Business for the delivery of bouquets to the house
The story of how, in a short time, the FlowWow color flower aggregator managed to connect more than five hundred stores located throughout the country in its online spaces. To date, the number of orders daily is 7-8 units per day, and the average check is equal to 2.5 thousand rubles.
Today, the founder of the aggregator Andrei Makeev is ready to share his experience in creating a successful business project at a cost of 30,000 rubles.
Do you know how people usually become businessmen and startups? Most often, a person faces a problem, for a long time and almost unsuccessfully tries to solve it, and then takes certain steps to solve the problem. It so happened in this case – Andrew tried to order a bouquet of flowers in another city, it turned out that suppliers want to earn a lot of money, but do not want to take responsibility for the delivery time.
Therefore, Andrei decided that it was necessary to create his own service, which would offer the services of local florists and small florist shops in different parts of the country on the same Internet resource.
Until the moment when the FlowWow team got together, the “parts” of the team worked in completely different areas – there were event organizers, Internet advertising specialists, and website creators. Entrepreneurial experience was obtained in previous works, and the desire to work for the benefit of the population was more than enough!
In the fall, the testing of the idea began: the site was set up on a standard WordPress template to create an online store, Andrew began to communicate with representatives of various flower shops and florists and received permission to place their products on his website.
Every day I had to communicate with a large number of people, approximately 5-6 meetings with florists and administrators of flower shops.
Understanding of the flower business, all the bottlenecks and possible problems did not come immediately, it later became clear not only what problems exist, but how to solve them.
The investments at the first stage were minimal – 30,000 rubles, and until recently it seemed to the guys that the FlowWow project could be supported for personal savings, however, now FlowWow is developing actively and requires cash investments from outside.
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Weekday startup
At the first stage, the work went according to the usual pattern – customers were searched through social networks, search engines and e-mail newsletters. Today, both these channels of attracting new customers and other methods work. Targeted advertising through social networks helps to find new customers who will come to FlowWow for a specific reason.
FlowWow finds regional representatives of florist shops and florists using the 2GIS directory and social networks. This method is very efficient and effective.
The project launch process was delayed for a short time. At first, we had to solve issues with acquiring, then the contract verification stage and the signing of documents came – it took 2 months, another 1 month was needed to start the system and eliminate deficiencies and inaccuracies.
At this stage, the most difficult is the constant growth of the project, its expansion and increase in sales. Each stage requires its own approach and attitude.
At the moment, the competition in the floristic market is very high. There are three directions in the flower business, each of the representatives of this business chooses its own direction and works in it. This can be both private florists and wholesale and retail companies that sell flowers at somewhat reduced prices, and shops that offer both services of private florists and wholesale and retail sales. FlowWow initially hoped to work exclusively with shops, but it turned out that private florists offer better prices.
Flowwow’s competitors so far are such huge deliveries of the international level type AMF and Florist.ru. Market share at FlowWow is still too small, but FlowWow is not upset and continues to invest all the money it has earned in advertising, in attracting new customers and in entering into contracts with new partners.
The profit from each bouquet sold through the service is 20%. Absolutely all the money is invested in further development and it is not yet possible to talk about self-sufficiency.
The company’s monthly turnover is half a million rubles, but given the current growth of this young project, by the end of the year, the guys plan to increase turnover five to six times and attract investors in the amount of $ 1-2 million.
