24/01/2025
Hi everyone, we hope you’re all safe and well after a windy Friday…just an important notice really about our personal circumstances and the flower trade in general at the moment…most of you know that we normally resume home deliveries from the end of January, unfortunately due to family arrangements we wouldn’t have been able to restart until next Sunday, however there’s some major things that are standing in our way of that happening…firstly the extremely high price for Dutch flowers in preparation for Valentine’s Day is nothing unusual… but year on year it gets worse and worse and this year it being on a Friday and the extra global demand that causes has already made prices hit the roof, Which basically means we can’t even buy flowers at the moment for less than what we normally sell them to you for…crazy!! In the past when this has happened at this time of the year we can normally avoid getting sucked into this price trap by selling flowers at cost and then offering locally indoor grown Lincolnshire daffodils and tulips( which actually would make up 75% of our 1st week back orders anyway…the cost of heating and increased labour costs has made the indoor grown daffs ( cheap outdoor grown ones not ready yet) not worth buying now, and our local tulip grower who was a well established business growing around 20 million tulips for 2 major supermarkets amongst others has ceased growing due to financial reasons… this has come at a time when tulips were already due to be in short supply and at a higher price this year due to the the poor wet weather and flooding Holland had last spring which resulted in a shortage of bulbs being lifted from the fields, Kim has been to two other growers this week and had constructive meetings but getting to the price point we need is difficult when there’s a shortage along with acquiring the same credit terms we’ve had for the last 7 years from our previous supplier is tricky when your new….So sorry to say as it stands deliveries have stopped for the time being, it’s really important to understand we are not giving up!!! We just need to figure out a way forward… 2025 is our 11th year of serving you whether it was on the stall before Covid or one of the many 1000’s of deliveries since then….where we have now built up an extremely loyal customer base whether you order weekly, monthy or once a year it is always very much appreciated and the support and love you have shown us….as you know this is a hobby now alongside our main day jobs, and as we’ve said in the past we have never needed to be greedy and make lots out of coming down on a Sunday, the day jobs pay the bills…it was always about keeping connected to Paul’s roots in Goldsworth Park and Woking with friends and family living there…of which many of our customers are classed as friends now too…alongside the love of selling flowers and plants…. So it’s just about waiting for a time to start to not necessarily make money, it’s more about not loosing any obviously. Luckily we can pick and choose unlike lots of struggling businesses that have no choice….
So we PROMISE we’re be back when the times right again in the not distant future….and hope you all understand.
Lots of love Paul Kim and Evie ###
