Requesting a Formal Quote for a Large Corporate Flower Order
Every week procurement managers contact Five Flowers asking for a quote, and about half of those first messages are missing the details we actually need to price the order accurately. Without delivery addresses, event dates, and a rough idea of scale, any number we give you is a guess — and a guess will not pass your finance department's approval process. This article walks you through exactly what to prepare before you write to us, so the quote you receive back is specific enough to sign off on.
Start with the Delivery Date and Lead Time You Actually Have
The single most important piece of information in a corporate flower enquiry is not budget — it is the date flowers need to arrive, and how much time separates that date from today. Fresh-cut flowers are a perishable product with a fixed biological clock. Roses, for example, are typically cut and conditioned for two to three days before they reach our cold storage, and they have a reliable vase life of five to seven days under normal office conditions. That window shapes everything: sourcing, import scheduling, and whether we can guarantee specific varieties. If your event is in four days, we can work with what is already in cold storage at around four degrees Celsius. If your event is in three weeks, we can place a direct order for specific stems — Dutch garden roses, lisianthus in particular shades, or large-headed peonies in season — and hold costs at a fixed rate. Russian corporate procurement often runs on tight internal approval timelines, so it is common for a manager to contact us with five days to go and expect the same variety options as someone who planned three weeks ahead. That is not realistic, and a good quote will tell you honestly what is and is not achievable in your window. When you write to us, state the delivery date, the delivery time window, and the date by which you need the written quote approved internally. All three numbers matter equally.
Bouquets we can deliver
Define the Scale: Number of Arrangements, Not Just Total Budget
Procurement managers frequently lead with a total budget figure and ask us to fill it. That approach produces a quote that is hard to compare across vendors and even harder to justify line by line to a finance controller. A more useful starting point is the number of individual arrangements or bouquets you need, their approximate size category, and the purpose each serves. Corporate flower orders typically fall into recognisable types: desk arrangements for a reception or conference table, individual bouquets for speakers or award recipients, large statement arrangements for a stage or entrance hall, and smaller thank-you bouquets for guests. Each category has a different stem count, a different labour time, and a different delivery requirement. A desk arrangement in a low, wide vessel uses different mechanics than a tall statement piece, and the two should appear as separate line items on your quote. When you tell us you need twelve reception arrangements, eight speaker bouquets, and two entrance pieces, we can price each category separately, specify the stem varieties and counts per arrangement, and give you a total that your finance team can audit. If you only know the approximate number, give us a range — ten to fifteen bouquets is workable. What does not help is a single lump sum with no breakdown, because we will have to guess the split, and our guess may not match your actual event layout. Think in units, not in roubles, and the quote will be far more useful.
Specify Delivery Addresses, Building Access and Recipient Details
Corporate deliveries in Russia, and particularly in Saint Petersburg, involve logistics that differ significantly from a residential order. Office buildings frequently require advance registration of delivery vehicles, have loading bays that are only accessible at certain hours, or have security desks that will not accept a delivery without a named contact and a phone number. If you are ordering for multiple addresses — branch offices, a hotel venue, a client's office — each address needs to be listed separately in your quote request, because delivery to a building in the city centre and delivery to a business park on the Pulkovskoye Highway are priced differently and scheduled differently. We deliver ourselves, which means our driver needs to know the exact building entrance, the floor, the contact name, and a working mobile number. For events at hotels or conference centres, we also need to know whether the venue has a floristry intake time — many large venues will only accept flower deliveries between seven and nine in the morning on event day, and that constraint affects our production schedule significantly. If you have multiple delivery windows across a single day, list them in chronological order with the address and contact for each. A quote that accounts for real logistics is one that will not surprise you with additional charges after approval. Include the postcode for each address, the name of the person receiving the flowers, and any known access restrictions. This information should be in your first message to us, not in a follow-up after we have already drafted numbers.
Colour Palette and Variety Preferences: What Level of Detail You Need
You do not need to be a florist to give useful guidance on varieties and colour. What procurement managers often do not realise is that colour direction has a direct effect on price and availability, because different flower families sit in completely different price brackets. White and cream arrangements built around spray roses, white lisianthus, and eucalyptus are consistently available year-round and represent one of the more cost-stable options for corporate work. Deep burgundy or true blue tones require either specific seasonal varieties — anemones for blue-purple tones in late winter and spring, for instance — or dyed stems, which have a shorter vase life and may not be appropriate for a multi-day event. If your company has brand colours, share them as a hex code or a Pantone reference rather than a word like 'corporate blue,' because that phrase means something different to every florist. If you have no colour preference, say so explicitly — we will then propose a palette based on what is in peak condition on your event date, and the quote will reflect actual market availability rather than a theoretical wish list. Variety preferences are worth stating if you have them: some clients specify no lilies because of allergy concerns in enclosed spaces, others require no strongly scented flowers for the same reason. Lilies and some oriental hybrids have a significant fragrance load that can be disruptive in a conference room. These constraints belong in your brief. If you have a previous order that looked right, a photograph is worth more than a paragraph of description.
Packaging, Branding and Presentation Requirements
A formal corporate quote needs to address packaging as a separate line item, because packaging choices affect both cost and the time required to prepare each order. Standard bouquets leave our workroom wrapped in kraft paper with a ribbon — that is the default and it is included in the base price. Branded ribbon, custom tags with a company logo, tissue paper in a specific colour, or individual gift boxes each add cost and, more importantly, add production time. If you need a hundred individually boxed arrangements with a branded card, that is a fundamentally different production job than a hundred kraft-wrapped bouquets, and the quote must reflect that difference honestly. In Russia it is common for corporate clients to request that flowers be delivered without any external branding from the florist — no shop name on the packaging, no business card tucked in — because the flowers are being presented as a gift from the company, not from a supplier. We accommodate this routinely, but it must be specified in the brief. If you need cards written by hand with a recipient's name, specify the language — Russian or English — and provide the name list in a spreadsheet with the order. Handwritten cards for large orders require additional lead time, typically at least one working day. Vessel or vase requirements should also be stated: some venues require that arrangements arrive in their own containers, while others have house vessels you can use. If arrangements need to be freestanding without a vase, that affects the mechanics of how they are built and needs to be in the brief before we price the order.
What the Written Quote Document Itself Should Contain
When you receive a formal quote from Five Flowers, it should contain enough detail for a procurement officer who has never ordered flowers to verify that the price is reasonable and the scope is complete. A quote that simply says 'fifty bouquets, total sum' will not pass most corporate approval processes, and it should not — there is no way to audit it. A properly structured quote lists each arrangement type as a separate line item with a description of the stem varieties and counts, the packaging specification, the delivery address and time, and the unit price and extended price. It should also state the validity period of the quote — flower prices are tied to import market conditions and can shift week to week, so a quote issued today may not be valid in three weeks without reconfirmation. It should state the payment terms clearly, including whether a deposit is required to secure the order and what the cancellation policy is for large orders. In Russian business practice it is standard for a supplier to issue a formal invoice alongside or shortly after the quote, and many procurement departments require both documents before they can raise a purchase order. If your internal process requires a specific document format — a particular heading, a legal entity name, a VAT breakdown — tell us that when you make the initial enquiry, not after the quote is drafted. Revision cycles cost time on both sides. A quote issued with all the correct legal details the first time moves through approval faster and gets your order confirmed before the flowers you want are committed to another client.
Common Mistakes That Delay Approval and How to Avoid Them
The most frequent problem we see with corporate flower enquiries is a mismatch between the internal approval timeline and the biological timeline of the flowers. A manager submits a request for quote, the quote goes through two rounds of internal revision, finance requests a resubmission with updated VAT figures, and by the time the order is confirmed the flowers originally specified are no longer available at the quoted price. Peonies, for example, have a pronounced seasonal availability window — they are at their best and most affordable from late April through June, and outside that window they are either unavailable or significantly more expensive. If your approval process takes ten days and you started the process at the edge of peony season, you may confirm the order after the season has closed. The solution is to start the quote process earlier than feels necessary, and to ask us explicitly what the availability risk is for the varieties in your brief. A second common mistake is submitting an incomplete delivery address list and expecting us to fill in the gaps later. Once a quote is approved and an order is placed, changes to delivery addresses, especially additions, can affect the logistics schedule and may incur additional charges. Compile your full address list before the first enquiry. A third mistake is not nominating a single point of contact on your side. Large corporate orders involve questions that need fast answers — a substitution decision when a variety is unavailable, a delivery time adjustment because a venue changed its intake window. If those questions have to travel through three people before they reach someone authorised to decide, the order suffers. Name one contact with decision-making authority in your initial brief.
A formal quote for a corporate flower order is only as accurate as the brief that generates it. When you give us a delivery date, a unit count, a list of addresses with access details, a colour direction, and your packaging requirements in a single structured message, we can return a line-by-line written quote within one working day — a document detailed enough to move through your finance department without revision cycles. The flowers themselves are the straightforward part. The paperwork, the logistics, and the timing are where corporate orders succeed or fail, and the information you prepare before you write to us is what determines which outcome you get. We deliver bouquets across Russia in 1–2 hours.
Frequently asked questions
How far in advance should a corporate flower order be confirmed?
For standard arrangements using roses, chrysanthemums, or spray flowers, five to seven working days is sufficient. For specific seasonal varieties such as peonies, garden roses, or lisianthus in precise shades, two to three weeks gives us time to source and schedule imports. Orders confirmed with less than 48 hours notice are possible but variety options are limited to what is already in cold storage.
Can the quote be issued in the name of our legal entity for accounting purposes?
Yes. Provide your company's full legal name, tax identification number, and registered address when you submit your initial enquiry. We issue formal closing documents — invoice and delivery confirmation — that meet standard Russian accounting requirements. If your company operates under a specific document template, share it with your first message so we can align the format before drafting.
What happens if a flower variety in the approved quote becomes unavailable before the order date?
We notify you as soon as we identify a supply issue, which is typically three to five days before the event. We propose a direct substitute of equivalent stem size and price tier — for example, standard roses in place of spray garden roses — and confirm the change with you before production begins. No substitution is made without your approval, and the quoted price does not increase as a result of a substitution on our side.
Is a deposit required to secure a large corporate order?
For orders above a threshold that we confirm at the quote stage, a deposit is standard practice. The deposit amount and payment schedule are stated explicitly in the quote document. This secures your variety allocation and your delivery slot. The balance is invoiced after delivery. Payment terms for established corporate clients can be discussed individually when the account relationship is set up.
Can flowers be delivered to multiple addresses across Saint Petersburg on the same day?
Yes. We handle multi-stop corporate deliveries ourselves. Each address needs a confirmed delivery time window, a contact name, and a working phone number. Addresses with restricted loading access — gated business parks, hotel receiving bays, buildings requiring vehicle registration — should be flagged in your brief so we can schedule the route and register vehicles in advance where required.
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