3 years, 1 month ago

As the world is recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, and things are slowly starting to resemble normalcy, some industries are still struggling to cope with the demand for products. The floral industry is one of them, with last year’s low demand and substantial losses to farmers and growers affecting this year’s supply.

In addition to adjusting growth, farmers in South American countries like Ecuador and Colombia have faced an especially damaging rainy season. This, coupled with high airfare and cargo pricing, has made availability a concern.

Despite flower demand soaring, the supply is still short for high-quality varieties, making it difficult to fulfill orders for graduations, weddings, and other ceremonies. However, this hasn’t affected all equally. Some have been smart enough to establish standing orders and have received a reliable and steady supply of fresh flowers for all of their needs.

What Is a Standing Order?

A standing order is simply placed by customers in advance for the entire year so they can continue to receive fresh flowers every week, a couple of weeks, or as often as they wish. In essence, it’s like a floral subscription or pre-order that guarantees fresh flowers at all times. Weekly standing orders, for example, are automatically fulfilled once a week for an entire year.

While you can decide how often to receive fresh flowers, other parts of the order, such as the variety of colors, are fixed. For example, you could have a standing order for 200 red roses or 400 Explorer roses, or 100 mixed carnations every two weeks.

Why Opt For a Standing Order of Flowers?

Even if you know what a standing order of flowers is, you may not know why these are essential and how they can benefit you. There are several reasons standing orders are so popular in the floral industry. In addition to being more inexpensive than recurring orders, they also guarantee consistency, delivery, and more.

Guaranteed Fresh Flowers

With the past year and the pandemic still affecting supply to this day, it’s difficult to have a guarantee on fresh flower orders unless they’re placed well in advance. Standing orders offer you extra security on orders since these are already in place, and farms will prioritize them over the open market. With the floral industry's shortages recently, standing orders are the best way to guarantee high-quality fresh flowers all year round!

Lower Prices

Because you’re placing an order for the entire year, farms are flexible and willing to negotiate when it comes to pricing. Most of the time, placing large standing orders can score you a substantial discount, often throughout the different seasons, including peak demand. This depends on volume but if you’re placing large standing orders on a regular basis, like one for 600 roses every week, you’ll note a significant discount than if you were only ordering 50 roses every three weeks.

Sometimes, if you have a standing order and a good relationship with flower farms, they let you double your order during peak demand times for the same or comparable rates!

Consistent Quality

In addition to consistency in price, you can look forward to consistency in quality. Since your fresh flowers will come from the same farms, you can expect the same outstanding quality on every order.

Convenience

If you’re planning on ordering flowers every week or every couple of weeks anyway, why not do it with a standing order? It eliminates the need to place a repeat order every time you want flowers, making it more convenient and saving you valuable time.

Standing Orders Amid a High Flower Demand

When it comes to Latin America and Ecuador in particular, many farms have closed during the past year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Others are cautious, have reduced growing areas, or produce less due to harsh weather. The biggest advantage of having a standing order in place is that your order is prioritized – even if there’s a shortage in supply, your order will get fulfilled, and there will be less available for the rest of the market. The only time you’ll see a cancellation is under extreme circumstances since your order will be a priority to the farms.

Use Fresh-o-Fair’s Floral Concierge Service

From stability and availability to consistent quality and great value, there are many reasons behind standing orders being so popular and beneficial. No matter the specific variety of flower, color, or grade you’re interested in, a standing order can ensure you get the best flowers available throughout the year and boost your revenue.

If you’re interested in creating a standing order through Fresh-o-Fair with a flower farm, we’re more than happy to help. Our floral concierge service ensures timely delivery of high-quality fresh flowers and even warns you of upcoming shortages and other situations. We know the floral industry inside out and offer you high-quality wholesale flowers at a great price.

Cut out the middleman and get flowers fresh from the farm at wholesale prices by contacting us here.