Published on October 7th, 2017 | by Guest

All You Never Knew About Online Flower Gifting

Gifting flowers is one of the most beautiful ways of expressing your sentiments on virtually any occasion. Now you can choose from a wide variety of flowers, including some very exotic ones, from an online catalog in the comfort of your home, and with a click of a button have them delivered anywhere in the world. If you ever wondered how it really works, here’s a peek inside the business:

From Where Do the Flowers Come?

Floriculture is a big global business and today flowers are grown all over the world and shipped to the various markets where local florists pick them up to fulfill their orders. Typically, online flower gifting sites have a network of affiliated florists spread across various cities and towns. When you go online and select a bouquet from the catalog, the order is transmitted by the site to its affiliate florist at the location where the delivery is to be made. For example, if you want to send flowers to Germany from America, the local florist in the town in Germany processes the order and delivers it. This is the reason why your order may be placed on one company but executed by another.

You can well imagine that selecting a network florist is not an easy job because of the need to match the specific floral arrangements that are shown in the online catalog and ordered by the customer. Only florists who can execute the order perfectly will be capable of meeting customer expectations. There are also florists who source flowers in bulk from flower farms across America and send them to the customer directly from their distribution centers. Typically, the flowers are sold loose and not in specific arrangements and delivered to the customer in specially-design boxes that preserve the flowers well.

What about the Payment?

All online flower gifting sites will accept your credit card at the time of placing the order. When the site outsources the order execution to a network florist, it also has a payment mechanism to send the required payment to them. You remain completely transparent to the process.

How Long Do the Flowers Travel?

The transit time of the flowers depends essentially on two factors; where the flowers come from and where they need to be delivered. For normal seasonal flowers, the network florist will typically have the flower farm in the proximity delivering the fresh flowers early each morning following which the delivery to the customers is made within a few hours. However, exotic flowers sourced from far away countries can easily spend quite a few days in transit. However, international flower traders always scan trends and make popular flowers more easily accessible to the local markets.

Conclusion

Many people advocating the cause of small and local businesses think that online florists are a big cause of worry to local florists. However, one can easily understand that online florists merely add a level of intermediation to the process and make flowers more accessible to customers. The flowers still need to be physically arranged and delivered to customers, and that is a role that only local florists can fulfill.

Tags: flower, gifting, never knew, online