In addition to sending pre-orders for requested date of shipment/departure, the flower supplier Daoflowers offers its customers the option of buying flowers on our trading platform, «Online Offers» Module.

The majority of our customers successfully use combined way of working:
The part of the order is purchased on a pre-order basis, and another part - from Online Offers on our website.
Some of our Customers have adopted the web-purchase, preferring to manage their orders independently and fully.

As it has been stated before, the holiday period (St. Valentine's Day and March 8) is a period of great risks: both logistical and, above all, price risk.
It is impossible to forecast for 100% the upcoming farm pricing policy:

- if the harvest was poor (cold weather, not much sun) – in this case the winners are the customers who have placed their pre-orders. They have the high percentage of fulfilling the order and approximate prices are known in advance.
- If it is a fat year for flowers and there are many flower offers from farms, risk-taking customers, who decided to wait - they get the best price for flowers purchasing online offers.

In the light of the mentioned above and against our background, we recommend our customers to follow combined style of work:
The main part of the order, especially the shortage positions, we still recommend include in pre-orders.
As a rule, during the holiday’s eve these are all red rose, long colors and rare varieties.
Therefore, there will be much more time to work it out and to understand the pricing policy.
Besides, pre-orders are fulfilled for the first and foremost, and the major contract agreements are distributed basically between them.

The so-called "additional" types of flowers: carnation, spray carnation, spray rose, gypsophila, alstroemeria and others, except for roses, the farms less often release on the free-market, they prefer to work with these types of flowers on pre-order basis even during the regular (not pre-holiday) period of time.
We strongly recommend ordering these types of flowers in sufficient time in advance.

If the customer decided during this pre-holiday season to buy his order (partially or fully) from the free market using our “Online-Offers” Module, we ask the customer to notify us in advance of the estimated volume of his purchase, since the space in the aircrafts is limited during this high season and we have to book it in advance.
In case of flowers shortage, some of the farms can make demands for the purchase of particular positions on the free market. For example, they ask to buy rose color in equal parts with red one.
Despite some of the purchase disadvantages from the free market during the high season, this tool is a good support both for the purchase and for the better understanding of the market situation in general.

In conclusion we would like to emphasize that based on the experience of the previous years’ deliveries we can just recommend to the customer how to deal in a given situation.
In the end it will be customer’s decision after weighing all logistics and price risks – what style of work to choose on the eve of holidays.