Why Cartel Flowers founder Amanda Kereama thinks Mother’s Day should be even bigger than Valentine’s Day

For Melbourne-based online flower and gift delivery company Cartel Flowers it’s all systems go every year when April and May come around and it receives a surge in orders and demand for flowers for Mother’s Day.

Cartel Flowers co-founder and managing director Amanda Kereama, who runs the business alongside her husband Ezra, says this time of the year is when they ramp up operations, place orders for huge amounts of florals, bring in extra cool rooms and fridges and run on increased staffing levels to handle the increased volume of orders.

Whilst early orders start to trickle in from April, it’s usually the week of Mother’s Day, which falls on May 14 this year, when orders really start to come in thick and fast for Cartel Flowers, which delivers locally in Melbourne, Australia-wide and worldwide.

Speaking to SmartCompany, Kereama says given the current economic climate, she is unsure if this year will be as big as years past.

“However, our marketing initiatives and new product releases have proven to be a success, and our repeat customer order rate for annual celebrations like Mother’s Day remains strong. We’ve also noticed an increase in first-time orders which is fantastic as this means we are reaching new audiences through social media and paid advertising,” she said.

Valentine’s Day vs Mother’s Day

Kereama says as a mum herself, it always annoys her that Valentine’s Day is bigger than Mother’s Day.

“Valentine’s Day consistently remains a more popular holiday for gift-giving compared to Mother’s Day, partly due to it being commercialised more heavily by businesses over the years, but also as a result of social media influence and the content people post surrounding Valentine’s Day,” she says.

“For example, users of Instagram, TikTok etc especially love to post about what presents they are gifting and have received to/from their partner with many feeling the pressure to impress and send something ‘insta worthy’. 

“Mother’s Day doesn’t seem to have quite the same effect when it comes to social media posts around this holiday.”

That being said, Kereama says Cartel Flowers is seeing new up-and-coming trends for Mother’s Day this year.

“We’ve observed some new trends in buying flowers for Mother’s Day, including the preference and steady growing love for reflexed roses, which is the practise of opening up each rose by hand, petal by petal, to double the look and size of the rose,” she says.

“Whilst time-consuming and fiddly this is a popular trend which heeds a gorgeous end product, so we have injected these into our new floral arrangements. We continue to see personalisation as one of the biggest trends around annual holidays like Mother’s Day, where gift-givers love to honour their Mum by including their name on a box or posie bag to elevate the gift from ‘just flowers’ to something really special and thoughtful.”

Cartel Flowers has become known for what Kereama says are the “world’s first personalised flowers” and the retailer tries to add personalised elements to each of its products.

Kereama says Mother’s Day means Cartel Flowers receives thousands of roses in its warehouse each year, all of which are processed by hand. However, the business has also expanded its product range this year to also include other fresh and dried flower varieties.

“In the years past where we sold only roses in our boxes, the days and nights leading up to Mother’s Day were a blur of roses — so we are all having lots of fun playing with the new blooms and arranging them into not just our signature round boxes, but also into new luxe cement pots and new huge personalised posy bags, which both have already proved very popular, especially with our customers that have been shopping with us on Mother’s Day for years.

“Some of our long-time customers’ mums must have a wall of Cartel Boxes at home! We have one customer based in Singapore who has sent his Mother both Valentine’s Day, and Mother’s Day flowers with us for eight years in a row now!”