Way way back we had a contract for Roses Only
On Valentines day one of the local newspapers gave away a free tubed rose to every valentine massage in the classified adds.
Told you it was a long time ago
What was amazing was how many valentines ( mostly husbands ) had absolutely no idea where their precious other half worked.
By the end of the day all of the large city buildings had dozens of tea chest ( moving cartons to some ) full of tubed roses with addresses like Helen @ Amp Sydney , Amp had 6 buildings in Sydney , and one of them was 50 stories & another was 42 stories
In Australia Square ( which is round by the way ) there was so much lift traffic that several sets of lifts over heated so not only did SHE not get her rose but she had to either walk down the fire stairs ( again 36 floors ) or wait till the lifts were repaired, many of which were a couple of days to get finished
On the other side of the harbour there were a couple of lift room fires , remember Valentines day is in our hottest month of the year
So I don't have to tell you what happened to all of those red wrapped chocolate hearts either do I .
The following year you had to provide a company name, building street address , company & floor number .
The volume was about 1/3 of the previous year , still massive I delivered over 1000 & $ 1.20 each and again at least 1/2 ended up in the foyers because the addresses were wrong .
The first year the adds were $ 16 and the next year they were $ 25 .
It carried on for several more years but the flower shop did their own deliveries as it finally struck them was a near $ 500,000 up for grabs on Valentines day so they rented a few trucks and paid friends & family $ 250 for the day .
Mind you that day went at least 12 if not 16 hours .
A weeks wages were around $ 200 back them.
Fond memories of valentines day & No never sent a card or gift but the boss did send roses to every receptionist on both our pick up & delivery books , we got a lot of cred & quite a few new customers for that little PR trick .
