It seems like in every town you pass through, there's at least a couple of florists. Giving and receiving flowers for weddings, birthdays, sympathy, and of course Valentines, is a tradition we all love.
But when you think about the last time you purchased flowers, it probably wasn't a great experience. Maybe you went online, and scrolling through dozens of mediocre options, finally settled on a bouquet, which then came shipped in a box and your recipient had to arrange the flowers themselves. Or maybe you called your local florist- and got sticker shock for the small amount of flowers for the price. Or maybe last minute you just grabbed a grocery store bunch, but it looked cheap and died in a few days.
As the girl who's always had fresh flowers on her own kitchen table (why should us women have to wait to be given gorgeous flowers?) I had these same frustrations with the options out there. As an avid reader, I love to research new topics and we determined to find a better option than my same 5 Costco bouquets, so set out to find a better model for the floral industry.
In my research, I was shocked to learn that the average floral shop has over 40% waste!
Because they offer all of those dozens of options on their websites, they have to keep a large amount of perishable inventory. In addition, customer foot traffic into pricey retail space has been falling for years. Worst of all, the big names like 1-800 Flowers and FTD, do nothing but sell the customer’s order back to a local florist, who then pays a 30% referral fee- and ends up with almost zero profit. Unfortunately it is us, the consumers, who end up with low quality flowers at an exurbanite price.
With those problems in mind, I looked for any other company providing a better way. While I found a few providing a different model, these providers are still shipping the flowers in a box with long transit times- nothing that still provided same day hand delivery that we all love about working with a local company.
So, seeing a market need and determined to fix it myself, EverWild Florals was created- which is as much of an innovative supply-chain company, as it is a floral one.
EverWild has a unique model, eliminating the common waste of most floral shops by providing a straight forward ordering solution: simply choose by size, and have the freshest in-season blooms delivered same day or on a subscription basis.
We are local, and do not accept wire fees from National brands. EverWild operates from a private studio, eliminating pricey retail space, and offers same day hand delivery. We source frequently direct from local farmers, reducing the long transit time of Internationally shipped blooms, so that when treated equally, our customer’s bouquet lasts up to 3 times longer. All of these savings allow us to price the bouquets affordably enough that they can be ordered not just on Holidays, but on a subscription basis.
Since launching, we’ve achieved some exciting wins: we’re averaging a monthly growth rate of 140%. We’ve cut the industry average waste of 40% down to just 3%. That not only makes us a much more profitable floral company, but also an environmentally friendly one. Our long term profitability lies in the fact that our customers are raving fans- keeping their subscriptions for an average for 6 months, and spending nearly 5 times more than the average consumer. We actually are increasing our customer’s buying habits by creating a better solution at a more attractive price.
We've been accepted into the ultra-exclusive Midwest Start Up Incubator, BetaBlox. In January of 2020 we were invited to participate in a documentary with a handful of other Entrepreneurs to talk about what it's like to start a business from zero and scale in a short period of time. We were also privileged to pitch Shark Tank style to over 200 Kansas City Angel Investors, Entrepreneurs, and Press, to explain how the floral industry is broken and how we do things differently.
We’d love you to check out our designer arrangements or floral subscriptions, and see for yourself how giving and receiving gorgeous flowers can bring more beauty and joy into your world.
