Behind the Blooms
"Where do your flowers come from?" #2
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Our second phase of the "Where do your flowers come from?" equation is "Shipping". Last week we discussed how our Purchaser Extraodinaire DD Parks scours the globe to get great flowers here everyday. This week we'll talk about our daily pick-up of shipping.


We start every day at Tiger Lily with a stand-up meeting before the shop opens. During the meeting each employee briefly talks about what they have going on that day, customer comments, operating procedures and such. DD tells the drivers where we are to pick-up fresh product that morning; UPS, FED EX, US Air Cargo and/or Delta Air Cargo. They are all located near the airport, which is just 12 minutes from Tiger Lily. It would be easier if we just had the flowers shipped directly to our back door, but then the flowers spend all day riding around in the back a truck before they get to us. With the Charleston heat and potholes, they would suffer more damage from that than their plane ride from Hawaii or Colombia!


DD has flowers sent to particular locations based on shipping speed and cost. DD can get flowers shipped to us a whole day earlier just by using a different carrier. It's a complicated process that she really focuses on, but spending one day less crammed in a box and sitting on a tarmac somewhere means a world of difference in the appearance and vase life of a flower. We feel it's worth it!


The bottom photo is what the drivers see when they pull up. We're at this location so often, they gave us the security gate code and let us pull our van into the warehouse and sign the boxes out ourselves! It may not look like much, but each narrow box holds around 100-150 stems of flowers. Large boxes hold around 250 stems. Multiply this by two or three pick-up locations, and when the driver gets back to the shop around 10am he might have a couple thousand stems! This happens everyday. During the busy season, one cargo van may not hold it all and we'll have to make a second trip. Those are the days when we'll have five or more College of Charleston students processing flowers for eight hours or more.


As you can see in the top photo, the boxes are packed meticulously. All the care the grower takes in planting, nurturing and harvesting the stems are worthless if they are just stuffed in a box to be bruised and broken. It's all manual labor, and you can tell the pride and quality of a grower just by the way the stems are packed.


Getting great flowers in is critical to our success at Tiger Lily. I equate it with a chef trying to cook a gourmet meal. It's a lot easier if he can get artisan breads, cheeses, meats and other ingredients from specialized vendors than just picking up some ground beef and hamburger helper at The Piggly Wiggly. That's why we spend the extra time and effort with getting great flowers to us a quickly as possible.
Next Post: Processing, The Devil's in the Details!

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Posted by Manny Gonzales
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Where Do Your Flowers Come From?
Monday, August 11, 2008

"Your flowers are awesome. Where do your flowers come from?" That's a question we get all time. The short answer is:DD. Our flowers come from DD Parks, Tiger Lily Purchaser Extraordinaire. DD (pictured) has been with us for 10 years now, starting out as a floral designer. About 4 years ago, she was looking for a change and actually turned in her resignation with us. She was tired of being on her feet all day designing.

Now, DD is somone special. Everyone loves her. She's knowledgeable, passionate, intelligent and, well, just plain awesome. Truly one of the best people I've ever met. She's even takes on the role of surrogate mom to our college student employees. The cool mom you could have a glass of wine with. We needed her. I couldn't let her leave. So, being the responsible (and selfish) boss that I am, I gave her a 3 month fully paid sabbatical, with the caveat that we would "talk" about her future with Tiger Lily when the sabbatical was complete. So, DD enjoyed the summer off, looked around for other employement, and thankfully decided to re-join us, but in a different role.

Let me tell you, finding and purchasing flowers for a $1.8 Million+ flower shop is not easy. Coordinating trends, quality, price, box lots, special event orders and transportation can be a full-time job. In fact, we decided that's exactly what it had become. Up to that time, my wife and co-owner Clara had been doing it. She was doing the best she could and doing well, but was also our head wedding designer/owner. We knew we could be better. DD was looking for a change and liked the science and magic of purchasing. The timing was perfect. DD accepted the challenge.

In typical Tiger Lily fashion, we decided that if we were going to change something, let's change everything. Let's start over, with no pre-concieved limitations. Charleston has a couple great floral wholesalers, like Horst, and we still use them. But there were other opportunities out there.

We have the best customers in the world. They are knowledgeable and want great floral designs. To satisfy them, we need great flowers. Cool, different, fresh, high quality stuff and a lot of it. DD's job is to locate wholesalers, farms and growers with the right stuff who understand and share our committment to quality. Then figure out how to get the flowers from their fields or warehouse into our cooler in 24 hours or less. It's like a daily miracle.

One of the innovative things we did was to create our own wholesale florist, Southeastern Floral Wholesaler. It allows us to buy directly from the farms. This guarantees the freshest blooms at the best price. Southeastern Floral Wholesaler sells only to Tiger Lily and has been a great tool (It's kind of a secret so keep it on the down low).

Transportation is another key element. We're fortunate in that Charleston is big enough to have its own international airport, but small enough that it is only 12 minutes from our shop. That means we can have stuff shipped overnight from around the world and our driver can pick it up the next morning. We do that everyday.

"DD, we need 15o yellow mini calls by tomorrow!" a frantic designer pleads. DD calmy replies "Let me check" and goes to her computer. She contacts her super secret list of vendors, makes a few calls, perhaps even uses a live on-line auction in Europe or South America, returns to the design studio and says "They'll be here by 10am." WOW! The everyday miracle.

You may not know it, but a single Tiger Lily design has flowers in it from five or more countries. It may have tulips from Holland next to larkspur from nearby John's Island. Orchids from Hawaii and roses from Ecuador. All brought together just for you, by DD Parks.

NEXT TIME: How we process thousands of flowers upon arrival for highest quality and vase life.
Posted by Manny Gonzales
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