We are not a wire service! Wire services, order gathers, and grocery stores make it difficult for local florist with trained designers to stay in business. Please select a local florist and help keep America's Small businesses in business!
Before the internet, it could be difficult to find a local florist in another city when sending flowers to a loved one. Now, every florist has a website and it is easy to find a local florist on google. So, wire services are no longer necessary.
A wire service is a company that acts as an intermediary between you and a local florist. They don't make flower arrangements, they just take orders. If you place your order with a wire service, the wire service takes a commission on the sale (a BIG one! 20%-30%) just for taking the information. Then, they try to find a local florist who will make the order for a 70% or 80% of the order's value. So if you order $100 flower arrangement they try to find someone who will make it for $70 or $80 and they keep the rest. This can result in you getting fewer flowers or a lower quality arrangement than you expected because they do not give the local florist control over the quality of the flowers.
There are also order gathers. Again, they do not make flower arrangements, they just take a cut of your money. Many provide misleading advertisements or information saying they have designers. They do not! They also add an extra cost and a hefty commission. For example, if you place your order with them and pay $75 for a flower arrangement, $15 for delivery, another $10 fee, they start trying to find a local florist who will do the order for $52 + $10 for delivery. When the first florist rejects the order, they send it to another one, and so on and so on until they find someone who will accept it. Many times you will get a call back asking for more money because they cannot find a florist to accept the order. This results in delays.
Here is a partial list of order gather's: Ava's, Blossom flower Delivery, Florists.com, From you Flowers, Just Flowers, Pro Flowers, The Sympathy Store, plus many, many, more!
Here is a partial list of wire services: FTD, 1-800-flowers, Teleflora, plus many, many more!
Local Florist support your local economy! Your money stays in your community unlike buying flowers at Kroger, Tom Thumb, HEB, Costco, Sams, etc. The profit from those sales goes to a big corporation! Buy Local!
