What a weekend!  On Thursday evening Shanghai time we were contacted by an under pressure gentleman in the States who was in desperate need of a flower wall for a large wedding this upcoming weekend. A rush order indeed but we were happy to help! A phone conversation later revealed a cautionary tale for worldwide flower wall buyers – a less than great experience with a floral backdrop received from one of China’s huge e-commerce sites.

Our client (who we will call John, who agreed for us to tell his tale but not reveal his real name or city) had actually already purchase a flower wall from China for the price of 720USD – a cheap price indeed! But the flower wall he received, was, in John’s own words “so terrible I wouldn’t even pay 100 dollars for it”. Yikes we thought!

John needed a 10ft x 10ft wall in cream roses and hydrangea for his wedding client, so had purchased one online from China, and sent us the photo’s of what we wanted and what he had bought. By coincidence, the photo he had of what he wanted and asked if we could make was actually one of our flower walls that we sent to Hawaii in early 2015, so of course we could easily recreate this wall! When we saw the images of the flower wall he received, we were really shocked.

He told us the quality of the flowers was terrible and cheap looking, with frayed edges and the hydrangea petals already falling off, but was most frustrating to him was the lack of flowers. John told us the wall was extremely gappy with obvious holes that took away from the luxury feeling a flower wall should have.

Another issue was the colour, and he acknowledges that on monitors there is a variance and risk when seeing colours, but in his own words, “it’s cream, it’s almost neon yellow in places and if i’d known that I would have never ordered”. But to most sellers on large e-commerce sites who aren’t used to dealing with such intricacies of colour tones and nor a western style, cream is cream is cream.

In the end we discussed what flowers we have available at short notice and what the actual over all vision and design for his clients wedding was – and we created a beautiful ivory, blush and white flower wall.

Most of the flower walls on these e-commerce sites are actually no different to ours in terms of the way you put them together, we use the same method. The difference? We use high quality materials, everything from the flexible frame to the flowers is, in honest words, more expensive, but we would definitely say better value. There is a common misconception that everything in China is cheap, which is true to a certain extent, but if you want anything of quality, you do have to pay more for it. Our back tracking panels is different to the one John received in that it’s a lot stronger and durable. We also asked John to count the amount of flowers on the flower wall he bought – around 40 per panel….typically we use 100 – 130 per panel for a design of roses and hydrangea, and that is the same size of backing panel, so you can see how our walls differ in price. We also custom design and colour more than half off the flowers we use, meaning they aren’t available any where else and we try to match the current trends and fashions of weddings and events around the world.

We also include extra flowers for final touches, clips and cable ties for construction and a how to guide, as well as an unlimited amount of support and customer service by email or phone. Our flower walls are designed to be used over and over, a quick scan of our Instagram feed will show you how often our walls are being used by our fabulous clients all over the world. Buying a cheaper wall and product may seem like a cost saving idea at the time, but as John found out, it’s false economy.

www.theflowerwallcompany.com

info@theflowerwallcompany.com

We sent it today, express four day shipping with TNT, and we can’t wait for John to receive it and see the photo’s of this gorgeous wall in action!