Fleurex 2022

Our Visit to Fleurex 2022

What a weekend we had in Birmingham at Fleurex 2022 this Octrober.  Meeting fellow florists and educators, meeting growers and wholesalers, meeting suppliers and designers …wow, we were blown away

It all started on a Ryan air flight to Birmingham and one of our lovely UK students had organsied a car to pic us up and bring us to the Hotel – thanks Eileen.

Meeting Stephaine from Oasis Floral Products

We chilled the first night, sneaking a peek at some of the stands and taking a few pics and videos, and up bright haired and bushy tailed we started Saturday visiting as many of the stands we possible could

Our first port of call was the gorgeous Stephanie in Oasis floral products who we buy a lot of our supplies from, but this was the first time ever to meet her in person.  We chatted about the new floral mediums that are available and also about what is coming for Oasis, and they have lots in the pipeline.

Catching up with Hoek Flowers

We then moved on to Hoek and the fabulous Frank was there offering us Pink Gin at 10am in the morning!!! as much as we love our Gin, it was a little early for us, but we did pop back later in the day. What a display they had set up for the event. We were delighted to meet Caroline ( the Irish rep) who really looks after our trainee florists here at Kays and also the rest of the Hoek team, we had so much fun and we heard all about their new branding that is coming soon.

We promised them we would be back later to try out the gin. 

But just look! How amazing is this fresh flower wall?

Perennial - A UK charity that supports people in the horticulture and flower industry

We met up with the most beautiful Clare from Perennial.  Perennial is a UK charity that supports those working withing the “soil” industry.  We have had many of our past UK students receive funding through Perennial for their training with us here at Kays.

Direct 2 Florist

We then moved on to chat with Alex and Wendy from Direct to Florist, they had the most amazing show offer on of a free website, we were so excited about this that we went on live into our Bloom Studio to tell them all about it (our Bloom Studio is all our past online students who have completed their training with us and many are now running their own businesses)

Direct to florist is a very popular UK website format and is growing in numbers here in Ireland too.

Vive La Fleur

We moved on then to chat with Neals in Vive la Fleur who showed us how to use their newest Gadget, the Bloom Shaper, which shapes your bouquet of Roses in a Heart shape, the video here has got an amazing response which makes me think this could be a very good selling tool for any retail florist.

Su Whale - Cut Flower Books

Moving down the venue we came across our favourite author Su Whale and her Cut Flower Books, you know how much we rate these books and this was our first time to meet Su & Bret in real life.  Su is a regular in out Bloom Rooms educating our students on conditioning cut flowers and foliage.

Merel Van Den Burge from Florismart Direct

Later in the day we had a lovely chat with Merel and Ron from Florismart Direct who explained how their system of buying works, how florists buy direct from Growers at auction, and they all come in are packed in Florismart HQ before being cooled and shipped out with Hannon to Ireland, Delivery into Ireland is available 3 days per week.  Merel is a fountain of knowledge, and we can’t wait to have her in our Bloom Rooms soon

We also met with Detail Flowers who have a fabulous software system which is a must for any busy wedding florist, making proposals and quotations so much easier and also making ordering a lot more simplified.

Caroline and Michael were playing a blinder at their Floral Box stand that we could hardly get a look in, huge interest from all the UK florists for their eco friendly boxes and packaging.  We have used Michaels Floral Boxes for many many years and highly recommend them as an alternative to plastic wrapping. See a short video here of their products

As we came to the end of Day 1, we had sit down story time with the lovely Cara from Florist Pro, another great website platform that is designed for florists for selling retail.  Cara gave us a list of the benefits of using their system and how economical it works out for Florists and floral designers.

This is only a taster of the amazing people we met at Fleurex in Bermingham, I will do another blog about the growers we chatted to and learned so much from.

Our visit to Fleurex in Bermingham really was a breath of fresh air, having been out of touch with so many of our industry specialists for such a long time due to Covid, thank you to The British Florist Association for putting on such an amazing event for our Industry.

Janette & Deirdre

xx