How to Select a Florist
When you need to send a bouquet or gift basket to cheer up a friend, or celebrate a birthday or anniversary, you know how important it is that that bouquet or basket has to be “just right.” It has to look wonderful, be wonderful, and arrive on time.
As the saying goes, you only have one chance to make a good first impression. If there’s a problem with the delivery or the product, a replacement bouquet or basket sure won’t have the same impact as that first arrival.
So when choosing a florist, you want to make sure you’re dealing with a reputable company that has a reputation for delivering excellent flowers or gift baskets, nicely designed, and that will arrive on time at its destination. You also want to make sure that the prices you spend are comparable.
1. Reputation for fresh flowers, tastefully arranged
2. Reputation for varieties of flowers, from common to exotic
3. Reputation for on-time delivery
4. Reputation for friendly sales people and floral designers
5. Reputation for comparable price with competitors
While it is certainly possible to visit florists on the web – practically every florist business these days will have a website of some kind, it’s also nice to be able to visit a “bricks-and-mortar” store and talk to the friendly service people there. You can see their offerings at first hand, smell ‘em, touch ‘em, enjoy ‘em.
But a florist’s website is also crucial. At their website, you can see all the information you need to know, from their opening and closing hours, to their delivery times, to the flowers and gift baskets they have on offer, to their prices, to their delivery charges.
You can also purchase flowers, plants, gift baskets and so on from their website, and once again you can compare prices on each item.
Oh, those prices. Price should never be your first or even second consideration when ordering flowers for a friend or loved one. There’s no point in paying a little bit of money for an inferior product, that’s worse than sending nothing at all. On the other hand, you don’t want to pay an exorbitant amount of money, either.
That’s the joy of surfing the internet, you can compare prices on a variety of florists, and combining that with information you already know, make an informed decision.
Some florists have been in business for decades – as for example, Turpin’s Florist! However, some have sprouted up overnight…and how can you tell the wheat from the chaff. Well, there’s always the Better Business Bureau (www.bbb.com) a company that keeps track of any complaints made against a business. It’s always a good thing to check out the BBB whenever you are about to do business with a new company.
Then of course there’s word of mouth. If your friends have had good experiences with a certain florist, they’ll probably direct you there, too. You’ll still want to check them out, though.
