Flowerhub Cookham is a new business venture development set up in collaboration with the established Flowerhub at Pauntley. Our shared mission is to supply top quality, naturally grown, English flowers and foliage wholesale to local florists. Through our hubs, we aim to to reduce environmental impact through reducing costs of time and transport, and champion British flowers by making it easier for florists to source them.
How Flowerhub Cookham works
Over a weekend, all flower farmers will add the flowers and foliage and quantities they would like to sell the following week onto the website. The deadline for adding your flowers is 8pm on a Sunday. If you haven’t put your flowers on by Sunday night it is too late for the week ahead.
The products you list will need to be in perfect condition for an event the following weekend. Farmers will therefore know when to cut and how to condition these products
When you upload a particular variety, you will need to specify the cultivar, colour should then come up automatically, but you will need to add your stem length. It is important then that you cut all your stems to that length, if that is what you are offering. Obviously, a longer stem won’t be an issue!
Pricing is the next stage. As it is against the law to price fix amongst a group, you must come up with a reasonable price for a wholesale stem of that flower. There are places like Clowance and BJ Richards you can check for market information, but you cannot undercut everyone else on the hub in the hope of selling your flowers first.
The website goes live on Mondays at 10am for florists and is open until 5pm on Tuesday.
On Tuesday after 5pm, you will need to log onto the website and print off a picking list of any your flowers/foliage have been bought.
You will need to cut on Wednesday morning and deliver to Cannon Court Farm, Cannon Court Road, Maidenhead SL6 6NG between 2 and 4.30pm on a Wednesday.
Costs and Invoicing
Flowerhub Cookham charge a 10% handling charge for order management and hub costs
At the end of each month, you will need to invoice Flowerhub Cookham for the products you have sold that month, minus the 10% handling charge.
You will be paid within 7 days of receipt of invoice.
If you are VAT registered please invoice for the full amount of products sold plus VAT. Please do not deduct the commission. On receipt of your invoice Flowerhub Cookham will invoice you for 10% of the net amount and pay you the difference between the invoices.
Quality and preparation of flowers
Flowers / foliage Need to be bunched in 10 per florist order (unless otherwise specified) and tied with your specified coloured twine. Flowerhub Cookham will give you a colour to buy and use.
Phototropic flowers need to be wrapped
Remove any marked leaves/buds/petals and bugs
Double check each stem for quality
Triple check against your picking list that you have the right flowers and the right numbers.
Flowers should be delivered in suitably sized buckets with clean fresh water. There will be buckets available at Flowerhub Cookham to put your flowers into so you can take your buckets home.
Flowerhub Cookham is an agent to sell your flowers through, you are solely responsible for the quality and presentation of the flowers you are selling through the hub. There will be quality control and any flowers not deemed suitable or good enough will be rejected. If this happens consistently you will no longer have access to the hub.
Rejects from the florist
If your flowers are rejected by the florist once at their studio, they will be given a full refund, including the admin fee. This admin cost will be charged to the grower.
Order fulfilment
If you don’t have what you promised on the Sunday when entering your flowers:
Can you offer an alternative?
Find another grower that can supply theirs instead?
Contact the florist to find a solution.
Once you have sold your flowers, you are then in a contract with a that person to cut, condition and deliver a quality flower. All products will already have been paid for by the time you get your picking list, so you need to make sure you have entered details correctly onto the website and that you can definitely produce what you are offering. This is paramount.
Photography
At the moment there are stock photos of flowers, over time we will be endeavouring to create our own photo stock and so a heads up of new flowers that aren’t on the website yet would be helpful for the admin team.
Minimum Orders
There is no minimum order for supplying flowers or minimum order for buying, so you will have to be prepared that some weeks you may only be supplying a few bunches. You need to take this into consideration when adding your flowers to the website, working out if it is worth your while and what value stems it is worth supplying. You can also adjust the bunch size so you are only supplying a volume you are happy to provide.
You may wish to consider collaborating with other growers located closest to you to gather your orders together and take turns with the weekly drops to Cannon Court Farm.
Registration
Your registration on the hub confirms your acceptance of these terms of business, and our other Terms and Conditions on the Flowerhub Cookham website.
Flowerhub Cookham reserves the right to remove your registration on the website should you fail to adhere to our terms of business, or if your account is not used within a six month period.