Ferns N Petals will launch bookmyflowers.com – an online platform for florists to route orders to multiple cities. To launch in two weeks, it will play host to 3,000 florists across the country initially.
Thirty per cent of the company's revenues are from the online channel fnp.com. The rest are from wedding planning and offline (retail) businesses. It has 117 outlets in 47 cities in India. There is also a vendor-led network to deliver fresh flowers to over 100 cities in India and to 145 other countries. The online business was launched nine years ago.
Mr Vikaas Gutgutia, Managing Director, Ferns n Petals, told
Extensive surveys have given Ferns N Petals this database of 3,000 florists, who would otherwise not be able to deliver outside their markets, said Mr Gutgutia. Not more than two to three per cent of the online business would be in place of the retail business, according to the company. The site enjoys around 15,000 unique visitors per day while the average ticket size is around Rs 600, about Rs 200 lower than the store ticket size. But the online business is more profitable, said Mr Gutgutia, without divulging specifics.
“Smartphones and tablet computers have become very popular and ordering on the Internet has become convenient. We believe this space will keep growing. The B2B gateway will enable more florists to make use of online ordering,” said the spokesperson.
The URL bookmyflowers.com is already live, but is currently catering to customers, routing orders to fnp.com.
On the URL being similar to ticketing portal bookmyshow.com, Mr Gutgutia said, “I agree that bookmyflowers.com is very similar to bookmyshow.com, because it's a very catchy name and also the top-of-mind recall is very high of this URL. I believe in the near future it would be easier to popularise this URL. But as such there is no connection.”
On the retail end, the company's ‘mission' is to get the store count up to 200 in the next 12 months. Of its 117 outlets, 15 (of 34) in Delhi are company-owned, and the rest franchised.