Eureka moment
There
were three eureka moments!
The first was when I tried to send flowers while getting on a plane, to thank a family friend for letting me stay at their holiday flat (I hadn't had phone reception all week). It was so hard on my mobile that I gave up. I had to order once I got home and the flowers didn't arrive until a few days later.
The second was when my business partner saw a shipment of dry, flat-packed flowers at Amsterdam airport - we hadn't realised flowers could ever be out of water.
And finally, there was the time I received my first graze snack box through the letterbox. Why not do flowers through the letterbox, and make them easy to order on a mobile phone?
Financing
We
started with our own savings, before raising angel funding and then a venture
capital round from MMC Ventures. This has really helped us to grow - three
years in, we're sending out thousands of bouquets each week all across the UK
and now Ireland too.
Regrets
Absolutely
none - I've loved building Bloom & Wild so far and have a great team of
passionate people - we're excited for what's next.
What would you have changed?
I totally underestimated how core technology would be to our business, and we tried to outsource it all to save money and get our initial site built. We ended up having to start again a year later with our own software engineers - if I started again then I'd have built an in-house development team right away.
