On Friday the New Product Development Team and myself went over to Holland to have a day of creativity, coming up with new bouquet ideas, particularly for Valentine's and Mother's Day. I can officially say that the bouquets that were designed are absolutely fantastic. They're full of beautiful flowers, that we think you'll love, but more importantly for you, we know the flowers are long-lasting and offer you great value...but you'll have to wait until we're a bit nearer the time to see the fruits of our labour!
Wanting to make the most of our day in Holland, we squeezed in a visit to a Germini farm on Friday afternoon. I've been to a few flower farms...I think it's really important that we have as much knowledge as possible about the amazing product that we sell. I find that when you visit farms you always pick up some new top tips, that we can then pass on to you, our customer, about how best to care for specific flowers. It blows my mind when I see flowers growing as far as the eye can see, i've attached a few pictures for you to have a look at. Germini's are such a happy flower, so it was lovely to see acres of them...it brought a smile to my face!

This morning I had the privilege of announcing the winners of our 'design a Christmas card' competition in our local primary school. Every year we ask our local school, in Newstead Village, if they'd be happy for their pupils to get creative and come up with a Christmas card design, which we then send to our customers. We love to get the local community involved in Bunches' projects and this is a great opportunity for the children and it's lots of fun.

Every child in the school, ranging from 5yrs-10yrs, did a design and some of them were just brilliant and others were really funny... children think so differently to us adults...for them it's completely normal for humans to have arms growing out of their head!

All the Bunches team cast their vote, in true democratic style, and the 2 runners up and the big winner were presented with their prize in assembly this morning. Tania and I have taken this assembly for the last couple of years and it's a little highlight of our year...it takes us both back to being at primary school! They even sing the same songs as we used to sing in assembly...and just an observation...how come all schools smell the same?

We'll post the winning Christmas card design once we've scanned it in...you'll all love it i'm sure, Megan (age 7) is a really talented girl...definitely a designer in the making

I think all of us know someone who's been affected by Breast Cancer...a couple of years ago my Mum was diagnosed with it, thankfully it was in the very early stages and with thanks to the brilliant medicine that is now available, she is now fit and well!
So when Emma, our sales office supervisor, brought 'dare to wear pink day' to my attention, I thought it would be a great day to get involved with. The idea is that you donate money to breast Cancer research for the priviledge of being able to wear pink. So, today all the Bunches team have donned different shades of pink...some have taken a very cautious approach, with just pink socks, whilst others have really gone for it. It's been a really fun day and I've particularly loved the fact that all the team match our flower gift boxes! I've attached a few pictures for you to have a look at...they really made me laugh! It's always good to have fun, whilst doing something that will make a difference to peoples lives...

Have a great weekend

Dani :)

On monday this week me and my Dad went up to UCB radio to be interviewed. UCB  stands for United Christian Broadcasting, it's only available on digital and sky, so many of you won't of come across it before. We were being interviewed on how Bunches started and how we source our flowers from socially responsible farmers, who use enviromentally sustainable methods. You can read about Bunches ethics at www.bunches.co.uk/ethics.php and you can read all about how we started at www.bunches.co.uk/aboutus.php

The interview went well, however I've concluded that live radio is a little stressful. I used to think that Chris Moyles had the best and easiest job in the world, I now think that he's actually quite talented!  Once the red light switches on in the studio you go from being a very calm, composed & coherent individual to a stuttering, not so calm girl who starts every sentence with 'ummm'. It's a really odd experience because you're just chatting to a DJ one on one...which is fine, I'm very good at chatting...but the thought that there are potentially thousands of people listening to you, makes you hugely self-aware and in my case made my brain stop communicating with my mouth... so I just waffled! General feedback has been that the interview went well...but I've decided to stick to my day job!

Dani 

As part of our work related learning course in year 11 we are expected to spend a week out of school, working somewhere. My parents know Bunches well because they are friends with the owners and when the company first started they deisgned one of the first Bunches logos. They encouraged me to do my work experience at Bunches because it would be interesting for me and I would learn a lot about business.

During my week at Bunches I have really seen the bigger picture behind something that sounds so simple like 'flowers by post'. I spent my first two days in the sales office helping to take orders and learning about customer services. My next two days were spent in the factory putting together and packing flowers, potted plants and other gifts like balloons. I enjoyed it because I'm quite a creative person and I was always busy doing something. On my final day I worked with the Commercial team learning about the marketing side of the business like everything that goes on behind the scenes to get Bunches well known.

Overall I have thoroughly enjoyed my week working at Bunches. It has made me realise just how much goes on to make a company work and be successful.

Esther, 15 years old, The Minster School, Southwell.

Hi,

I'm Alex from the Commercial Team at Bunches - we all want to get in on the act with the Bunches Blog, so various Bunches employees will be having their say in the coming months...

We're pleased to see you're loving our E-cards feature which was launched with the new web site in August. Lots of you have been using this feature to thank family and friends for sending you a Bunches bouquet, and it's even taking off as a social tool to communicate and keep in touch with friends and family. If you haven't already sent an E-card, then you should check it out - just click on this link and we'll take you there:

www.bunches.co.uk/ecards.php

There's loads of other new features on the new site to have a play with, so feel free to explore!

Recently Tania, Alex and myself were exhibiting Bunches at the Subpostmaster and CTN world show at Olympia. Now being from Nottingham I always get a little bit excited about going to our nations capital, not only do I love the buzz of London (& the massive Topshop) but also the likelihood of seeing a celebrity is so much greater than in Nottingham! And my recent visit didn't disappoint...we met the one and only real life Postman Pat! As you may know we send all our flowers out with 1st Class post, so meeting our postal icon was a pretty big deal! Check out the picture below....he was much taller in real life!
Aside from celebrity spotting the Bunches team have been really busy getting ready for Christmas. Our beautiful range of Christmas bouquets will be going live soon...i'd love to hear your feedback on the range once they're live on our site.

My friends are always really surprised how busy Bunches gets in December.  I guess you don't traditionally associate flowers with Christmas but the festive season is all about giving & blessing people and flowers certainly do that. I recently received a letter from Mrs Innes, a recipient of our flowers in Plymouth, she said...

" I'm writing to say how very pleased I was to receive an absolutely beautiful arrangement of your flowers, as a gift from a dear friend. For once I was lost for words! I was very touched, your flowers gave me so much pleasure and were a lovely sight each morning when I woke up."

I think it's so great to work with a product that makes so many people happy, I always say to the Bunches team that we're in the business of generating smiles across the UK...what a privilege!

That's all for now


Dani

So I'm currently ridiculously excited, as I count down the weeks to my up and coming nuptials on the 27th December. You may think that it's a little crazy for the MD of a flower business to get married at the end of one of the busiest weeks of the year....and you'd be right, it is crazy but also very romantic, with a mass of fairy lights and candles! I'm currently working through a huge checklist planning the big day and am so relieved that I don't have to worry about the flowers. I've spoken to our very talented girls in production and they're going to be designing and creating all the flowers for the big day, so the whole Bunches family is involved! I'll keep you updated with their deisgn ideas...
     
When Dan proposed (yes we have the same name, it's all very confusing) along with a gorgeous ring he also presented me with a beautiful yellow Rose, which has the name Danielle Turner…yes, he registered a brand new rose breed at the International Rose breeders association with my future married name, so I now have my very own Rose….how romantic eh? I've posted a photo of one of the first flowers from the Danielle Turner Rose bush! You never know, one day we may even be able to sell it, it's so fragrant it would make a gorgeous gift.

After chatting with staff and some of my friends it's become apparent that Mum's and Dad's are very much looking forward to their children going back to school...I must say this is no bearing on how much they love their children, it's just they're running out of ideas to entertain them after they utter the dreaded words "I'm bored". So, I thought i'd help you Mum's and Dad's...you can occupy your children, for the last few days of the holidays, with some alternative uses for Bunches packaging.

I've attached a picture of my Nephew, Sebastian, who’s well ahead of his 2 years, I think you’ll agree, as he’s fashioned himself a brilliant car out of a Bunches box. All you need to do the same is:

• A Bunches box    
  
• Some time
• Some sticky tape
• And a little imagination!

Or you could set your children on the task of making a hat! There’s a photo below of one of our customers’ daughters, with an award winning head accessory made for a mad hatters party that she went to, it's made out of our very popular Candy Stripe bag and won first prize at the party! So, help your children to while away the hours and see what they can create out of  Bunches packaging, or maybe you can have a go yourself,  if you’re feeling a little bored!

Send us the results of your creativities to flowers@bunches.co.uk and we’ll post your attempts on our staff notice board and maybe we’ll even send the best a prize!

Enjoy the last few days of the summer holidays!

Dani
 

Welcome to the first of many entries into the brand new Bunches blog, if you're reading this then I guess you've had a peek at our new website. Barry, Ing and Chris, our super duper web development team have been working very hard over the last few months to bring you a website that looks fantastic, but that more importantly is really easy for you to use . We'd love to hear your thoughts on the all new singing and dancing bunches.co.uk. It  was our aim at the beginning of the project to create a site that would be better for you in every way....so let us know if we've done what we set out to achieve! You can leave your comments on our facebook page or you can email us at flowers@bunches.co.uk. As with everything at Bunches we want to continually improve everything that we do, so don't be shy....

One of the new features that I’m loving on the new site is the time lapse photography video link that’s on the flower care page. I genuinely think that flowers are amazing but this video just fascinates me…it shows some Bunches lilies opening from bud to full bloom…you should take a look! Where possible we send our flowers out in bud, so we wanted to show you what they can look like on arrival and what they’ll look like a week later. Sending our flowers in bud means that the lucky recipient can get the most out of their flowers, watching them come into full bloom in their own home. The buds protect the petals while they’re traveling to their destination too. The video only takes 1 minute and 16 seconds to view but it actually took 8 days to shoot, with a photo being taken every 15 minutes day and night! And for the first day our amazing photographer manually took the photos every 15 mins!  Thank goodness he was able to then rig the camera up for the photos to be taken automatically…otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to go out the house or more importantly sleep for 8 days!

Another new feature, that I think is just fab, is the Bunches wallpapers that you can download to your desktop for free, when you log in to your account. There’s a selection of our most popular bouquet flower images to choose from. What a great way to decorate your desktop – it’s just a shame you can’t smell the flowers too!

Dani