FlowerGarage.com

305 Second Avenue, Suite 310
New York, NY 10003
Ph: 212-375-1285
Fax: 212-202-3540
www.flowergarage.com

Alex Munoz-Suarez, CEO and President
Tony Munoz, Vice President, Business Development

Product Line

 

FlowerGarage.com is a business-to-business online flower vertical serving the $150 billion floral and gift industry. We offer florists one-stop, direct-from-grower sourcing, significantly reducing delivery time and cost. Fresher, cheaper product combined with value-added community and content comprise the compelling value proposition of FlowerGarage.com.

 

FlowerGarage’s management team has vast experience in the flower import business. The co-founders also own one of South Florida’s premier florists, Heaven Scent Florist, therefore they also understand the retail aspect of the business. Management has performed due diligence trips to Ecuador, Colombia, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic, where they visited over 55 growers. Current customer sales and over 200 customer surveys indicated that retailers are very receptive to the FlowerGarage concept, particularly the availability of fresher, higher quality product and new lowered cost structure.

 

FlowerGarage sources flowers in bulk from an extensive network of growers worldwide to its Miami cross-docking center for overnight delivery to retailers. Florists can access real-time inventory and place orders at significant discounts directly from our representative growers via the web site. This model will be extended to other related product lines, such as vases, floral preservatives, baskets, gift accessories, and technology tool kits. Transactions are supported with relevant content and service offerings. In this way, FlowerGarage creates a virtual community of retail florists with commerce as the anchor.

 

Tapping into such a community of floral retailers is very attractive to growers, particularly in such a highly fragmented industry. To date, growers have been cut off from retailers. FlowerGarage serves double duty as a central marketing vehicle for flower growers, who use the site to build their brands as well as to access customer data.

 

FlowerGarage.com has revolutionized the value chain in the flower industry: from a pure commodity business where a number of intermediaries captured the lion’s share of the value to a more streamlined, differentiated product value chain where the growers, a few key technology-based intermediaries, and the consumers share the value recaptured by eliminating inefficiencies.

 

Market Opportunities

 

FlowerGarage.com is a business-to-business flower vertical serving the $150 billion worldwide flower industry. This model will be extended to other related product lines, such as vases, floral preservatives, baskets, and gift accessories. Transactions are supported with relevant content and service offerings - such as trade show listings, events calendars, articles on industry trends or success stories - as well as by a suite of related products - such as technology tool kits, insurance products, office supplies, used asset auctions, and job bulletins. Content comes mainly through partnerships and links, requiring minimal editorial labor. The community component is rounded out with relevant service offerings, including job search, bulletin boards, used-asset exchanges, and technology tool kits. In this way, FlowerGarage creates a virtual community of retail florists with commerce as the anchor.

 

Marketing Sales Distribution

 

Our primary goal in our marketing effort is to communicate our value proposition of providing fresher, higher quality product at cheaper prices (i.e., providing flowers easier, cheaper and faster). We want to “arm” our customers, giving them the power to compete in an online world. This means providing a fully functional web site that allows the florist’s, party planners, and mass-marketers to order flowers, pre-made bouquets, materials, supplies, services, etc. from anywhere in the world at his or her convenience (i.e., without the hassles of a salesperson pressuring the florist to buy product). We plan on building our business by using the following marketing strategies: creative and compelling events marketing, such as launch parties in cities where we initiate coverage, print advertising and public relations campaign in trade magazines, developing relationships with industry associations and floral schools, team to build awareness, affiliate network on related sites, viral marketing - discounts for recommending another florist and trial incentives - e.g., free product with approved credit application, business development 

 

Flowergarage.com sources flowers in bulk from an extensive network of growers worldwide - including South America, California and Europe - to its Miami cross-docking center for overnight delivery to retailers. Florists can access real-time inventory and place orders at significant discounts directly from our growers via the web site. Product is then delivered to retail locations by overnight air via Federal Express.
Competition

 

FloraPlex.com, an $8 million venture-backed start-up, is seeking to become a provider of b2b electronic commerce solutions that links buyers and suppliers of indirect goods and services into trading communities over the Internet. It will provide an intranet-based purchasing application that allows users throughout an organization to make purchases over the Internet from catalogs of multiple suppliers. This process should lower the overall cost of procurement by reducing inefficiencies related to phone and fax-based manual transactions.

 

FloraPlex.com is not trying to replace the existing distribution or supply dynamics of these industries, it is creating a more efficient and effective purchasing model. FloraPlex.com generates revenues from licensing its software, billing for service, and generating transaction fees. They are currently involved in flowers and produce, with plans to move into other areas. Their model does not attempt to replace wholesalers or change the supply chain to capture value; rather they “e-enable” the existing players. As such they are a potential partner for FlowerGarage.com.

 

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