In 2022, Lovingly shops had one of their best Valentine’s Day ever. And that’s despite all of the turmoil, all the things that are happening in our world. We still have COVID, the Delta variant went through, we had Omicron to deal with, supply chain disruptions. You had demonstrations at the borders that prevented transport to go through. And despite all that, Lovingly shops had a fantastic Valentine’s Day.

KEN

In 2022, Lovingly shops had one of their best Valentine’s Day ever. And that’s despite all of the turmoil, all the things that are happening in our world. We still have COVID, the Delta variant went through, we had Omicron to deal with, supply chain disruptions. You had demonstrations at the borders that prevented transport to go through. And despite all that, Lovingly shops had a fantastic Valentine’s Day.

48% of products were upgraded to Deluxe and Premium. That’s despite inflation being its highest in the last 40 years. And the average order value of products sold for Lovingly shops was $100.14. That’s one of the highest it’s ever been.

JOE

The reason why is because of our secret sauce, right? This year we came out with something called Florist’s Choice PLUS. So, on the Lovingly shop websites, we normally have this theme called Florist’s Choice. What Florist’s Choice is, it enables the home page to turn into, sort of like a product page where customers or gifters can only buy the Florist’s Choice product. And florists turn that on usually around February 9th, give or take, when they are a little bit behind in terms of what products they can sell. And it’s worked great. We’ve had those for years. What happened differently this year is we came out with Florist’s Choice PLUS.

What is Florist’s Choice PLUS? Florist’s Choice PLUS is a feature that florists in the Lovingly network have that can convert their homepage on their website into a product page. Not only a product page, but it actually almost behaves almost like a category page, but it only actually shows up to nine products at a time. There is no menu. It’s a very minimalist design and customers or grifters, if they actually want to buy something for Valentine’s Day, they only have those nine options. And it has been a tremendous success.

For example, the average order from the Florist’s Choice PLUS theme was $10 more than the average order against the rest of the site. It also enables shops to stay up, to stay open a lot longer. It also enables gifters to actually put their orders in at the last minute. And one of the biggest things that was a surprise to us, that was a huge benefit, I mean, this is the feedback

that we’re getting from florists, from our shops, is that they were able to pre-create those nine products ahead of time so that when they turned the theme on, customers would order one of these particular products and then they will just go out and deliver them. I was told that – the feedback that we’re getting back – now is, like, that was something that the florist did and it helped tremendously with alleviating the design team. To be creating all these different crazy designs at the last minute and also alleviated the fact that they didn’t have to buy particular stems because they already pre-ordered the stems to begin with, because they already knew ahead of time which nine products they were going to be selling.

KEN

So in trying times, the best way to propel your business forward is innovation. And once again, that’s what Lovingly did; we innovated by creating the Florist’s Choice PLUS product. So that florists with Lovingly would be able to stay open longer, sell a specific number of products that they’ve pre-selected at price points that they’ve chosen. And this is critically important

because every single time we’re in a situation like Valentine’s, where at the end of the day, as a florist, your back’s up against the wall, there’s so much that you have to do in such a small amount of time. It’s things like Florist’s Choice PLUS that make your life that much easier.

If we rewind the tapes back to the beginning of COVID, one of the things that Lovingly introduced then was tips for delivery drivers. You know, you’re used to tipping your pizza delivery guy, but florists, when the delivery driver goes out and delivers, the recipient is unaware. It’s a surprise to them. So we innovated at that time to create it so that when the gifter actually places that order, they’re actually able to add a tip for the delivery driver. And during trying times, that tip goes a long way. These delivery drivers were out there risking their health, risking their lives during the height of COVID to deliver happiness at the end of the day. And what better way to thank them for their hard work, as a gifter, than to provide that tip?

JOE

That’s right. That was a huge step going forward. We’re always about innovation. Like you said, we did it pre-COVID, we did it post-COVID. You have to be adaptive, right? You have to adapt to things. You have to be innovative. And I’m so happy that we actually created this, the Florist’s Choice PLUS theme, because that’s what actually took us over the top.

And there’s a lot more where that came from. So tune in next time to see what we’re up to next.