Fishkill’s Lovingly partners with local florists for business in the internet age
Fishkill-based Lovingly prides itself on bringing the neighborhood flower shop experience to an online setting, allowing small florists to compete more heavily with big-business online flower retailers.
As a sales platform, it optimizes online retail for small florists, connecting customers who can buy directly through the site from flower shops in their own community or any others where Lovingly has partners, across the United States and Canada.
Joe Vega, co-founder of Lovingly, was an IT consultant with search engine optimization expertise before starting the business and worked for major floral industry leader FTD Cos., where he became acquainted with the business.
“Back in 2008, while installing a point-of-sale system for a local florist, I saw she was having a difficult time with her website,” Vega said. “I offered a few simple, off-the-cuff SEO suggestions and then ”¦ she called me in tears. Her order volume had gone through the roof and she could barely keep up. After tweaking a few things, her flower business boomed and she was elated. It was the moment I knew I had to start Lovingly.”
From that start, the company has always aimed to be a resource to support local florists.
While other flower retailers online may increase order prices to turn a profit, Lovingly”™s approach is to use the same pricing advertised by the individual florists, and have customers pay a $9.99 direct fee for the service, resulting in better profits for the small businesses. It doesn”™t take in any money until its partners do.
“Joe had a front-row seat for all the ways local businesses like florists were struggling to keep up with the age of the internet,” said Ken Garland, co-founder of Lovingly. “Other flower companies known as ”˜order gatherers”™ swooped in, claiming to be a resource to help local florists with the convenience of doing business online, but instead took advantage of their work and undermined the pivotal part they play in their local communities. Sending flowers online was missing the mark ”¦ it became transactional and cold, plus the florists who were making the arrangements were barely scraping by financially.”
In addition to being a sales platform, Lovingly also runs an online advertising service for florists, using Google Ads and optimization to help its partners compete with larger businesses.
Lovingly hopes to bring back more business to the small florists whom the founders believe are the ones who have built up the industry, but see it being overtaken by order gatherers.
Vega also said that he wanted to bring a more personal touch back to the flower business, which he believed could only be possible by connecting customers directly to their local shops.
“When you send with Lovingly, your flowers are hand-arranged by a real person in a local florist shop in your loved one”™s community,” he said. “By bringing the local floral shop experience online, the charm, service and quality local businesses are known for doesn”™t disappear when you do business online.”
Lovingly is growing, likely boosted by the rise in e-commerce that resulted from the pandemic and the need for struggling small businesses to expand their customer reach in order to survive.
“Over the past year, due to Covid hitting the small business sector the hardest, we knew we had to help local florists survive somehow,” Vega said. “So, we restructured our product development goals and set about building features and products to help not only our local floral partners survive, but thrive, while still allowing them to service their community in a safe, modern, contact-free way, that many in our industry were slow to adjust to.”
When the pandemic hit, the company”™s plans for 2020 were put on hold. Lovingly developed a no-contact delivery app, to benefit both the businesses and customers.
They also added a tipping feature for customers who wanted to show extra appreciation for the stores, and a “Gift Now, Deliver Later” feature for customers to keep supporting businesses that may not have been allowed to open or that faced difficulties keeping inventory in stock due to disrupted supply chains.
Garland also attributes some of the growth to their model”™s emphasis on being a business partnership.
“Lovingly is experiencing strong growth driven by our market offers and our best-in-class approach to partnering,” Garland said. “Making our partners successful as a priority means we drive a shared objective, we succeed with them.”
While based in Dutchess County, Lovingly has partners across the United States and Canada utilizing its platform and advertising services. The founders are Dutchess residents and wanted to keep the business nearby to contribute to local economic development.
Among Westchester and Fairfield area florists using the Lovingly platform include Bed of Roses in Scarsdale, Graceland Florist in Mount Vernon, Floral Fashions in Port Chester, Peter Rogers Florist in Stamford and Garcia”™s Flower Shop in Stamford.