eCommerce Founder Series: Kelly Jamieson I Edible Blooms

Ever wondered how a simple idea can blossom into a million-dollar business?

That's exactly what Kelly Jamieson, founder of Edible Blooms, will unravel for us as she narrates her journey from the legal halls of Minter Ellison to cultivating a flourishing Australian brand.

Ryan Martin, founder of eCommerce SEO Agency Remarkable Digital interviews Kelly and talks on the calculated risks that paved the way for an audacious venture into e-commerce, yielding a sweet first-year revenue of $1 million. 

She talks candidly about embracing failures as stepping stones and the reality of blending family into the business fabric, with her sister joining forces to solidify their nearly two-decade partnership.

Strap in as we traverse the terrain of e-commerce success through the vibrant lens of Edible Blooms. 

Kelly shares her guerrilla marketing escapades, where a strawberry costume in Sydney became an iconic symbol of budget-savvy brand-building. 

She draws back the curtain on the evolution of online marketing strategies and the essential role of credibility markers in establishing trust. 

All the while, Kelly underscores the significance of not just knowing your audience, but immersing yourself in their world—fuelling a customer-centric approach that has kept her brand blooming, even as the landscape of e-commerce perpetually shifts.

She illuminates how Edible Blooms leveraged the surge in online shopping, pivoted with strategic omnichannel retailing, and blossomed further through partnerships with traditional retailers. 

And as we peek into the future, we learn how Kelly's judicious embrace of AI is balanced by a commitment to the human touch that her customers cherish. 

If you're intrigued by what gives Edible Blooms its competitive edge in the gifting market, our chat with Kelly will unwrap the importance of trust, quality, and reliability in crafting a brand that stands out amidst a crowded field.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:19

Welcome to the Ecommerce Australia podcast. For those of you seeking direct assistance, remarkable Digital is just a call away. Our mission is to be remarkable, doing great things for great people and great businesses. I understand how much choice you have and how many podcasts are out there, so I'm truly grateful you've tuned in. Please let me know if you have any questions, comments or topics you'd like covered. Let's get started.

Speaker 1: 0:42

Welcome to eCommerce Australia. Really excited to get stuck into today's episode. We have a very well-known entrepreneur in Australia who has founded a brand that most, if not all, australians know, which is an exceptional feat. After four years at Minter Allison, kelly Jamison founded a company called Edible Blooms, starting out with the idea to create bouquets of fruit and chocolate and, amazingly, did $1 million in revenue in their first year of business. Out with the idea to create bouquets of fruit and chocolate and, amazingly, did $1 million in revenue in their first year of business. They've also been recognized previously as the number one online florist in Australia and, in 2022, become the number one store online for gift delivery as well. So I'm very honored to have met Kelly at the recent Retail Fest on the Gold Coast. If you didn't attend this year A, you missed out and B put it in your calendar for a must attend in 2025. But yeah, a big welcome to the podcast, kelly Jamieson.

Speaker 2: 1:31

Thank you, ryan. It's great to be here and I agree people absolutely missed out if they didn't get to Retail Fest this year. It was awesome.

Speaker 1: 1:37

Yeah, it was my first year and, yeah, really thankful to Ash and the team. They did an amazing job, they put on a great event and, yeah, you get to meet people like yourself.

Speaker 2: 1:46

I get to meet people like you.

Speaker 1: 1:50

Too kind. So yeah, well, look, let's get stuck into it. I'm really interested to hear how the Edible Blooms story started. So obviously you're working at Mint of Allison as a. What was your role there, Sorry? I was head of marketing and BD for a couple of states, so yeah, yeah, and then, in the background, where did you identify the niche of Edible Blooms and the market and where did you think that it could become a business like it is today?

Speaker 2: 2:16

That's a really good question. So I guess I always wanted to have my own business. So I actually had gone to a consulting role and I was at Minters for four days a week. I actually had gone to a consulting role and I was at Minters for four days a week. So I used a day a week to research business ideas. I was 26 actually and I'd had quite a lot of work experience because I was actually sponsored to study university straight out of school. So I sort of had nearly 10 years of work experience by this point.

Speaker 2: 2:38

So I was ready to do my own thing and I actually went through. I looked at buying an existing franchise. I looked at buying an existing franchise. I looked at buying existing business. I had a book idea and then I finally, you know, I had the aha moment when I came across the idea of smashing together two of my favorite things, which are fresh flowers and gourmet food, into this one amazing gifting idea. So pretty much as soon as I had that aha moment, three months later I was living in Brisbane at the time the doors opened. So it was a pretty quick. I'd done a lot of sort of prep work in advance and honestly, I had no idea where it was going to go. I don't think I was even sophisticated enough back then to check market size or anything else that I would recommend people would do now when they start a business. I just was really following pure learning instinct and I felt like I had an interesting idea.

Speaker 1: 3:25

So Edible Blooms was born. Great to hear that Sometimes you can do so much analysis that you never get started. And the other people that do no analysis and get started eight times a year. So yeah, I guess whatever works for you. And what was that first 12 months, like You're obviously you're in? Was your sister in the business from the start? Was it both of you?

Speaker 2: 3:42

Yeah, my sister came back from a working holiday in the UK a few months in or a couple of months in, and our family are farmers actually. So she was a school teacher by trade and she was swapping from driving dad's harvester to coming flying into Brisbane and helping me do deliveries for edible blooms while she worked out what her next thing was, and so thankfully she said I'm keen to jump in and make it work. So that was great and we still work together. We're nearly 20 years in now, which is incredibly. It's flown and yeah, we just we get along really well.

Speaker 2: 4:15

But I think that first year so Brisbane opened in the August, September, Within a year, we had Adelaide, Sydney, we're about to open the Melbourne offices within our first 12 months and I was still consulting back to Minter Ellison for the first eight months.

Speaker 2: 4:31

So it was pretty hectic. And so in our first full financial year, the year that followed, we did a million dollars, which was awesome, and I honestly look back and I think the reason that we had that growth and that approach to business was it does come back to naivety again it was just there was no thought in our head that said we couldn't do it. We just went and did it, and I think when you're younger too and I love this, when I meet young entrepreneurs it's just that their risk profile's quite high. That's something that I've recognised has changed in my profile as I've progressed and now I have children and a mortgage and a husband and all of those other things. It changes your risk profile and I guess the complexity of your business changes that too. So part of that initial success for us was we just did stuff like. We just tried things out, failed fast, moved on to the next thing. We were just really hungry to see this idea succeed.

Speaker 1: 5:22

Yeah, brilliant. And when you say you mentioned you started in Brisbane, then you opened in Adelaide and Sydney and then Melbourne, were they physical locations or were they all just offices?

Speaker 2: 5:33

Yeah, because we do.

Speaker 2: 5:34

We work with food.

Speaker 2: 5:35

One of the things that I had to learn about from the get-go, because I wasn't a florist or a food expert at all.

Speaker 2: 5:41

I had to do food safety courses and all those things, and so we had to have food safe premises, and so to deliver a perishable product, we had to open physical distribution premises. So that's probably why we've had this national footprint from a really early stage, and so what we have done is we've just really refined our business model so that we can be close to make fast deliveries to our customers. So we generally choose like a city fringe location to do our daily production from and to get our careers in and out, because getting to our customers fast is priority for us and that's something we take a lot of pride in. So we often get testimonials from customers that will oh my God, I ordered and it arrived to me in like three hours. It's like it's often how it works with us because we are close to customers. We have really strong logistic systems behind our business, so we do have that capacity to get things out really quickly.

Speaker 1: 6:31

Yeah, that's fantastic. And did you know that when you started that business, or was that something that you learned very early on that you needed to open those distribution centers when you're dealing with food?

Speaker 2: 6:41

Yeah Well, do you know? It's interesting because a lot of people start businesses from their garage or their dining room or their kitchen. Because we're food approved. We had to have commercial premises from the beginning and our first landlord actually in Brisbane was a caterer, like a catering company, so he had this premise all fit out. And I remember because I actually used my own savings to start the business at the beginning and I was looking at leases in Brisbane city because I thought, oh, all of our customers will be working in the city and they want to come in and pick things up, but we just couldn't afford the lease in the city.

Speaker 2: 7:13

Like it was extraordinary, especially to have food approved. You have to have like a cafe type premise and it was just beyond our reach. So I found this premise and I thought if I'm not going to be near my customers, I'll be near my suppliers. So our very first premise was just down the road from the Brisbane fruit markets, so that meant we could get stock in and out really quickly like really fresh stock. So it was just that necessity If you can't be near your customers be near your suppliers.

Speaker 2: 7:38

So it was yeah, I don't know. I do believe that things often work out how they're meant to, because our online sales started taking off quite quickly. We could see we didn't need to be near our customers. People wanted us for a convenience purchase. We're really that connection piece between if you can't be with somebody. We're that carrier that takes a really gorgeous message, a thoughtful message, and we take it to someone that you can't be with. So one of our company values is about connection.

Speaker 1: 8:10

So it's a really fundamental part of what we do. Yeah, fantastic. It's so interesting.

Speaker 2: 8:12

What platform were you on back then when you started. This is something I share, in common with Carla, who you mentioned earlier. So we both have been in e-com for a long time and we shared that we both were on a platform called XCart. So back in 2005, there weren't a lot of off-the-shelf standard e-com products, like a lot of the time you had to be a coder and you had to completely code the entire site. So there was a system and it was actually Russian, called XCart, and funnily enough, we shared the same developer, sergius Mernov, and that is legit his name. And so I was up in the middle of the night with Sergius asking questions how do I do this, how do I do that? And he'd sort of buy ticket points and whatever. And so you know, throughout my career in e-com I have worked in many different time zones with different developers around the world, but it started in Russia.

Speaker 1: 9:02

Fantastic. Yeah, what a very Russian name. It was great. And you look back at the technology we had, it was so basic but it started in Russia.

Speaker 2: 9:05

Fantastic, yeah, what a very Russian name. But uh, oh, it was great and you look back at the technology we had. It was so basic but it worked and it enabled that transaction online, which for gifting, I think people, it is that connection piece. You can't be with someone, so to order something online conveniently see a photograph of what it looks like, no one's going to get there it. It's pretty important.

Speaker 1: 9:23

Yeah, exactly, and with that first 12 months, like how many times did you think, geez, what have I done here? Like, was there any kind of moments where you just kind of because I've had that myself- oh, yeah, totally. Where you just think what have I done? I'm way over my head, like did that teach you that first? 12, 18, two years teach you a lot about business that has held you in good stead now.

Speaker 2: 9:46

Yeah, I think probably one of my early lessons was that you know like you open another.

Speaker 2: 9:50

I remember we opened Sydney and I was like I just need to get more orders in, because you're obviously leasing premises, you need to get order volumes coming in and we had a really non-existing marketing budget, like we couldn't go out and buy billboards or like do anything along those lines. So we invested heavily in PR from the beginning, which was really good to us as a brand and growing yeah, growing the brand awareness that way, and we also had a very strong word of mouth support, so people, when they would receive something, would often then send it. You could literally was small enough then to see a domino effect of a flow on from orders that way. But I do remember when we opened Sydney, I was like I need to better tell people about Edible Blooms opening in Sydney and what we do, because it was a quite an education process, and so I thought, oh, I could afford to print some flyers. But I was like, but no one. Like if you're standing out handing out flyers at the train station or something, everyone ignores you and so.

Speaker 2: 10:43

I hired a strawberry costume in Brisbane costume shop and flew down to Sydney with it in my bag and these flyers, and I walked up Oxford Street in Sydney because I'd already researched. You couldn't do that in Martin Place because you had to get a permit and I didn't have time or you know, to do a permit. So I just walked up and down Oxford Street, which was near our office, and it was really interesting. The engagement I had was really good, and so I think I have got no idea. I couldn't track like you could now, with a code that we could redeem it online, et cetera. I was literally just handing out flyers to say we exist, yeah. So they're the kinds of like stunts that we would do to spread the word about our brand. So we just tried stuff and just did things a bit differently, I think about our brand.

Speaker 1: 11:25

So we just tried stuff and just did things a bit differently, I think.

Speaker 2: 11:26

Did you get any photos of that? Not photos of that day? It's funny like we're so good at taking photos now, aren't we?

Speaker 2: 11:31

But back then I was operating on a BlackBerry. There's no camera in the phone, but I do have a photo around that era of me in a strobby costume that I wore. So yeah, definitely I do have some photos and we still have the suit. We still literally and actually. So I hired the original costume. And then Sarah, who was our first employee in Brisbane, who now is our business partner in New Zealand. She's a Kiwi. She actually made the costume. She's a really great sewer, so she made the costume. So we sort of went from hiring one yep that worked and then whenever we'd do something where we oh, brilliant.

Speaker 1: 12:07

That's fantastic, and so do you still not particularly that tactic, but is that still the way you? One of the areas you grow your online presence in your business now is thinking outside the box and perhaps looking at some of that sort of more guerrilla style marketing.

Speaker 2: 12:23

Yeah, look, we have over the years. I think it's getting harder to do it now. I probably shouldn't say that. I'm sure there are easier ways to do it, but I felt like there was a lot more scope for that kind of thing in the early days of e-comm. I think it's becoming so sophisticated now that we're all trying to get smarter on the data and that sort of thing. So I think there's probably but I still think there's lots of opportunity to grow a brand.

Speaker 2: 12:45

And I think the other thing that we did in those early days, which I think was quite good, as we were nominated for a few business awards and we were successful in the early days and I think when you're a new startup, it gives credibility and trust, which, on the early days of online, was really important, having that trust factor that people would go this is a brand. I'm prepared to type my credit card on the big wide web and order something. So I think some of those guerrilla tactics were as simple as just working on how can I make my brand feel trusted with people coming onto our website. And we were quite successful in the Telstra Business Awards, telstra Women's Awards and all of those sorts of things early days, which was really good.

Speaker 1: 13:23

Yeah, for sure. That definitely helps with credibility when you're a new brand. Yeah, and so I'll get on to the next question around the pillars for a successful e-commerce business. But I just want to backtrack. So you started in Brisbane, but you're an Adelaide girl originally.

Speaker 2: 13:37

Is that correct? Are you family in Adelaide? Yeah, I am. Yeah, so I actually. Then my sister went and moved to Melbourne to open our Melbourne office, and then I actually ended up in Melbourne at one stage as well, and now we're both back in Adelaide. So yeah, so head office is Adelaide.

Speaker 1: 13:51

Oh nice, it's good to hear of an Adelaide success story. I'm not saying that there aren't any, oh there's loads here.

Speaker 2: 13:55

You'd be surprised. Actually, there's heaps of e-coms in Adelaide now. It's awesome. Is there, I'll have to find out and have a which is just on the city fringe. So we're literally we have a purpose-built pink building on the edge of the city, so we're pretty close to get in, which is great.

Speaker 1: 14:17

Does the pink building stand out?

Speaker 2: 14:19

Is that?

Speaker 1: 14:20

another sort of marketing tactic?

Speaker 2: 14:21

Yeah, I guess you could say it is, there's a long story about how we end up with a pink building, but we absolutely love it and it looks awesome. So it's like a little pink jewel box and we're on a major arterial going into the city, so it's pretty well seen around Adelaide, which is good.

Speaker 1: 14:35

Yeah, fantastic. No, I love Adelaide. I spent five years in the Barossa, oh beautiful. Yeah, when I had a previous career as a jockey oh nice, I spent five years in the Barossa and absolutely loved it. So Adelaide's a great spot. Yeah, so Adelaide's a great spot.

Speaker 2: 14:48

Yeah, for us it's gorgeous.

Speaker 1: 14:50

All right. Well, let's get on to some of the pillars for a successful e-commerce business. Now you're well credentialed and well-versed to answer this question, but are there some sort of key pillars for any one of our listening audience that are trying to run or building a successful e-commerce business? Is there any kind of key attributes that you've found have worked for you over the journey?

Speaker 2: 15:12

I think probably, um, for us with product is pretty important. Um, we're certainly a a product-led business in that we want to provide something different for our customers. We want to provide something. So we're really centered around gourmet gifting. So over the years we've had all sorts of. We've followed a lot of food trends, which which I think it kind of makes it interesting for us too. But the other thing is customers, and what's really satisfying for me now is if I ever do a speaking engagement, people go, oh my gosh, I love Edible Blooms. I've used you guys for a long time and it's really nice that they can keep coming back to us and choosing something different. So I think that's a really important part of our offering.

Speaker 2: 15:49

So I would say probably my two key pillars would be product and customers, and just knowing how your customers are. And actually going back to those early days when we didn't have a big budget, I knew my buyer was a female, like the person that bought gifts in any household is a female. So we skewed all of our marketing towards women. It's a great way of making a marketing spend more efficient. If you really zero down on, if you can cut out half the population, you don't need to worry about talking to. You can make your dollars go a lot further rather than just having a spray and pray approach across everyone.

Speaker 2: 16:22

So you know if it was a female event or like if we're, because we've always been really strong on giving back to our community. So we always really look at, you know which community partners, support women and children in the community, because they're the right community partner for us to grow our brand with. So we really really think quite deeply about our customers and how we can please them and make their every day a little bit more joyful is what we try and do, so ours is about giving joy. So, yeah, they're the two key things I think. Technology is often talked about in e-com and it's really important. But you could have the smartest technology, but if you don't have a great product and you're not connecting with your customers, it doesn't work, whereas you could have a fairly average tech platform. But if you've got a great product and you're talking to your customers in the right way, then it'll still work pretty well yeah, fantastic, and I'll just uh, sort of reiterate that point too.

Speaker 1: 17:17

I mentioned to a couple of people over the weekend that I had you on the podcast and every one of them knew exactly the brand, even if they didn't order from you or not. As soon as I mentioned the brand, everyone knows oh yeah, it's good like a really well-known brand. So you've obviously nailed that. And yeah, with product and customers, I've got a question on how do you as a business continue to find out about your customers? Like, do you use any kind of surveys, or is it literally just getting into those community events and really understanding who you're talking to or listening? Like, how do you get to know your customers on a deeper level?

Speaker 2: 17:54

That's a really good question. It's funny enough. We literally were talking about that this morning in our weekly marketing rip and we were like we think we know our customers really well, but we were like really questioning how well do we really know them? So literally on my this week's to-do list is I'm going to randomly call some of our customers and have a chat, because I think that these are the things that we all fall short of as brands is really just having those grassroots chats. So I think it's incredibly important not to assume you know your customers really well, because I think it's good to second guess yourself as well, because I'm hoping we'll get some great learnings there.

Speaker 2: 18:30

But I think one of our big focuses as a brand has been of late is really connecting with community and so, like Mother's Day this year, I visited one of the maternity wards in Adelaide and delivered edible blooms to the mums for their first Mother's Day and that was a really amazing customer connection experience because, yeah, I got those little things. Oh, I love edible blooms, but it'll be like we've created a moment with those mums, because nothing more special than being in the maternity ward and having a surprise and delight with no commercial gesture other than the fact that we feel like it's a great connection piece and a great story to tell around Mother's Day about that first Mother's Day people had so yeah, and then yeah, we're really just working hard on connecting. I think that's the you know. Coming back to our company values, and we've always been very true to them. But I think if we're talking about guerrilla marketing, it might not seem too out of the box but it is jumping on those opportunities to find those unique moments with our customers.

Speaker 1: 19:30

Yeah for sure. I 100% agree. I have a lot of those conversations, whether it be on this podcast or just with my own clients around. Yeah, just picking up the phone and sometimes I think e-commerce businesses we're really dialed into the numbers, which we need to be, and the data. But sometimes just picking up the phone or walking out on the street, do a Vox Pop and interviewing 30 people like do you know the brand, what are your thoughts of the brand? Do you like the look of the website? Trying to build that connection, and sometimes, you know, I think that comes into building brand a little bit more. And that sort of conversations that I'm starting to have with a lot of these e-commerce entrepreneurs that I'm lucky enough to have. On the podcast is, yeah, and to your point. You know we can get lost in the tech, but if you focus back on product and customers, you're going to have a pretty good business. If that's your two focuses, yeah, one of the things that I've noticed too.

Speaker 1: 20:24

you picked up when you said earlier around making sure that you could deliver your product within three hours or five hours or whatever. That timeframe was Like early days, like it's almost become something that you need to do now to compete with the Amazons and all those sorts of bigger e-com platforms, but back then it must have been, yeah, a real USP to be able to deliver products that quickly.

Speaker 2: 20:49

Yeah, look, it's definitely when you've got less volume going out and you've got to try and get them all out quickly or you've got to do one delivery run and cover the whole city. Your cost of delivery units is so much higher. Yeah, so I think there's a lot more agility in the way you can use carriers now. So, like the same last mile delivery, there's a lot of flexible career options that you can use. Certainly, compared to when we started, there's a lot of choice. So I think it is it's becoming a customer expectation that it's fast, but also it's actually what we find the biggest game changer for, because we used to get a lot of customers ringing us just to say, oh, where's my order? Because we didn't have that full transparency of where along from the time it leaves, our premise like where is it? And we now have real time tracking. So if you ordered something from me today, you would see as soon as it leaves us, almost like an Uber delivery, it will show you where it is and you'll know exactly what time it's arriving.

Speaker 2: 21:43

And in fact, one of my friends here in Adelaide was sending something to her sister in Melbourne and she was watching it and she was so fascinated by the technology and then, when it arrived at her sister's door this was, I think it turned out her sister wasn't home, but the driver took a photograph of where he'd left the parcel and she actually was like oh, hang on, that's the neighbour's door, not her door.

Speaker 2: 22:10

So she just SMS saying oh, hang on, you've delivered it to the wrong doorway. And our driver was. She was in direct contact. The technology is so instant now he could pick it up, move it to the right doorstep and she was like that experience was amazing because she had control of the process rather than everything being in our control. So, yeah, so I think innovation around that communication piece is really important and we love new things that we can deliver to our customers to make that experience better. And so I think even more important than how long it takes to get there is that like I know where it is, like you can relax if you know that it's close by or you know all those things. And Australia Post is the same too, like their systems have improved a lot and Star Trek's are improving as well, like a lot of the carriers, like the powers in the customer's hand, which is really great. Now makes it much better for e-com businesses.

Speaker 1: 22:58

Yeah, exactly, it almost sounds like it's gamified as well. You could sit there and watch it. You know, watch it being delivered the whole way. Sit there and watch it being delivered the whole way.

Speaker 2: 23:08

That's fascinating, oh yeah yeah, it's kind of cool, though I think it's that I'd love to get to the stage where we were literally showing the strawberries being dipped in our Belgian chocolate and then set in the fridge and packed, and that would be super cool if we could manage to get that one day?

Speaker 1: 23:19

Yeah, exactly, who knows, it mightn't be too far away. I'm sure it will happen.

Speaker 2: 23:24

I'll embrace it. If anyone's listening and you can do that for me, let me know.

Speaker 1: 23:29

What about the biggest challenges you've had in your business? Obviously, you know starting. How long has the business been going? I didn't actually address that. Was it 18 years?

Speaker 2: 23:38

Yeah, we're 2005. So next year is our 20th birthday.

Speaker 1: 23:46

So yeah, so we're, yeah, nearly into our 20th year, which is a fair while. Yes, you've done well and obviously there's been. You know we've had a once in a lifetime pandemic. How did you get around that? Obviously that was huge for e-commerce and I would imagine it would have been. I think the traffic to your website may have increased quite dramatically, but, yeah, how did you navigate through that period?

Speaker 2: 24:03

That was a pretty yeah like you said, it's a once in a lifetime period. Gifting was incredibly hectic because everyone wanted to connect and they couldn't in person. So our category had a lot of new entrants. So coming out of COVID has probably been one of the biggest challenges in our category, I would say, because it's one thing to scale when you've got unprecedented demand coming in, but it's another to get back to what is the new normal when you come out of a period like that. So that was definitely challenging for us and, I think, for our category, but I think it was the same for a lot of e-coms too. It was like coming out of that really buoyant period. That was more challenging. I know for most of us we didn't get any of the support during COVID because we were all travelling pretty well and I think the next 12 months is going to be pretty interesting for e-com in general. I think there's a lot of you have to run your business very well to get through a period like this?

Speaker 1: 24:56

Yeah, exactly, it's really hard to like compare COVID years to now these years and think that you're still going forward with the huge spike and then the obvious drop off and recalibration of website traffic and conversions as we've opened up again.

Speaker 2: 25:14

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 25:14

Okay, that probably leads me on to then how has 2024 been? Are you still seeing strong growth, or how would you sum up the year so far?

Speaker 2: 25:25

I think for us we're pretty steady, which I think is growth in the current market. We've introduced a new division to our business eight months ago and it actually came about from Retail Fest last year. So I actually spoke at Retail Fest about this experience. So I was listening to one of some of my favorite speakers, malchia, at last year's Retail Fest, and they were just talking quite openly about, you know, like, how do you accelerate, how do you grow the performance of your business in a tight environment? And you know, when they were presenting it was not as tight as it is now.

Speaker 2: 25:59

And I remember looking at the checklist going, yeah, I think I'm doing that, that, that. And it said, if you're not an omnichannel business, if you're a pure play e-com, you need to think twice about it. And I was like, hmm, interesting, okay, that's what I need to think about in our business. And soon after I was thinking maybe we could, could we have an offering of edible blooms that could sit with traditional retail? And at first I thought, oh, I don't think we can. But I was on a flight from Sydney to Adelaide soon after and I got my.

Speaker 2: 26:29

I tend to be a bit of a nerd on the plane. You'll see me on my laptop when I'm on the plane. I love like when they introduce Wi-Fi on planes I'm like, no, that's my time when I get to catch up or think about something new on the plane. So I often don't use the Wi-Fi on planes. But on this occasion I was doing a bit of thinking time about how we could work with traditional retail and I started running some numbers and trying to work out and I went actually I think I've got a really great opportunity here. So I came back to Adelaide and within a month I started reaching out to different brands. So I started I was like, if we can do like a mini edible bloom with I sort of designed the concept around European window boxes where beautiful like displays in retail because we can provide a shelf-stable floristry option in traditional retailers. So our chocolate bouquets have a shelf life of up to six months from production.

Speaker 2: 27:23

So I came up with a small $29 retail point, so that convenience, you know, like the small box you'll get at the hospital or at the convenience store, et cetera. And then I started thinking about which retailers I wanted to work with and I felt like a chemist would be a really good fit for us, because hospitals for edible blooms, nurses don't love fresh flowers, because they don't like to have to refill vases, find water, you know, like all those sorts of things, and so nurses are one of our biggest advocate groups at Edible Blooms. And so I felt chemists was a good because they're often near hospitals, they're like that care piece. And so I reached out, I sort of. I also looked at all the chemist brands and I decided at the beginning we wanted to have one best friend in each vertical, not be friends with everybody. We wanted to have one best friend in each vertical, not be friends with everybody.

Speaker 2: 28:08

So I chose Terry White. And, lo and behold, I got an introduction, a warm introduction, to someone there, and within two weeks they were sitting in my boardroom here in Adelaide because they had their national conference for Terry White in Adelaide in August of last year and they sat in here and they said, right, how soon can we roll this out to our 50 company stores? And I literally had a prototype that I was showing them. So then it created this whole new process. Anyway, we're now in 130 Terry White stores. We're actually in 400 retailers overall now. So we're in Nextra News Agency Group, we're in the OTR Viva Group and we're in lots of hospitals, gourmet grocers around Australia and we're about to roll out to Celebration Liquor Stores.

Speaker 1: 28:50

Good, on you.

Speaker 2: 28:51

So our goal is to be in 1,000 retailers by the end of 2024, so we're on track for that, and our New Zealand office is in 60 retail stores as well. So we're 400 in Australia, 60 in New Zealand within eight months, which I think is a pretty good turnaround.

Speaker 1: 29:07

That's incredible. Yeah, what a story.

Speaker 2: 29:09

Yeah, it's really cool actually, and so I guess it was really again going back to customers and product. It was creating a product that was at the right price point for that retail environment. Where are our customers going to be? And we chose to be like having one key partner in the few key verticals, and it's great because then they feel like they've got a really special product for their customers. We're not sort of in all the chemist brands, we're just at Terry White, so it's a really great fit.

Speaker 1: 29:35

Yeah, absolutely. And that whole process like you went to Retail Fest, so people shouldn't miss that. You got a great idea from Mal, who's a great speaker. You went on the plane and you executed upon one idea. I mean, how many ideas do entrepreneurs get and ignore or try to ignore or whatever? But to execute on that to such a degree is incredible.

Speaker 2: 29:59

Yes, pretty exciting, and I think that's the thing I think. In this environment you have to act quickly. Actually, I was saying we don't do anything guerrilla style but maybe that is guerrilla style. So there you go, we kind of do stuff without realising it. I didn't mention that we built a chocolate garden for our 10th birthday. So I built a walkthrough chocolate garden in a Westfield for our 10th birthday.

Speaker 1: 30:19

Oh, wow, and we raised money for the here, the hear and say center. So, yeah, we do like thinking outside the box, definitely yeah, and what's coming through in this podcast is how closely aligned you are to the community as well. So that comes back to product and customers. You could probably know what products work well because you're so connected to that community by the sounds of things and you can speak to the customers because you're involved organically in the community.

Speaker 2: 30:47

Yeah, I think it's important to be a brand that you was really clear on giving back, and actually there was a period where we've always done it but we didn't talk about it as much. So I think one of the things that we're trying to be better at is talking about what we are doing in the community, because I think people do want to know that about brands. They want to feel connected and they want to feel part of brands that are doing the right thing.

Speaker 1: 31:07

Yeah, 100%. And I've noticed your social media. You're starting to do some collabs with some pretty big influences, when I noticed the other day, but also oh, yeah, we are. Yeah, founder-led stories are working quite well. How do you go telling your story other than podcast? Is there any kind of founder stories that your team works on, or do you like to kind of be a little bit removed from that and let the brand sort of do all the work?

Speaker 2: 31:35

It's funny, I think in the early days I was very much part of the brand story as we started up. I don't know whether I'm too old now or what it is, but I probably pulled back from it Probably when I had kids. I just kind of felt like I wanted a bit of my own privacy for a little while there. But I'm so passionate about our product and our customers that I'm probably doing a little bit more of it. I do a bit of speaking every now and then, not all the time, but yeah, I really enjoy sharing our story because I think that we do create moments of joy quite regularly, which is good every day in fact.

Speaker 2: 32:08

So I'm pretty proud of what my team do every day and I've got such a great team around me. So, yeah, I guess I think there's probably more opportunity to do more of that founder-led storytelling than we do at the moment. But you'll see it a little bit. You'll see that we do a little bit of that.

Speaker 1: 32:23

How big is your team? How many staff have you got at the moment?

Speaker 2: 32:26

So we have about 50 staff at the moment, but most of them are production staff actually. So we're a really tight head office team and that's just. With business costs going up, you have to be really critical of every dollar you're spending. So we do run a pretty lean team and that's been really important to us as a business to have a team that we stick with and they stick with us yeah, I could imagine it would be uh kind of like a family, a real family in the offices there, at edible blooms, I'm sure I have such a great team and our first employee in australia, sarah.

Speaker 2: 32:59

She's our business partner in new zealand, so we've worked together like 18 years now and my sister obviously worked with from the beginning as well. So and I've got quite a few other long-serving team members who, yeah, we adore. They're very much part of our, our fabric here.

Speaker 1: 33:13

Yeah, brilliant. I mentioned social media before. I did notice the collab with it, soza the other day and and that was some amazing content. If anyone hasn't, uh, seen that, I suggest jumping on the social channels and checking out the posts. But yeah, that was quite touching and quite community engagement. You know community-led content as well. So, I got heaps of views. Was it 2 million views or something? I think yeah, it was something crazy.

Speaker 2: 33:40

We haven't had content reach that far before, but they approached us actually, so we didn't initiate that at all. They just felt our brand was a really great fit for what they do with their community, which was fantastic, and I think what they do really comes from a great place, so we were pretty pleased to be able to partner with them. So, yeah, we'd love to do more of that and just creating those moments and highlighting real everyday people, their story.

Speaker 1: 34:06

Yeah, it was really. It was really beautiful, a lot of tears in our office.

Speaker 2: 34:09

When they sent us the content they created.

Speaker 1: 34:10

We were like, wow, that's awesome yeah, I could imagine I won't give it away. But yeah, definitely check out edible blooms and the and the content there with it. So it was was really cool oh, thank you.

Speaker 2: 34:21

I'll pass it on to my marketing team because they they were the ones that got the call out and they were just really passionate about doing it, so they championed that concept, which was great.

Speaker 1: 34:29

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Two more questions for you. How have you utilized AI in your business at the moment? Obviously, it's the buzzword of 2024 and probably 2025. A lot of brands are trying to work out how to utilize AI. Have you integrated that into your business in any way?

Speaker 2: 34:47

We're always looking at new things actually, but it's interesting. I've been doing a lot of research time on AI and, yeah, like most other business owners, like what can we do to, you know, create more efficiencies and opportunities to engage so we're naturally doing it. Like it's surprising how much AI is already inbuilt to things that we're using anyhow. So there's a lot of pieces to do with, particularly around CX and content writing, that we're already using those things, although we've been very careful not to rely on it for our content writing as far as writing blogs for our site and all those things, because you know you're going to get penalized by Google if you really do cheat. You've got to be authentic and true to yourself all of the time. So we have been using it.

Speaker 2: 35:32

I'm probably sitting back a little bit because I think, naturally, we are using a lot of it anyhow and I am seeing some great instances of it. I'm also not jumping too far in like feet first, but it's watching it really carefully because I think we don't want to be untrue to our customers. We're very particular about authenticity and I don't want my customers to feel like they're talking to bots or there's not a real person there when there is, so I think. But I think there's huge opportunities to engage in a way that is useful and, yeah, gives you some advantage, but I can't see our business ever being totally automated by AI.

Speaker 1: 36:08

Yeah, I can imagine. Yeah, you're right, with all the tech stack that every e-commerce business has, or every business has now, there is AI already built into that, but I see a lot of LinkedIn posts not going to go off on a tangent, but I see a lot of LinkedIn posts that are just completely written by ChatGPT and it's a little bit offensive, to be honest. So, yeah, there is a time and a place for it, but it's interesting to hear you say that as well.

Speaker 2: 36:31

I'm really interested in it and I'm certainly we will embrace the parts that we think really add value. But I can't see it like completely transforming what we do.

Speaker 1: 36:41

Yeah, yeah. One last question how does Edible Blooms sort of stand out? You mentioned how competitive the market is. Do you think it's the you know, coming up to 20 years, that brand, that really credible, strong brand that helps you stand out in a super competitive market as that sort of gifting and hamper space?

Speaker 2: 37:01

It's really interesting. I'm going to actually with my customer calls I'm going to actually ask them that when I do them over the next week, because I think my perception might be different to our customers. But honestly, I think it's a trust piece. I think that's really important. I think it's a quality piece and quality of product, because we still have stayed true our entire nearly 20 years of using Belgian chocolate to dip our strawberries, because it's just the best, and if you're sending a gift, you want your gift to be the best possible quality.

Speaker 2: 37:34

But most of all, I think it's our speed. I think the fact that in any capital city, it's our team delivering that product and it's not being outsourced to a 3pl that people know it will get there on the day they want it there. So I think it's that speed and trust that it will arrive. Because it's a birthday, it's a thank you, it's a congratulations. It can't arrive a day late. So there's plenty of online gifting options that it will arrive sometime soon, but there's not many that it will arrive on the guaranteed day.

Speaker 1: 37:59

Yeah, brilliant, that's a great answer, and I would add congruency into that as well. I think there's really good congruency between your brand, your messaging, your social media and what they know they're going to get, and then, obviously, the transparency around where things are at. So all that over a long period of time, I think sets you up for where you are today, which is incredible. And even just the growth in the last eight months has been seismic, by the sounds of things. So congratulations on that, iic by the sounds of things. So congratulations on that. I know we're out of time, so, yeah, really looking forward to it. I really appreciate your time, firstly, and looking forward to watching edible blooms continue to grow and, yeah, excited to see what's next.

Speaker 2: 38:38

All right. Thank you so much for having me today, Ryan. I'm looking forward to listening to many more of your episodes.

Speaker 1: 38:44

Too kind, thank you. Thanks, ali.

Speaker 2: 38:45

All right, thanks, see you.