Post-a-Rose is part of family run business Robinson's Ltd, the leading supplier of fresh flowers on the Isle of Man. The florist first began in 1908 and was acquired by the Robinson's Group back in 2009. Since then, the affiliation between the two retailers has proved a great success.
Post-a-Rose specialises in selling fine quality roses and flowers primarily via its website. Once ordered, items are then packed fresh in the Floristry Centre on the Isle of Man each day and delivered to an address of choice either on the island or in the UK using guaranteed delivery or standard mail services.
The Isle of Man Post Office has been providing delivery services for Robinson's Ltd for over ten years now, to arrange for flowers and roses to be sent to customers across the island and to the UK.
Valentine's is one of the busiest days in the florist's calendar and it is essential that all deliveries are made on time. This Valentine's Day saw a lot of challenges in getting deliveries to all destinations on time as result of bad weather, which created constant ferry cancellations and then equally challenging weather conditions across the UK.
Isle of Man Post Office remained resolute during these difficult days. The team worked really hard to pull out all the stops and put contingencies in place to ensure that the flowers and roses were delivered on Valentine's Day. In doing so, it worked closely with Post-a-Rose and took a flexible approach sending items by mail plane and ferry; it held ongoing communications with the steam packet to ensure sailings were on track and communicated regularly with Royal Mail counterparts to guarantee that everything sent over then reached its end destination on time and safely.
Mark Hotchkiss, Post-a-Rose Director, commented: "Valentine's is an important day in the calendar where our roses and flowers must be delivered on that specific day. In the weeks leading up, with the continually bad weather we've been experiencing, there were regular communications with the Post Office to plan contingencies should the weather impact and those contingencies had to be put in place and we were really impressed with the speed at which Isle of Man Post Office reacted to the continually changing situation".
He continues to say: "Once the flowers are sent, we then go on to monitor customer feedback, track orders, and hear back from customers if there are any issues with delivery. Despite these challenges in getting products off the island, and then getting them across to the UK with all the flooding, the success of deliveries was above all expectations. There were no issues at all, and we kept all guarantees in place with customers. This year we have had between 1500 and 1700 deliveries in the UK and Isle of Man over the Valentines period this marks an increase on 2013 of approximately 12%."
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