What Makes Lily's Florist Different

There are partner florists in most towns and suburbs across Australia, and in the bigger cities usually more than one. The deal with every single one of them is the same deal we shook on with the first florist back in 2009: we send the order, they make it and get it there, and they put a bit more into the bunch to cover our commission. No joining fee, no software to buy, no lock-in contract. We were up front about the commission with the first one and we have been up front about it ever since.

We are fussy about who joins. Most have been in the trade at least ten years and a fair few have won awards for it. What I will not tell you is that they are the single best florist in your recipient's suburb, because I cannot prove that and neither can anybody else who says it on their homepage. What I can tell you is that these florists have been making our orders for years, and we hear about it quickly when one of them has an off day.

If you want the longer version of how a flower physically gets from a grower to a doorstep, we wrote that up separately: where our flowers come from.

Monday to Friday, 7am to 6pm. Saturdays, 7am to 12:30pm. It is a person, they are in Australia, and they are not reading from a script.

Some of them used to be florists. That turned out to be the most useful hiring decision we ever made, and we made it more or less by accident. Somebody rings up wanting flowers for their mum's 90th and cannot describe what they are after, and a person who has spent fifteen years standing at a bench can hear what they mean and turn it into an order. You cannot train that into someone in a fortnight.

One page, and no account to set up. You should not have to invent a password to send your mother flowers.

We built it that way because of when people actually order. A lot of it happens at a desk, wedged between two other things, with somebody about to walk over. Or standing outside a building on a phone. Or at 11pm the night before a birthday that nearly got away. Nobody in that state wants a verification email. So it is one page, the card details go in, and it is done.

The mobile version came out of the same thinking. You can order the whole thing on a phone from anywhere, which is just as well, because that is where most of these orders now start.

Order by 2pm, Monday to Friday, online or over the phone, and it goes out that day. That is the whole rule.

The exceptions are the places where a plane gets involved. We do send flowers to some genuinely remote spots, including a few islands off the coast of Darwin and off eastern New South Wales, and those are the ones where same day is not always on. Islands, though. Still surprises me. You can check the locations we cover if you are sending somewhere unusual.

We also send to the USA through partners over there. If that is what you are after, Lily's Florist USA is a separate site.

You can also pay now and pick a date later. Up to three months out, which is further ahead than most people need, but the option is sitting there. There is no surcharge for it. You put in the recipient's details and yours, choose the delivery date, and the order waits in our system until that morning.

Most people still want it today. But a birthday you already know about is an easier job the week before than it is at 1:50pm on the day.

There is a fair bit you can add to an order beyond the flowers themselves.

The hampers are worth a look for people who are hard to buy for, or for an office where a bunch of flowers on one desk creates more problems than it solves.

One rule, and it catches people out. An extra has to go on an order that has flowers on it. We cannot send a bottle of red on its own, which we know is occasionally exactly what the situation calls for.

Two products exist for exactly this moment. You hand the decision to the florist making it, which is usually the right call, because they know what came in fresh that morning and you are looking at a photograph taken months ago.

They are also the two fastest things on the site to buy, which matters when you are doing this on a lunch break with eleven minutes left of it.

The card is free and you write it yourself at the checkout, in the card section, in your own words. If you get stuck we built a free gift card simulator to give you somewhere to start.

There is a blog. Flower care, arrangements by occasion, what the different flowers are supposed to mean, and a fair amount that is just us following something we got curious about. If you keep flowers in the house it is worth a look, particularly the care articles. Most cut flowers die earlier than they need to, and usually for the same three or four reasons.