Thanks for your comment. You nailed it re: spam. They play a similar game with CPC ads - cornering the real estate with resellers and effectively bidding up the CPC on themselves. Speaking of which, I love the ads for the same companies underneath the horrible consumer ratings in the link you posted!
Agreed. Density is a key component here. The good news is that nearly 80% of Americans live in places considered to be urban (50k + population). Are they dense enough for a model like this to work is yet to be seen.
Thanks for your comment. Your experience in the space is insightful.
We see delivering products (of any kind) in as fast as possible more inevitable than as our differentiator. For a large group of consumers, Uber has contributed to the shift of consumer expectations to mobile, instant and high quality.
We actually don't think of local florists as competition. Rather we partner with the good ones, provide the tools and training to make awesome arrangements, and bring in the urban logistics to make on-demand delivery possible. As you said, vertically integrating all of this new infrastructure would be way too capital intensive. There's a fairly new entrant to the market doing that now and it's taken a long time to hit a $4mm run rate.
On the consumer side of things, you're absolutely right. Great branding and awesome customer service will solve a ton of problems. Worst case for BT, a little bit rubs off on the incumbents and customers still win. Thanks again for your comment.
Thanks for your comment. You bring up good points.
Most of our users are sending flowers in creative ways outside of the obligatory flower send occasions. For this reason and others, we see the total addressable market to be quite large. In fact, we've reached substantial small biz levels of revenue in a matter of months.
Delivery in 90 minutes is what allows people to send flowers in creative ways. But hey, we're happy to concede 90 minute delivery isn't a game changer these days - it's a requirement.
Our users tell us the power flowers arriving moments after leaving a meeting or closing a deal is quite real.
Thanks for responding, it's good to hear your side of things. I'm sure you understand the market a lot better than me (I very rarely use flower delivery services).
Great insight. You're absolutely right. For this reason, we take a lot of inspiration from Warby Parker. By building an awesome brand that people want to associate with, you can (hopefully) avoid playing the super expensive demand harvest game.
Jeff, thanks a lot for sharing this episode. We haven't watched it yet but we'll take a look tonight when we get a chance.
Existing online shops give florists a lot of leeway in the arrangements they put together. BloomThat, however, works very closely with our partners, providing exact specifications for each arrangement.
By keeping the offering limited and holding everyone to a high standard, we're able to ensure quality across the board.
Hey scubasteve - great name - and thanks for the comment. You're absolutely right: pricing tricks and up charges are not cool. The price we display is the price you'll pay (plus a little tax). We're working hard to spread to other cities super fast. Where are you located?
Thanks for using BloomThat! The impact of sending flowers in the moment just to say thanks is really powerful. It's great to see people use the service for things other than the twice annual obligatory flower sends.
Hi evmar, we really appreciate your feedback. We rotate our arranged bouquets seasonally and we're big proponents of supporting local flower growers and local brick and mortar florists.
At any time, about 80% of our flowers come from California, and the majority of those are grown within a couple hundred miles of their final destination. Thanks for your comment!
That's great to read. The last time I looked into purchasing flowers outside of SF I was sad to discover that most local florists are themselves effectively just resellers of gross FTD flowers, so it seems like a service like yours can go far. I wish you luck.
