The florist at Arts and Flowers

Kirstie Lancaster-Gillson from The florist at Arts and Flowers

Transcript

00:00So I'm Kirsty Lancaster and we are in Arts and Flowers, we've run this as a family business

00:05for 51 years now, obviously not from me being, I look too young for that. We opened the shop

00:13when I was three, my parents opened it and they started by growing blooms, dahlias, tulips,

00:19daffodils and selling them into the wholesale market and then one day my dad came home and

00:24said I've bought you a shop, so my mum went into panic mode and 51 years later we're still here

00:30on the fourth generation. It's a labour of love, it's also a very very enjoyable job,

00:38great team, great family heritage and every day is different. Tough market though? Very tough,

00:46very tough. It's a very hard market, obviously most businesses nowadays are competitive from

00:52supermarkets, you could look at that two angles, the supermarkets have probably allowed a lot more

00:58people to purchase flowers and the sense that they probably think they're a lot more cheaper,

01:02so it's given them more of an audience to flowers, which has helped but on the other hand

01:07has lowered the product, so such as your spring flowers, your tulips, you'd have to sell them at

01:11non-profit because it's to get you in the door or it might be at the counter and a good add-on for

01:16your shopping, so whereas florists was always generally thought of as only doing big expensive

01:23things, we've always tailored for two kinds of markets, we do the big expensive things, we do

01:29the banquets, the bouquets, the weddings and we also do if you want a bunch of daffodils at £1.50,

01:35I feel in this day and age you've got to target for all price ranges really.

01:40Valentine coming up must be so important to you with Valentine's Day this time of year.

01:46Valentine's Day is a fun one really because you guys don't get organised I'm afraid, you

01:51kind of leave everything till the last minute, which we as florists have to be psychic and think

01:56right how many red roses we're going to sell, do they want red roses, do they want lilies, do they

02:00want this, so we kind of have everything at the back of our forefront and with 51 years experience

02:06we kind of know how you guys work. Ladies as well, they buy flowers nowadays for men, so yeah we've

02:12got our rose orders in, all the way coming from Ecuador a lot of our roses, fantastic quality

02:19over that way and really really good size heads, so and this year like most years we have not upped

02:28our prices of red roses, our red roses are the same price all year round.