one would have a minimum 80 mile round trip to deliver flowers here. That’s one heck of a delivery charge.

So I called a couple of the florists and asked if they were expanding their delivery areas. The universal response has ‘no’.
‘Do you know you are running ads giving your location as down here in Anaheim?’
‘No, we don’t deliver there. Why would we advertise there?’
Turns out the ads are being placed on their behalf by their own SEM firms.
One shop’s campaign is being run by a Yellow Pages company and the florist expressed extreme dismay with the results they’d had so far. ‘We get a lot of clicks but few orders.’ No kidding. When your home page tells local searchers you’re in a town 40 miles from the city where they need to send flowers, they can’t hit the back button fast enough.
Another shop owner is trusting his PPC management to a program through a national florist wire service. His Adwords listing is at the bottom of page 2 for a set of fairly non-competitive keywords he doesn’t even want and he’s paying the SEM around a dollar a click for the privilege. He too expressed great displeasure with the ROI.
Most local florists focus on serving the geographic area within 12-15 miles of their stores. By placing Local ads (and including specific city names) in towns their clients don’t directly deliver to, these SEMs have managed to get plenty of bouncing clicks but have failed to serve their customers.
Small business need SEMs and are willing to invest in online marketing – but they need advertising partners that spend their dollars wisely and craft their campaigns to appeal to their target customers.
I pointed my friends to one of my favorite blogs about search marketing for small businesses, Small Business SEM and hope they read up before renewing those campaigns.

In a comment last week in Mike Blumethal’s blog about Yahoo Local Mapspam, I mention the frustration of a local Butler PA florist being challenged to prove his company was a real brick and mortar store while a national affiliate marketer had managed to place ‘local’ listings without addresses throughout Y Local.
The 1-800-Flowers remote call forwarded (RCF) ‘local’ numbers were appearing in city pages right along with brick and mortar flower shops:

“Meanwhile, over the last few days Y Local (along with yellowpages.com, switchboard.com and AOL Yellow Pages) has added 1-800-Flowers’ listings (which feature local phone numbers that remote call forward to 1800Flowers.com’s call center) to cities all over the US. See Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Boston and St. Louis for examples. See any ‘physical locations’?”

1-800-Flowers’ listings included tracking codes (in addition to the remote call forwarding numbers [RCFs]) and typically appeared in regular Local results looking like this:

A few member florists of FlowerChat contacted senior management at Bloomnet (1-800-Flowers’ florist services division) and expressed concerns about the new marketing tactic.
As of last Friday, the ‘local’ campaign – banner ads and ‘local listings’ – were removed from yellowpages.com and its related sites (including Yahoo Local). One FlowerChat member reported 1-800-Flowers’ management as being unaware of the RCF’s.

“…they have taken down the (listings on the) sites that they had control of, and are communicating with their (hired) marketing company to remove anything that appears to be a “local” listing that is in fact not. They do not want to be part of listing local numbers that forward to their call centers, they use 800 numbers for corp. ads.”

RCF’s purchased by affiliate marketers of flowers to appear ‘local’ are not new, but their use, coupled with local-sounding names and/or phony addresses violates consumer protection laws in 24 states. Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum recently filed suit against a New Jersey flower telemarketer stating

“Consumers are entitled to know with whom they are doing business, and companies who deliberately attempt to conceal their true identity or location have no business operating in our state.”

Kudos to the 1-800-Flowers leadership for pulling down a campaign that made them look like they are running local businesses when they weren’t.
The questions still remains as to how Yahoo Local can provide an accurate data set when a partner like yellowpages.com appears to be able to place ‘local’ listings there for companies with no physical presence.