Online:

Do you have your own web site or newsletter with lots of viewers?
We have a special way for you to get credit and automatic payments for sales that originated from your newsletter or web site.
http://www.ccberries.com/reseller_wholesale_affiliate.html

If you want to sell strawberries with your logo (possibly higher profit) there are startup costs: http://www.ccberries.com/fundraising.html  when this type of setup is done we create special landing pages on it with your special decorated version of the product.

Pre-packaged:

roses for fundraising

 An example of pre-packaged fundraising would be our wholesale roses in sleeves http://www.ccberries.com/roses-bouquets-wholesale-delivered.html?category_id=146 they come ready to sell, all you’ll need are some buckets to allow you to put them in water.

These can be pre-sold or you can set up a table at a local event, they are designed for fundraising, with minimal effort on your part.

Re-packaged:

This takes the most coordination at your end but can lead to the highest profits.

Re-packaged Flowers:

Wholesale Roses

First you get some wholesale flowers
http://www.ccberries.com/roses-red-400.html?category_id=110  You can even order different colors to mix them up and make different versions..  (for valentines: red/white, red/pink, white/pink..), on the wholesale flowers page there are options for 100,200 and 400 roses..

add some ferns
http://www.ccberries.com/leather-leaf-fern-wholesale.html?category_id=146
and babys breath
http://www.ccberries.com/wholesale-babys-breath.html?category_id=146

put them in sleeves
http://www.papermart.com/Product%20Pages/Product.aspx?GroupID=5213&SubGroupID=5214&ParentGroupID=19083#5214
or a wrap
http://www.papermart.com/Product%20Pages/Product.aspx?GroupID=7814&SubGroupID=7815#7815
with a box
http://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/S-12698/Retail-Boxes/30-x-6-x-4-Floral-Boxes

If you have a reliable workforce this can be a great way to make up semi-custom roses bouquets. (5 red roses and one white,  or 5 white and one red..), if your workforce is not reliable this is not the way to go.

Strawberries:

Basically you order wholesale quantities and then repackage them in much smaller boxes or bags.

Wholesale Chocolate Dipped Strawberries

Wholesale Strawberries:
http://www.ccberries.com/drizzle-strawberry-gift-4dz-set.html?category_id=54

Box option:
Gift boxes to fit three berries (This is just one of many types of boxes that will work)
http://www.papermart.com/Product%20Pages/Product.aspx?GroupID=5495&ParentGroupID=18990
Red film to make the inside look prettier:
http://www.papermart.com/Product%20Pages/Product.aspx?GroupID=11968&ParentGroupID=19003

or
(you can also use shred (red/pink Easter grass )
http://www.papermart.com/Product%20Pages/Product.aspx?GroupID=15958&ParentGroupID=19007

or besides boxes you can put them in
Fancy plastic gift bags:
http://www.papermart.com/Product%20Pages/Product.aspx?GroupID=34729&ParentGroupID=18876
You can fold over the top of the plastic bag and tape it shut or tie it with a ribbon. The size of the bag would be dependent on how many berries you want to put in it.

Repackaging takes a lot more effort on your part but it also has higher rewards as you can get a larger box and add inexpensive items such as fun sized candy bars , small bags of jelly beans, or those little candy hearts that are popular at Valentines. (we have wholesale sources for all sorts of bulk candy that we can recommend after you place your order.. ) Along with the higher reward there is higher risk, is your workforce dependable?, will they be free in the short window between when the berries arrive and when you sell them? (a period that should be just a few hours at most). Much of your prep work can (and should) be done well ahead of time: assembling the boxes, prepping the shred/fill, adding in the non-perishable side items,  but the final step of taking the berries out of the larger boxes and putting them in the smaller ones has to be done in a very short timeframe.

Several of the links on this page go to companies that we have used in the past , you can always find your own sources but we feel they are a good starting point. If you wish to find your own sources just do a Google search on “floral sleeves” or “floral box”, either way all supplies (not the berries or flowers) should be ordered so that they arrive well ahead of time: that gives you time to make sure everything is OK and pre-assemble them if needed.

For Valentine’s we suggest you pre-order any wholesale priced flowers or strawberries before mid-January as this allows us to get the orders to our suppliers before they do the Valentine’s price increases (roses can jump up by 30% but if they already have the roses in their order system the current pricing is honored), even our wholesale strawberries will jump in price right before Valentine’s as we focus on the retail side rather than wholesale. When you pre-order the strawberries & flowers make sure you select the correct delivery date as these are very perishable, flowers can have a delivery date a few days ahead of the event if stored properly, but strawberries should be delivered the day of the event and kept refrigerated as long as possible.

Once you have committed to your  fundraising purchase we’d be glad to help you selecting secondary packaging such as “will this box work with 3 berries”, or “is this type of shred safe for food contact..”  just use the help desk on our main site..

Update: rather than have our help desk get swamped with questions about side items that we don’t sell: you can buy bulk candy to fill out a Valentine’s day box here http://www.candywarehouse.com/valentinebulk.html and  http://www.acandystore.com/shop-by-event-valentines-candy.html ,  (a nice mix is http://www.candywarehouse.com/valentinemix.html) most of the selections are bulk packaged so you’ll need to bag them up with little plastic bags from a companies like PaperMart or ULine. (just make sure the bag is approved for food use)

Giveaway started 8/1/2011 – ended 8/18/2011 at Midnight

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CCBerries : Authentic Gourmet Ingredients, Taste the Amazing Difference

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We have a winner in our chocolate covered strawberry giveaway:
Edgardo F,  of  Colorado.  (Currently deployed in Afghanistan)
Congratulations Edgardo (stay safe) 

3 ways to enter

1) Enter Online (Below)
2) One automatic entry per shipped order at ccberries.com
3) Tell friends about this giveaway. (details below)

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Terms and Conditions

Eligible:
US residents, 18 years of age or older. Employees of CCB Radiance/CCBerries, their families (and the members of their immediate families,and/or households), SAS affiliates, or suppliers are ineligible to participate or win. Subject to all applicable federal, state, and local laws and regulations. Void where prohibited.

Entry:
Three methods:
1) Online using the form on this page, one entry per person, email address or IP address.
2) Automatic entry for each order shipped between August/01/2011 and August/18/2011
3) Tell your friends and family about this giveaway, if they enter your email address or twitter user name in the “How did you hear about our giveaway?” field you’ll be entered again. (If you tell people to enter your twitter ID you’ll have to follow @ccberries on Twitter so we can notify you). One referral per entry. How you tell your friends about us is up to you: Twitter, Facebook, Renting a blimp, use your imagination, but don’t spam or break the law..

Notification:

Winner will be randomly selected and will be notified by email and/or phone on or before August/31/2011. The winner will forfeit any prize or prize certificate not claimed within forty-five (45) days of winning.

Prize:

Prize consists of a single use discount code for a $50 discount off of product(s) with chocolate covered strawberries ordered online, discount code is valid for a single order and can not be split between orders, not valid with any other discount codes or on phone or fax orders. Discount does not apply to shipping costs or or other handling fees.

There is no substitution, transfer, or cash equivalent for prizes, the prizes are expressly limited to the item listed above and does not include taxes, or any other expenses. Other restrictions may apply.

Privacy:
None of the data collected will be sold, rented, given or otherwise transferred to a third party.
The phone number entered above will only be used in the event of verification of a winning entry. Email addresses will be added to our customer newsletter system which you can later opt out of. Feedback data may be used in our testimonial section (without your last name) but has no effect on giveaway.

Odds of winning are dependent on the number of entries received.

Entries found to be submitted fraudulently will be removed. This includes but is not limited to: computer generated entries, entries with false/non-working phone numbers or email addresses, entries from outside the United States, entries by people under 18 or with invalid city, state or zip codes.

Entry deadline: as described above by Midnight August/18/2011 Eastern.

I found a number of these types of pictures on a social media site and contacted each of the photographers  in order to get the rights to use the pictures, so far I’ve only heard back from one.. below is that picture.

The thing you notice first is not the most important thing to us, broken berries can happen for several reasons. Unless we had a whole lot more detail (pictures of the outside of the box, the shipping label and such) we really would not be able to determine the cause of the breaking. The breaking could be caused by dozens of reasons, everything from missing gel packs to carrier mis-handling to the after effects of a bad delivery address, we have no way of knowing for sure. But as we said that’s not the most important thing…

What we see is that the product delivered never matched the pictures on their website, while we know from their ingredient list that the product is not dipped in Milk, White or Dark Chocolate; what we see is no leaves. It’s not just that the leaves were lost on one berry during dipping process but that they were taken off before dipping. While I’m not certain: the removal of the leaves is more indicative of a machine dipped/ conveyor belt type of operation rather than hand dipping.

All of the problem pictures I found for this competitor had the same missing leaves, and that was not what was pictured in their many TV commercials, print ads or their web site. The product does not even match the marketing materials included in the box (as seen below). It’s not the result of an accident in packing,  delivery or customer actions: It’s a very basic change to the product; one that was done on purpose.

Even with the logo that you can see in the marketing materials above: just avoiding that one web site will not keep you from running into other parts of the same company with the same product, they operate under many different names and web sites, they own shopping channels, a  baseball team, TV stations and so much more that it would boggle your mind. The product is also sold by totally unrelated companies, they are so pervasive that it’s hard to avoid them.

Ignore the broken berries for a second: The product in the box does not match what was promised, no leaves, no stems, and not milk, white or dark chocolate. But since their customers are also saying they are involved in the “easy saver scam”:  should it be a surprise that their product looks nothing like their marketing materials?

Of course we sell chocolate covered strawberries so when  you are ready for real chocolate and whole strawberries with the leaves, dipped by hand to order give us a try.

Colored paper boxes:

Having an event where standard white boxes would look out of place? Coordinating the box color and ribbon with the rest of the events color scheme makes thing look more finished and professional.
Colored boxes
http://www.papermart.com/Product%20Pages/Product.aspx?GroupID=5484&SubGroupID=5485&ParentGroupID=18990#5485
http://www.uline.com/BL_5602/Gift-Boxes

Clear boxes
http://www.papermart.com/Product%20Pages/Product.aspx?GroupID=16493&SubGroupID=16494&ParentGroupID=18998#16494

I’ve worked with the clear boxes before and while they are not difficult to assemble, they are a lot more time consuming than the paper versions because the plastic wants to flatten back out . Creasing the box along the two folds that arrive flat will help the box go together quicker and look square-er (is square-er ever a word?)

Remember that the boxes don’t have to be square, sometimes a different style box will fit better with the event theme.

Chinese style takeout boxes
http://www.papermart.com/Product%20Pages/Product.aspx?GroupID=20794&SubGroupID=16233&ParentGroupID=18991#16233
One of the options you’ll never get with commercially prepared individual gift boxes is decorative shred inside the box. The quickest way to describe shred is it’s most common use: “Easter baskets”. Some but not all shred is made of food contact, choosing the right color will make the individually boxed berries look even better. Most gift boxes have a plain white interior, commercially prepared boxes have to add a lot of foam to protect the berry in transit, but since you don’t have to worry about UPS or FedEx you can do without the foam, but that leaves the box a little empty. No box is going to perfectly fit every strawberry, so the box needs to be bigger and the shred makes the bigger box not look empty. Only a tiny bit of shred is needed to make the box look much better, it sometimes comes packed very tightly, so you may need to pull it apart to get the best effect.

Shred
http://www.papermart.com/Product%20Pages/Product.aspx?GroupID=19007

Another option is plastic (or paper) gift bags, gift bags take less time to assemble and can be tied or taped shut.
Gift bags
http://www.papermart.com/Product%20Pages/Product.aspx?GroupID=14802&SubGroupID=14803&ParentGroupID=18876#14803

What if you want a totally custom color?
You need to remember that the box manufactures make their money by setting up the equipment and letting it run for a long time, every time they change colors all the equipment needs to be cleaned and that can be a very time consuming process. Custom boxes are ordered in a minimum quantity of 500 boxes and can take 6 to 8 weeks to produce, always remember that while 500 may seem like a big number to you: it is actually a tiny number for them (if you act like a diva they will drop you in a second as they make the real money on big commercial orders and a 500 box order may not even cover the time needed to set up the order). Another thing to remember that these boxes will be traveling (unassembled) through UPS/FedEx and some are bound to get scratched; no box order is 100% usable.
http://usbox.com/Boxes/Colored-1-Piece-Gift-Boxes/1LV-P
http://usbox.com/Boxes/Colored-1-Piece-TuckGift-Boxes/1LV
http://usbox.com/Boxes/Colored-2-Piece-Lock-Corner-Boxes/1LV

Assembly:
Every style of box goes together differently, and until you have the boxes in hand you can’t really see the steps needed. Some boxes, such as the clear ones above, take a lot more time to assemble. On the upside the boxes can be assembled days or weeks ahead of time. Assembling the boxes will always take much more time than you estimate. Assemble them well ahead of time and store them in a huge moving box or even  fresh garbage bags.

Ribbons or stickers:
It really depends on the look you are after, a gold foil label(sticker), is going to go on much quicker than the time needed to cut and tie a ribbon. Another ribbon option is stretch loops or even a bow with an adhesive backing.

Tips on ribbons:
Until you know what style bow you’ll be tying you will not know how long to cut the ribbon. Once you know the ribbon length. One trick we’ve used is to cut a piece of cardboard to match that length, then you can quickly unroll the ribbon onto the cardboard and cut the ribbon along the edges of the cardboard to get the proper length ribbon. Cutting the ribbon well ahead of time and taping it to the center of the bottom of the box really saves a lot of time during final assembly. The tape keeps the ribbon from sliding around while it is being tied and keeps it in place after it is tied as well.

Pre-assembly of the box, pre-stuffing the shred and pre-taping the ribbon will help speed the final assembly and help make the event a success. Waiting till the last minute to do all the assembly is just asking for trouble.

A better way to do individually boxed chocolate strawberries

Occasionally people want to order individually boxed chocolate covered strawberries for weddings or parties. The problem is while they look pretty all sealed up: a lot of packaging has to be used to make sure the berry arrives in perfect condition, the berries need to be packed so they can not move in any direction, and all that packaging does not look as spectacular as it could and only one color box is offered.

Things working against the best possible individually boxed strawberry:

1)Internal packaging: we  have to make sure the berry can’t move in any direction, things can get rough in the UPS/FedEx planes and trucks,  that is a lot of extra packaging & would be most of what the recipient sees when they open the small box.

2)All that extra packaging costs more, foam suppliers actually charge partially by the piece so 12 sets of individual foam pieces cost a lot  more than one set of foam for a dozen berries. Box suppliers also charge by the piece so the foam and boxes cost a lot more.

3)Shipment size, when berries are individually boxed they actually take up more space than if they are in one common box, since FedEx and UPS charge extra for larger sized shipments: individual berries actually cost more to ship.

The prettiest box would have minimal internal packaging (foam) so the person opening the box can actually see the berry, (rather than foam),  you’d also be able to select the color of the box (even if it’s pink polka-dots) to match your event.

There is a very simple solution. Order the berries in bulk and drop them in the little boxes yourself.

This actually ends up being much less expensive, much prettier, and you get to choose a box color & style. Some styles of boxes can’t be used to ship berries but would look much better on a decorated table.

Another option is to put the berries in individual gift bags, they are a lot quicker to pack than the boxes and can look very pretty.

The box size that works best for a single berry is about 3x3x3.. but more on that next time.

Next time we’ll suggest some vendors and packing methods, as well as some hints for making the packing go faster.

Once you rule out the Nigerian fraudsters, free product requests, and those who want us to sell our packaging separately … what type cases does the helpdesk desk get most?

Well there are two definitions of “most” : the most cases and the most time.

As far as ‘the most cases’ it would be address changes or date changes. A lot of people ‘catch’ address errors after they place an order or find out later that the recipient will not be home on that day. We’d much rather deal with these types of changes before the order hits the factory floor than deal with the messy aftermath if the changes are not made in time.

Occasionally we need to reship or refund and those type cases are handled during the business week, it’s rare but happens most often when we are overwhelmed with a major holiday: people who have been working for 20 hours straight make packing mistakes and we refund or re-ship as warranted.

Now the other side of the coin are the functionally illiterate (those special few that don’t understand basic of business hours, the days of the week, or calendars)

Here is an example:

A person places an order after business hours on a Wednesday night and selects the first available delivery date which is a Friday. Based on the delivery date we make the product when we reopen the next day (Thursday) and give it to FedEx/UPS that night, keep in mind that the order was placed after business hours on Wednesday night.

The product is made and shipped as scheduled and delivered on the date selected during checkout. As shown below:

Delivered on time and on schedule

FedEx picks the package up on Thursday and it is delivered, as requested, on Friday.

Being functionally illiterate, the person who placed the order and selected the delivery date said it was not delivered overnight, he ignored the delivery date on the screen, the confirmation screen, his order confirmation email, and shipped email. The package was delivered on the date he requested.

Nothing in the world is going to get a package delivered before the delivery date selected because, for freshness reasons, we don’t start making it until the day we give it to FedEx/UPS. Perishable products have to be shipped with overnight service because if we shipped them with ‘ground’ nationwide it would take several days to arrive and be a melted/rotten mess. For that reason every perishable shipment, no matter how far in advance it is ordered are made and sent so that they should arrive the day after we give it to FedEx/UPS. It is not that complicated.

Some people don’t understand this, but after a while you realize that there are some people who leave ice cream in a car’s trunk for a few hours and then blame the grocery store. Those helpdesk cases are the ones that consume the most time, some people read and learn but a select few are unable to understand the basics, they are the ones who eventually reverse the gift cards when sending packages to both their wife and girlfriends, we let Darwin thin them out, but if they are exceedingly rude we do block them from the site as it’s not fair to the staff or other customers to have our people deal with them when they could be doing something productive.

Helpdesk cases are also handled on a business day basis, like all businesses we have hours that we are opened and closed. It’s just like when you leave a voicemail at a company that is closed for the day: you would not expect an answer until the business reopens on the next business day. Since FedEx/UPS do not have Sunday pickups or deliveries our business days are Monday through Friday: the actual days we can make and ship things for next day delivery. Occasionally our staff will answer some after hours or weekend helpdesk cases from home, it’s entirely up to them, it’s not required, and they do it on their own time.

For some request special authorizations are needed: clearance from the factory floor or refund/reship authorizations have to be approved/processed and those only happen during the business week. Since the banks and carriers are closed on the weekends this actually does not slow anything down. The functionally illiterate don’t understand this and expect that we are going to bring in everybody (and open the banks/FedEx/UPS) just for them, it’s just not the way the world works. Unreasonable expectations are one of the hallmarks of someone who just does not respect other people’s time or normal business operations. These are the people that every sane business would run away from, you see them on the internet trashing companies, exaggerating their order value and basically ignoring the real world. Darwin normally takes care of them. Out of the thousands of customers we deal with each year only a few functional illiterates actually place orders, most end up going with the “easy saver“ companies  which is just fine with us.

Provide Commerce (parent company of Shari’s Berries, ProFlowers, Red Envelope, Cherry Moon Farms and more) seems have ticked off another group of customers.  Their customers have filed another class action lawsuit for passing credit card information to a company that then bills the customers monthly. The case regarding what is commonly knows as the Easy Saver Scam is still pending and according to some customers they are doing something similar with a new partner “Clarus Marketing Group”.

According to the documents we’ve found (Click for details),  (shorter version here) they used the lure of “free shipping”,  and once the customers clicked on that ad they were unwittingly signed up for a membership program that billed them between $9 and $15 monthly.

Another lawsuit that came to light was the one by their insurance group. from the linked document:

“Hartford Fire Insurance Company issued commercial general liability policies to the parent company of Provide Commerce, naming Provide Commerce as an insured.” “seeking a judicial determination of  whether Hartford is obligated to continue defending Provide Commerce, Encore and  Regent in two putative nationwide class actions“.

Hartford no longer wants to have to be involved with defending the Provide Commerce (ProFlowers, Shari’s Berries, Cherry Moon Farms, Red Envelope…)  companies from the lawsuits regarding these practices. Insurance protects against accidents, but if you willfully and knowingly break the law they don’t back you up.   (Partial details here). Right now we’re only seeing the documents on the related filings, not the full case, but if the liability insurance company wants to distance itself: they must think there is something to the class action lawsuits.

Consumers have been responding to “Free Shipping” offers like a Pavlovian dogs responding to dinner bells.  Companies have found that by posting “Free Shipping”: the customers will go partially blind and not notice anything except the “Free”.  Pretty much like a 17 year old boy in a strip club. You have companies like Provide Commerce raking in millions with their version and you have other companies raising prices and then claiming free shipping, and consumers are drooling like a pack of well trained dogs. While the “free shipping” scams are supposed to be regulated either by law enforcement agencies or at least the credit card companies: no responsible entity has shut them down.

How are they getting away with this? (and by “they” we mean all the companies named above plus the other “Free Shipping” scammers)
So far there have just been consumer class action lawsuits,
NO ACTION has been taken by the criminal courts,
NO ACTION by the FTC, (on this or any “Free Shipping” false offers.)
NO ACTION by Visa, MasterCard or American Express: the companies involved can still process credit cards,
While congress held hearings on similar types of behaviors: congress does not file criminal complaints. (they write laws: they do not enforce them)
Basically the  sections of the government and credit card companies that are tasked with limiting/preventing consumer fraud have done nothing.

I’m sort of surprised that in this second  class action  lawsuit didn’t list the credit card companies as additional co-defendants. The credit card companies knew about the previous activity and continued to allow activities that violated the merchant agreements.

Since the credit card companies and enforcement agencies have not stopped this type of scam how can it be stopped?

That’s a subject for another day, as no one expects to order flowers or chocolate covered strawberries and get signed up for a membership service that bills you $15 a month.

If a few weeks Valentine’s Day will be upon us, and a good portion of the country will be doing something for their special someone.

Today we’ll look at two types of situations, one where the public thinks something is wrong and others where something is actually wrong.

Spike in prices: are they gouging?
Roses and chocolate covered strawberries are perishable; they cannot sit in a warehouse for months, or even a few days, and still be any good.  (last year we stopped someone from ordering a Valentine’s Day Chocolate Covered Strawberry gift box that he planned to put in the closet for a few weeks.. it would have been an ugly surprise)

From the growers perspective:

Everybody wants the same thing on the same day, plants (strawberry and rose) have to be planted and prepped so that on this one day of the year they have the most product available, that is not an easy thing to do. It’s extra work (and fertilizer) to make all those flowers and strawberries ripen at the same time. Cold weather can quickly ruin all those roses and create shortages (like we are expecting this year).

Those same strawberries and roses need to be harvested by hand, that means bringing in a lot of extra people, training them to harvest correctly, and then the labor for the actual peak days of harvest. All those extra people are more expensive than normal because all the other growers in the area also need extra staff.

Logistics: Trucks, trains and plains:
It’s the middle of winter, if you think about it: Where are flowers being grown this time of year? Certainly not New York, Vermont, Colorado or Utah, it is ski season after all, snow and flowers don’t mix. That means the roses have to brought in: trains are to slow, and trucks are only used for the final part of the trip from the airport to the refrigerated warehouses. That means tons of are being flown into the country & even if you fill a cargo plane with flowers: it really adds to the cost.

Strawberries are only grown in a few places this time of year, California, Florida, Mexico as well as a few other places that are far outside the country. There are no ‘special’ large long stem strawberry plants, these are the biggest strawberries that are available on the existing plants, but the extra size and different of methods of harvesting and packaging (to prevent bruising) all add to the price.  All it takes is one cold weather event (freezing) in any of these areas and a significant amount of product will be lost. January freezing happens in Florida or California every few years, ruining the product that would ripen into the fruit or blooms that become the fruit that would be used at Valentine’s Day.  The growers try to limit the damage from the cold weather through various methods: helicopters to circulate air over the fields work in some situations, in others they have to encase the plants in ice and hope for the best. I’ve been hearing about really cold weather in Miami, so the chances are that the Florida strawberry crop is not going to be that useful during the peak time of year.

Grower summary:
The prices are higher because everybody wants the exact same thing on the exact same day during a time of year that it’s risky to grow.  That peak effort has a lot of higher costs in all segments from forced ripening, picking, and delivery.

Florist and strawberry manufacturers, we’ll take these two separately.

Florists:  local florist are in a rough spot, they have generally smaller locations and there often is not enough room to properly handle the huge volume of flowers that have to be stored and prepped for delivery, they also don’t have the delivery staff needed for all those deliveries. This means they need to get extra storage space and a lot of extra staff for deliveries. Even the sites that ship from warehouses need extra space for the big day. That extra space and staff costs a lot of money.

Strawberries are even more perishable than flowers, they have to be dipped the same day they are shipped to preserve freshness. Volume for the peak day will be over 100 times higher than other days of the year. All that extra production means extra staff, and that staff needs days of training. Extra shifts are a given: regular employees will probably be working 18-20 hours a day for three days straight. That is a lot of expensive overtime.  We also have to get extra storage space for supplies (boxes, gel packs, insulated containers and the rest), perishables (fruit) and finished/boxed product.  For the fresh fruit and the finished product ready for the FedEx/UPS pickup, refrigerated trucks solve part of the problem, but they are not cheap. Plus there is a lot of hardware,  such as all the extra melters, dipping stations, tempering.. even tape guns that are needed for all those extra people.

That box of machine made chocolates you saw in the drug store was probably made several months ago, it’s not the same type of product as something perishable like chocolate covered strawberries.

Summary: At least some of the price rises you see in the gift industry are market and conditions driven, the costs are a lot higher but so is the volume.

But what about the other unethical companies in the gift industry?
Nothing has changed in the last year… and parts have gotten worse.

Companies that advertise chocolate covered strawberries but the product is not made with chocolate? They are still at it (read more and even more), unforgettably fake chocolate is not what they advertise.

Companies that are being sued for the easy saver scam? Visa and MasterCard or the California Attorney General have not shut them down  (read more), not being able to trust a a company to protect your credit card information is very basic and their customers say they violated that trust.

Companies advertising “fresh from the grower” who really truck their flowers around the US to regional warehouses? (They even say they are fresher than local florists but those several days on the road to their regional warehouses say differently (it’s the same group as the “Easy Saver Scam”)) plus they even use local florists to deliver some of their flowers.

Surprise “care” fees at checkout? Of course.. (same people as above)

Corporate discriminatory Religious policies? Yep they are still at it (read more)

Fake Free shipping? The FTC seems to be sleeping on this one. They are not supposed to raise prices and then claim free shipping.

In the gift industry it seems like the government is not really doing it’s job correctly, and the largest players in the gift industry seem to be running amok while the regulators sleep, which seems to be a pattern in the enforcement segment of government. We are too small to play games like they do, and frankly we’d rather spend the time making a better product (and web site) than pay a bunch of lawyers to separate you from your money.

Most of the public does not know that parts of the government make rules for what is allowed to be called certain names.  The lawsuit was filed because according to tests the “Beef” didn’t meet the minimum government specifications to be called that name. Did you know “chocolate” has a legal definition? 

So how does that affect you?
Valentine’s day is coming up, and a group of companies are advertising “chocolate covered strawberries” and the product does not meet the legal definition to be called Milk, White, or Dark (bittersweet) Chocolate.

The easiest way to show that the product is not chocolate is to look at the ingredients as cocoa butter is required to be called “chocolate”.  If there is no cocoa butter: it was not dipped in “chocolate”.

But what about “chocolate flavored”?
The term “chocolate flavored” is allowed to be used when the product does not contain cocoa butter but does have other ingredients from a cocoa bean (chocolate liqueur, cocoa powder..), but it must be labeled “chocolate flavored” and not just as “chocolate”.  Since the minimum required 20% cocoa butter is the one and only ingredient in white chocolate that comes from the cocoa bean: once you remove the cocoa butter you cannot call it “white chocolate” or even “white chocolate  flavored”.

But what about Chocolate Cake?
Chocolate cake or even chocolate pudding are what are called a “common sense exclusions” as “the public” knows that a chocolate cake is not a big slab of chocolate but that there are other ingredients in the cake. This common sense exclusion does not apply to “chocolate covered strawberries” because those companies are saying the product is dipped in chocolate , a substance they do not use.

Eventually a law firm will file a lawsuit  and collect some big fees on this type of false advertising as well, as those companies “chocolate covered strawberries” don’t meet the requirements to be called “chocolate” , or even “chocolate flavored” since there is no such thing as “white chocolate flavored”.

Truth in advertising matters to us, as does the correct use of the legal term “chocolate” that is why we dip our chocolate covered strawberries in true gourmet chocolate unlike the companies that we list on our “Wall of Shame”.

We often get asked how to save on shipments throughout the year.

The first way is to place more than one order at a time, as our final checkout screen (the ‘thank you’ screen) has a discount code that even new customers can use to place more than one order at a time.

The second way is less obvious; simply combine your order with others as part of the same shipment this saves you a pile on shipping. To save even more look at our multi dozen chocolate covered strawberry assortments.  There is no special box that holds two dozen strawberries, when someone orders two dozen strawberries (or more) they are delivered in one dozen boxes. It’s pretty simple, order a 4 dozen chocolate covered strawberry assortment and you will get 4 boxes of one dozen strawberries. If you split those four dozen with 4 people at work your strawberries and delivery charges will be a whole lot less than if you each ordered separately.

Our wholesale flowers also are a great way to save money, our 100 ,200 and 400 long stem red rose packages can be split up upon receipt and you have roses for a whole lot of people. That’s a whole lot more than the $90 we’ve seen some local florists charge for a dozen roses on Valentine’s Day.  If you do the math right you could even get the other people to pay for your roses and they would still come out way ahead.

Order early: we place your order with the flower suppliers as soon as they come in, for Valentines we normally see stepped price increases as we get closer to the big day. The sooner you order the lower prices you’ll pay. It’s not that the suppliers are pricing gouging, there are millions of people asking for the exact same thing on the exact same day, this creates shortages of product, transportation, and trained labor. Special flights have to be arranged to bring the flowers into the US (it’s not like a whole lot of flowers are coming from Michigan in the dead of winter. They have to be flown in from South America).  The flower suppliers don’t want to suppress their January sales so they raise the prices in steps, the people that get the orders in soonest get the January prices, if you wait till the week before Valentine’s you’ll pay much more.

The same price increases happen in the strawberry market, plus if there is a freeze in California or Florida the prices for a flat of strawberries can easily jump $20 overnight. Strawberries are even more sensitive and perishable than roses and there are only so many places that they can be grown this time of year. Getting your strawberry order in early avoids the risk of price changes due to weather related problems or being locked out due to product shortages.

But if all you were after was a discount code … use “I-M-EARLY” it’s good on orders over $36 that are placed before 01/30/2011 (you’ll select a delivery date during checkout and can place  orders as far in the future as June). The discount code is only valid online and must be applied just after you press “Add to Cart” it can not be combined or used on previous orders or if  you have canceled an order in the last 30 days.