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Tag: Flowers

  • Reddit 1-800 Flowers Ad Goes Viral

    Reddit 1-800 Flowers Ad Goes Viral

    “Our ads on Reddit have gotten a lot of traction and puts a big smile on people’s faces,” says 1-800 Flowers CEO Chris McCann. “That’s what we’re trying to do is just make sure we’re relevant and create that cognitive speed bump when people think about our company. They see something different and I’m thrilled with the creative team for coming up with something like that.”

    Reddit Ad That Went Viral for 1-800-Flowers.com

    As usual, some opinionated Redditers expressed their thoughts on the ads:

    1-800 Flowers CEO discusses the company’s growth that was accelerated by the pandemic:

    Ecommerce Growth Accelerated During Pandemic

    What we’ve seen is an acceleration of growth in our company that began back in 2018 and really then accelerated even further in 2020 with the pandemic. It’s driven by the need for us as people to connect and express ourselves. As a company whose vision is to inspire more human expression, connection, and celebration, and as an ecommerce leader, we’re well-positioned in the trends that we see coming out of this pandemic. We think these trends are sustainable going forward.

    We started out as one flower shop many years ago. What we’ve done is created this e-commerce platform for growth, a platform for expression, connection, and celebration. It starts with this all-star family of brands that we have led by Harry & David, 1-800-Flowers, Cheryl’s Cookies, Shari’s Berries, and our recent acquisition just this past August of Personalization Mall. You see us now as a company in the expression and connection business with a leadership position in floral, a leadership position in gourmet food gifting, and certainly now leadership and position in expressions and personalized items which is a fast-growing market.

    You’ll continue to continue to see us grow by organic product development of products that help customers express and connect. And as we’ve done through acquisition, adding to that platform and leveraging that platform that we’ve built.

    Need To Express and Connect Is a Lasting Trend

    Hopefully, the vaccines accelerate and we turn to some sense of normalcy sooner rather than later. As we look at our business, the momentum we saw began in 2018 and 2019 and then accelerated with the pandemic. We’ve been on a good momentum growth even before the pandemic and we really see ourselves now as a bigger stronger company than we were prior to it. We’ve acquired Personalization Mall just this past August and by putting it on our platform and leveraging our digital marketing expertise we accelerated the growth of that company. It grew by 50 percent this last quarter.

    A year ago August we acquired Shari’s Berries and took a business that was stagnant and losing money to now one that’s got a nice growth rate and is generating a nice contribution margin as well. If we just keep our focus on what the consumer is looking for to help express and connect then we’ll be continuing to see double-digit growth for some time to come. That trend that we’ve all learned from being isolated, our need to express and connect is a lasting trend coming out of this pandemic along with the shift from offline to online.

    1-800 Flowers Ecommerce Growth Accelerated During Pandemic

  • Robin Thicke Hits New Low With Flower Promotion

    It’s possible that Robin Thicke hasn’t hit rock bottom yet with his desperate public attempts to win back wife Paula Patton, but he’s close. Really close. Following poor sales for his new album Paula, Thicke has now partnered up with 1-800-FLOWERS and is offering up a free album download with a qualifying purchase.

    Anyone who has glanced at the occasional entertainment news headline knows that things haven’t been going well for Blurred Lines singer Robin Thicke. Thicke has had nothing but trouble over the past year, and it all started with his cringeworthy performance with Miley Cyrus at the MTV VMAs. Patton filed for separation back in February after rumors of adultery circulated, and Thicke’s career has been on a downward spiral.

    There has been a lot of speculation over whether Thicke’s public attempts to win back his wife are genuine or if he is using the situation to boost album sales, but either way, the latest gimmick is worthy of the double facepalm. 1-800-FLOWERS is offering up a Robin Thicke-inspired flower bouquet called “Get Her Back.” View the details of the promotion here.

    The item description for the “Get Her Back” bouquet is listed below:

    Looking for a guaranteed way to get her back? Send our lush and luxurious bouquet of 100 romantic premium long-stem red roses! Inspired by Robin Thicke’s hit single, this spectacular rose arrangement is artistically hand-designed by our expert florists to help you express your feelings perfectly.

    Typically, buying a woman a $350 bouquet of 100 long-stem roses (or even the cheaper 12-stem “Forever Love” bouquet) would help matters in the love department, but this just doesn’t seem to be quite appropriate. Maybe a Robin Thicke-inspired bouquet of flowers would have been seen as romantic a year ago, but now? Nothing says “I’m sorry” like flowers associated with the guy whose marriage may be falling apart because of a cheating scandal. And let’s not forget the fact that he is using it to make money.

    Check out some reactions to Robin Thicke’s flower promo below:

    If you think you can make the Robin Thicke flower bouquet work for you, the promotion lasts through the end of September. All you have to do is enter the promo code “THICKE” at checkout after selecting one of the qualifying bouquets to get the free album download. In the meantime, if you aren’t trying to get anyone back and still want to hear Thicke croon, check out his latest single below.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • Rainbow Roses: Here’s How You Can Make Your Own

    Rainbow roses are expensive. If you go through a flower shop, you’re looking at $60 to $70 for a bouquet of multi-colored flowers. Unless you really want to impress somebody with your money, you can get the same results at home for far less money. After all, rainbow roses are easy (and fun) to make.

    So, how does one go about making their rose fabulous? First off, you’re going to want to buy some white roses. Starting with a blank palette will yield the best results. From there, you’re going to want to shorten the stem so that it fits properly in the glass you’ll be coloring the flower in and the vase that it will be stored in later.

    With that out of the way, it’s time to actually color the roses. You’ll first want to pick the four colors that you want the rose to take on and fill four glasses with colored water. After that, you will want to cut the stem vertically into four separate sections. Placing these four sections in separate glasses will allow each steam to absorb a different color and then transmit those four colors to the flower itself.

    At this point, it’s important to note that you don’t have to separate the stem into four sections. You can separate them it into any number of sections. I recommend going with four as it gives you a wide range of colors without weakening the stem too much. You could separate the stem into more sections, but you risk the stem breaking in half.

    After placing the sections in the glasses, you’ll want to leave the rose in the glasses for a few days. You’ll start to slowly notice the white rose is absorbing the colors that you placed the stem sections in. Now you have a pretty rose that you can store for Mother’s Day or any other occasion that calls for multi-colored flowers.

    If you need any more help, you can either consult this WikiHow guide or the below video tutorial. As you can see, it’s far cheaper than spending $70 at the florist and, dare I say, just a bit more fun. Heck, you can even turn it into a project with your kids to teach them how plants absorb water as the trick can be used with just about any white flower.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • Taylor Swift Flaunts Paintings on Instagram

    Taylor Swift just doesn’t stop. The girl is on fire and as we all know, quite talented. It wasn’t until a few days ago that we realized the 24-year-old “I knew You Were Trouble” singer could paint.

    And really-she did a pretty good job!

    Swift took to her Instagram four days ago to post a picture of her artistic watercolor creation. She captioned the picture by simply saying, “I made dis.” Of course, the picture caused quite the reaction from her many followers.

    One Instagram user cheerfully proclaimed, “I love this and you,” while another follower said, “Your Freetime is Painting , I think u like Painting . Wonderful!”

    The colorful flowers are pretty and delicate, much like Swift herself. She even signed her name at the bottom of the painting making us wonder if she’ll be selling the piece?

    She decided to post yet another picture of yet another watercolor. While the two paintings look fairly similar, we do know Swift is quite the talented artist.

    She captioned the most recent pic saying, “So far this week, all I want to do is paint and all I want to paint are watercolor flowers.”

    Does Swift have a successful painting career in her near future? We doubt she’ll give up her insanely popular music career, but this could be a potential fundraising endeavor for the talented songstress.

    Do you like Swift’s paintings? What do you think she’ll paint next?

    Image VIa YouTube

  • Same-Day Flowers by Drone? Not on the FAA’s Watch

    Same-Day Flowers by Drone? Not on the FAA’s Watch

    The Federal Aviation Administration has put the kibosh on one Commerce Township-based flower delivery company’s plans to deliver bouquets by flying drone.

    FlowerDeliveryExpress.com CEO Wesley Berry says that the FAA recently told them to shut down their new drone delivery pilot program, which is still in beta.

    “Unfortunately, we can no longer conduct testing of delivering flowers by drone,” said Berry. “However, the good news is that this technology is here to stay. When the time is right, we’ll be ready for orders to be delivered, not by an address, but by GPS coordinates. It’s exciting to plan the future of the business based on this emerging technology.”

    Of course, Berry could be right when it comes to the technology having a long shelf life.

    You may remember Amazon recently unveiling a short video showing their new test product in action. Through Amazon’s drone delivery program, Amazon Prime Air, the company says they can deliver packages weighing up to 5 pounds anywhere in a 10-mile radius of fulfillment centers. Jeff Bezos says that this means 86% of Amazon’s daily deliveries are within the range of these drones.

    It’s not just Amazon that’s thinking about employing drones to do delivery work – other carriers like UPS as well as various pizza chains are also interested.

    You can still sign up for Flower Delivery Express’ drone beta program on their website. Of course, the program is going to have to take a rest until regulations change or the FAA grants the company a special permit to operate “commercial” drones.

    “The company is recruiting for their consumer focus groups to beta test drone delivery services. Participants will receive products for free and, at, or below cost products in exchange for providing valuable feedback that will help drive future floral products and services,” says Flower Delivery Express in explaining the pilot drone program.

    They had intended to deliver free rose bouquets to participants today, Valentine’s Day.

    As of late, the FAA is surely making a habit of taking commercial drones out of the sky. Last month, the administration stopped a small Wisconsin brewery from delivering beer to ice fisherman via drones.

    The current law on this states thats recreational drone use is cool, but as soon as it becomes “commercial” the FAA goes full regulation mode. GigaOm has good breakdown of the current drone law situation.

    But for now, the FAA isn’t feeling the love–even on Valentine’s Day.

    “Cupid’s wings have been clipped!” said Berry.

    Image via YouTube

  • Flowers Online: Fresh To… Death?

    Flowers Online: Fresh To… Death?

    What would your gent or lady love say after receiving a bunch of dying roses from you on Valentine’s Day?

    This is something online flower delivery customers are asking themselves. The amorous Hallmark holiday has a way of sneaking up on us and doing to our wallets what cupid does to hearts. Thus, shopping online might seem like a reasonable and convenient workaround when we save our tokenistic gestures until the last moment. But flower delivery is a unique form of commerce inasmuch as the petal patrons never actually get to see or assess the product prior to its arrival at the recipient’s abode.

    So, the question is: are you getting what you’re paying for?

    According to TODAY, some businesses leave much to be desired. After ordering from some of the larger floral delivery companies like 1-800-Flowers, Teleflora, and FTD they noticed gross inconsistencies. Some of the arrangements arrived dying, some didn’t have the number of flowers promised, and – depending on location – whatever was ordered might be totally different from what was described online.

    For example, a $59.99 payment for one arrangement from 1-800-Flowers arrived in Illinois and New York looking fairly similar to the ad’s summary. The recipient said it was, “Very cool and modern, and a lot like the picture.” However, in Los Angeles, the recipient noticed a disparity in the number of lilies from what was promised: “While the ad shows eight lilies, the bouquet that showed up only has five,” adding: “If I’m paying for eight lilies, I don’t want five.”

    The arrival of an arrangement from the Teleflora in New York also included inconsistencies.

    With brown, wilting lilies, the $54.95 bouquet fell short of being worth the cost. The same arrangement that arrived in Illinois was put in a totally different vase. The store’s response when it was brought to their attention was that they were sorry but they reserved the right to make such substitutions.

    As for FTD, their $49.99 assembly of blooms arrived at the door of the Illinois location looking “a little sparse” and “not as tall”, according to the contact there. In L.A., results were not much more impressive, as the individual there described them as appearing also aged. Then, the New York location failed to deliver – and that’s not a figure of speech; they literally never showed up. FTD sent flowers and a refund after that episode.

    Each of these companies claim they “guarantee satisfaction,” and will offer refunds or replacements if a customer isn’t happy. But can you truly refund a gesture gone wrong? Also, it’s hard to imagine a person telling someone they adore, “Hey, thanks for the flowers, man. They looked like something out of the Adams Family movie.”

    All is not lost, though. 1-800-Flowers is planning a more plausible solution. If all goes well, you could see an actual picture of your posies before they leave the store. The company hopes to have that new technology ready to go in the next few weeks.

    Also, some surmise that a rise in the buying of artificial flowers may ensue for the upcoming holiday. Between the rising costs for real flowers and discontent over their quality, co-owener of K Flower Talk, a faux flower company, said:

    “Customers would usually complain about the steep hike on prices of blooms as Valentine’s Day approaches,” adding, “we are expecting them to switch to plastic flowers,” concluding that she expected sales to go up by 50% from last year.

    Dupe blooms could be good… so long as you use a line like this:

    But if a faux-quet just isn’t your style, it appears that real online flower delivery services aren’t to be entirely eschewed. You may just want to check the reviews first for your area so you can weed out any ones that sound like they might be a few roses short of a bouquet.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons