About Lily's Florist USA

For one reason or another, and I cannot think of why, but I have never chosen to tell this story. I have wanted to, don't get me wrong, but I just wasn't sure it would 'go down' with, well, you our customers, in the USA. But, in truth, I wanted to place a name, a story, to what we do, no longer are we to be another, faceless, flower delivery business. Yeah, it's a risk, but at least I think it's a cracking yarn. I know right (or IKR as my 14 year old daughter would say) I promise to keep the Australianisms to a minimum.

My name is Andrew. My wife and I, knowing absolutely nothing about flowers bought a flower and gift shop in Australia, yeah 'down under' I can hear you say, many, many miles away - in NSW actually. A state with around seven million people, made famous by Sydney, the Opera House, and Bondi Beach. 

The shop we bought though was far from the grind and bright lights of Sydney where I grew up, tucked away in a tiny coastal beach town, the move from the city was a must at that time in our lives with my wife and partner 2 months pregnant. Think Sequim WA, Pismo Beach CA, or Port Isabel TX in terms of size and location to the water. The idea? Scale down the flowers, scale up the gifts with things like baby care, organic skin care, food and so on, that is flowers meet organic shop. At least that was the plan.

Again, I can hear you thinking to yourself, but what has this got to do with flower delivery in the USA? I am getting there!

After a serious renovation of the shop we opened the doors in September 2006. Let's go. It was November, the town bursting with local and tourist life, we were selling a few bouquets that we were getting made by a local florist who had her own home studio, and the gifts were flying out the door, it was great. The momentum continued throughout Christmas and into the new year. Then it hit us, like a ton of rose, just as quickly as the rush had come, it was mostly gone. The tourist surge had given us a false economy of sorts, it was kind of scary.

By the end of June 2007, it was even worse. Whilst winters are not especially cold, the town gets quiet, like really quiet. $20 in the till (cash register) was becoming more frequent, day on day. But one thing didn't die down, day on day, that dang phone kept on ringing. People in our area, wanting to send flowers to other places, in our area, in other cities closeby, in other states even. To which our typical response was something along the lines of "sorry, you will need to call another florist...". Still perplexed by all the calls, we soon discovered that the previous owner had taken out an add in a local directory, think along the lines of Yelp or similar. Well that explained it, in mid-July 2007 the light bulb went on, and thankfully, as things were looking rather grim.

The Aha Moment

Sitting in the shop, turning away the 20th call for flowers outside our area that day and with probably less than $20 in the till that day, it happened. We both looked at each other with a blend of despair and optimism all rolled into one. What if we took the call and the order, charged the customer, then phoned a florist in the town that they were sending to, gave them the order and got them to deliver them. What if? This could actually save us.

I remember the first call like it was yesterday, to a small town near us called Murwillumbah. I rang the local florist, told her briefly about us and asked if I could pop in and introduce myself and share my proposal, 'of course' she said. 

WIth a fair amount of trepidation, I popped my 12 month old baby, Asha, into her baby seat and took off, it was (and still is as we still live in that beach town of Kingscliff) about a 25 minute drive from the shop. I walked into a flower shop, Murwillumbah Flower Shed it was called, popped Asha onto the ground and waited, and patiently waited, then I heard the loudest crash. Asha had clumsily, half crawled, half walked, over to a gift stand and pulled off something of interest, some very, very breakable. There it was, strewn all over the ground in 1000 pieces! Oh my, what a start, suffice is to say that the trepidation turned rapidly to anxiety. Shall I leave, shall I say, what a mess, what am I doing here, I am in too deep, I am not even a florist. Oh my.

Bev, the owner, peeked around the corner, thinking the worst, I said 'hi, I am Andrew, I rang you earlier today about helping us with our flower orders. Oh, and um, I am so sorry, but how much do I owe you for the gift...?". Asha's big entrance, little did I know, was the ultimate icebreaker, despite feeling shattered myself. Bev was smitten, she had a granddaughter the same age and she lovingly picked Asha up while I helped clean up, still sweating with anticipation.

I nervously proceeded to chat about our shop, the flowers and all the calls we were getting for flowers to Murwillumbah and how I was hoping she could help us with those. This was my plan:

• I build a website for Bev
• I put our phone number on it
• I exclusively give all the orders I get from that website to Bev
• I would not charge her any fees
• All I asked in return was that she throw in a few more flowers to cover our commission

Remember, this was now 2007. To my knowledge, nobody, globally, had thought of this idea in the flower industry, it was pretty edgy, but Bev got it, she was on board, and she was excited, mainly as she had absolutely no idea about websites, back then.

Bev became our first official florist partner, much to my surprise, she got it, and the idea, the hope, the saviour, was coming to fruition. Phew! 

The Pivot to Flowers

Over the next few months we built a website for Bev, using Ashop Intelligent Commerce and, pretty soon worked out it was actually pretty easy. Not just easy to build, but in 2007, to rank #1 for this website, we chose murwillumbahflorist.com.au as the website. Without exaggeration, it ranked #1 in Google in about 2 weeks. Suddenly, we were no longer getting calls for flowers to Murwillumbah from customers calling us from our shop number but were now getting online orders for that location, plus call to place orders for that location. But not just one or two a week, but at least 10-15 a week more.

It wasn't long before the grand aha moment, the one that changed everything, which ultimately led us to the USA. One late Thursday afternoon in August 2007, after our 10th order to Murwillumbah alone that week we thought, well we did it for Murwillumbah, what if we did the same thing for other small regional towns close to us, maybe if we build 5 websites or so, perhaps we could get 5 times more orders?

Rinse and repeat. We contacted 5 florists in towns relatively close to us, Byron Bay, Taree, Port Macquarie, Coffs Harbour, and one very far away in a different state as a trial in Townsville. Same story, same outcome, all the florists were excited to get on board and by Christmas 2007 we had 6 partner florists and 6 ecommerce websites feeding orders to them. It was evolving and rapidly, and so were the calls and orders.

The shop, well there was still no money in the cash register, as everything was done online or via our credit card terminal now, it was crazy. For every one person that came into the shop to buy a $2 soap, we would have over 20 orders online for flowers. But still, the shop was losing money, it was a grind, and we persisted.

Time to Sell The Flower Shop & go Online

Over the next 2 years we would contact at least another 30 florists dotted mostly on the East Coast of Australia pushing our partner network to over 35. By this time, the it was almost inconvenient for someone walking into the shop to buy a skin care product, as we were too crazy busy with flowers. By mid-2009, we were having second thoughts about the shop, the flowers were going so well, we decided it was time, time to back ourselves, time to take it to another level, we decided flowers were going to be our saviour.

We put the shop part of the business up for sale, and by some form of miracle, we able to sell the shop's organic business within a month of listing it. This was one of the more defining moments of our evolution, that was it, we were all in with flowers. We moved our entire operation, well, to a 3 bedroom condo we were living in at the time (renting that is), my wife downstairs answering the phone, me upstairs in the home office doing dev work and building more websites for more partner florists.

I remember clearly getting to that 50th website with Ashop and 50th partner florist with Ashop and thinking, my goodness, what have we created. It was close to out of control. Not only that, we were building our own home about 10 minutes down the road, the double garage being the new and proper home office which added extra stress, if you have ever built your own home, you will know what I mean. But, we were living in a small home and didn't want to hire someone to help and working in this environment, it will have to wait, breathe, push on.

That year though, we had another thought, we were sending all these orders on all these websites to florists but we had no identity, no brand, no face. All the orders going to our partners had financial value to both of us but no long-tail value to something, a face. Perhaps we could start a national brand of our own, something we could call our own, something that would work in parallel with our partner websites, not competing with, but complimenting each other. That's it, that was the missing piece, but how, but what, and how would we build it. Ashop to the rescue, yet again, our 51st website, it was decided, would be Lily's Florist (Australia). This was our thought:

• Build a national brand
• Have a national phone number
• A national identity
• Build location pages for far more places, now we could target large cities, with one website, rather than many and filter all those orders to both existing and new partner florist we hope we could get along the way
• To my knowledge, not one online florist, anywhere, in 2008-2009 was approaching business this way

We did it, we built our Lily's Florist, from the ground up, on our own, literally a Mum & Pop, with baby in tow. A new beginning, a national brand, but where to now...

The Home Office and Ramping Up

In 2010, much to our relief, we moved into our new home, and sparkling new home office/garage. I mean the office had workstations for the possible employees we would hire, a VOIP phone system, recess lighting, carpet, its own separate bathroom, air-conditioning, coffee machine, it was quite the set up, for a young family on a budget and who had big dreams!

We hired too, actually it was a strategic stroke of genius. We decided to hire two ex-florists as both to manage inbound flower calls, but also to manage the existing and future florist network. Because, in all honesty, they could talk the talk in a way that we never could.

Over the next 2 years we would build our network from the 50 to over 150 partner florists. Our national website would go from a few landing pages to 100's, and our partner florist website up to about the 90 mark. What was becoming clear though was that managing so many individual websites was getting very, very challenging, actually almost impossible, there just had to be a better way. But where and how? 

In 2012 we began doing research, we needed a tech solution that could easily manage 90 websites, and create many more. We were being held back now expanding the website partner model by our problem, but more on that later.

A Sliding Door Moment

Whilst researching other software options in early 2012, ironically, I was personally contacted by the owner of Ashop, having 90+ websites was perhaps the reason. He said to me something along the lines of "hey, there is a major ecommerce news website in the USA that wants to do a story on one of our clients and I have put you forward, are you interested...?". Initially I thought no, but after mulling it over, we decided to go for it, but what transpired after that was something we never imagined. The story went live and was titled Lessons Learned: SEO Makes Australian Florist Bloom. I was super nervous on the phone with the reporter, I had never done anything like this before and I was way out of my comfort zone, but I got through it and our story, at that point in time was 'out in the wild' so to speak and we thought nothing more of it.

That was at least, until I got, what I thought was, an unusual email from a competitor here. They explained who they were, what they do, how they had read our story, and was wondering if they could help us with our orders. Hmmm, very interesting. I will be honest, I was a little flippant about it, not quite understanding the magnitude of the message, but I meekly said my partner and I would think about it and moved on.

Not too long after that, I get another email from them, but this time from someone big boss of the company, he said that he was going to be in my area and wanted to meet up, and that he had read our story. I later discovered that they were owned by a much larger company in the U.S, like one of the largest flowers and gifting companies there (you can read into where I am heading with this). Whoa I thought, you want to meet the family and I?

A few months later we, by we, all of us, the now two kids in tow this time, at a restaurant near to where we live, full of curiosity and wonder.

The Proposal That Changed Everything

The proposal was as simple as it was complex, at least to us. We had a new house, an office full of staff, phones, our own network...he proposed to us that they absorb all our florist partners into their much larger network (over 800 at the time), they manage all our inbound calls and all our customer service. Wait what? Very interesting proposal but that's one we need to sit on, and for some time.

The Bali Backstory

In 2010 we had our first visit to Bali in Indonesia. We fell in love instantly. As we moved away from our family in 2006 we were completely isolated, not one babysitter, running our own business, the stress, the grind and pain at times. Bali was fresh, it gave us time to reset, we had babysitters for the first time ever, we had time away from the kids, well hours, we got massages, we absorbed the culture and relaxed for what seemed the first time, like ever. So with that, Bali became our our second home, going there two or even three times a year.

Each time we went to Bali we grew even more in love with it, if that was even possible, but if you know Bali, you know.

So, on one of our visits in late 2012, sitting around possibly the most amazing pool we have ever seen, we looked at each other with basically the same thought, marriage will sometimes do that to you. Hang on, if we didn't have an office or staff, maybe we could move to Bali and work remotely...BOOM. Enter that, what had now become, and unbelievable proposal. Yes, that's it, that's how we can move to Bali, cue the proposal that changed everything, not just in business but in our personal lives too.

2013 - Oh What a Year

In early 2013, it was time for a change. A massive one.

We had found a tech partner that was going to make our new software platform to manage all our websites and that was well underway.

We had decided to push forward on the proposal offer which was set to come to fruition June 1, 2013.

We had set a goal to move to Bali in January 2014.

The question was, how were we going to break the news to our staff whom we cared about so much. It was one of the toughest conversions I have had in business, really rough. They all understood and were very happy for us, and green with envy, mostly, as were moving to Bali. All our staff finished up after Mother's Day in May 2013 and by June 1 that year, all our phones were ported to our new partners office, all our orders were ported into their network, and all our partner florists were also moved into their network. It was done, oh wow, we had some freedom now, the stress around not having to worry about staff and the day to day grind was liberating, we had not felt like this for 6 years, and new beginning, and new time, and later, new opportunities, but in a different country.

The USA Flowers Idea Bubbles Away From Bali

We were in Bali from January 4, 2014. Initially, we were to be there for 3 months, the kids were going to the Australian School there, but seriously, after 2 weeks, we were like, yeah 3 months isn't enough. It quickly became 12 months, 18, and ended up being 2 years to almost the day. It would become the most memorable time of our lives, creating lifelong memories and friendships both, almost all of which are still with us to this day.

During our time in Bali, one thing was clear. The new platform that we built was immense, powerful, and could be replicated. We thought on numerous occasions, where else could we replicate the idea of Lily's Florist? Maybe in Bali, or perhaps in Europe, or just maybe, the USA.

During those years, and still to this day, I had become very close to one of the senior managers that we partnered with, he was doing a stint in Australia, from California, managing the Australian arm of their U.S business. Later, his friendship would become a blessing, for, not too long after he left for another position I proposed to him that we start the USA arm of Lily's Florist, leveraging my relationship with him (Dan), my relationship with our partners and their parent company in the U.S, and his relationship with his previous employer.

The idea evolved over time, and Dan thought it would be a good idea to bring in his best mate Dennis who immediately I gelled with which was great. The plan? Duplicate the software platform, and host it on a USA server. Luckily, thinking ahead, I had bought https://lilysflorist.com/ from someone a few years earlier, for a crazy amount of money, so that was great.

The Counter Proposal

We had the vision, the URL, the software and IP, the team, now Dan and I had to propose the idea, kind of in reverse, to our USA partner, you know, the awesome and massive flower and gifting company in America that approached us all those years ago. By this time, we had been with them for around 5 years, struck up a wonderful working relationship with them for Lily's Florist Australia, so when Dan and I proposed a similar model for the USA, they agreed in full. Gratefully, we thanked them and now, game on.

The concept had now turned into a reality, we now had a pipeline to over 15,000 florists in the USA. Wow, I am still pinching myself to this day at the magnitude of it. From a tiny flower and gift shop in rural Australia to this...

The Pain Point

By this time, I had spent almost 10 years in the online flower game, but in Australia, not the U.S. Even after all that experience and rather naively I thought, so we will just flip the model to the U.S., just like we were doing in Australia and we will be on our merry way. No way. 

We quickly learnt that online shoppers in the U.S are very different, far more mature, and have a much stronger allegiance to local florists, in the area they are sending flowers to. Moreover, florists, even in the partner network, had a very different attitude to what they deemed to be 'order gatherers'. How would we stand out, how could be differ ourselves, what could our USP be, what makes us different. 

I had to relearn everything, every detail, learn about different tastes, different buying habits, different holidays, different expectations, pricing, rules and regulations, tax, I could go on. It was tough at the beginning, actually still is to this day! Part of the motivation of telling this story, even after not telling it for 8 years, was the hope of giving us that edge, fronting up, and saying this is who we are, and what we do.

The Now - What We Are

We are Lily's Florist. It is run by Dennis, Dan, myself Andrew and my wife. Our tiny office is located in a small town in North Carolina. We have 3 employees, one of my old friends from Bali named Ayu, she helps with adding the orders to the network. We have Bonnie who does the same, but also all the customer service, Phoebe who works remotely from Vancouver, Dan is a mentor to the business and both Dennis and I work on business management.

We are just a very small team of people hoping to turn an idea that spawned way back in 2007 into something much greater and, hopefully, earn a few dollars along the way, and support a few other people and their families who work for us.

We don't have a giant marketing team, we have no legal team, we don't have big sales meetings, we don't go on business junkets. 

But we are an order gatherer, we cannot hide that, but the hope in sharing this story is that we are just that little bit different, more real, less corporate, and way more like someone, just like you.