charter Intro

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C

charter

New Member
Nov 9, 2008
5
5
0
Mountain View
State / Prov
CA
What is your website address?
http://www.bloomist.com

How long have you been in business?
Almost 1 year

Do you have any formal floral education?
No, however I've done extensive research on the industry.

How were you referred to FlowerChat?
I found FlowerChat through an article about Avante Gardens, which had a quote from Ryan Freeman. After some quick google searching, I found FlowerChat.

What do you hope to gain from membership?
I would like to learn how I can work with local florists to improve their visibility and compete against the wire services. I feel that quality florists can deliver a better product at superior prices and am saddened by the challenges they face generating leads. My goal is to work with florists as a group to change this trend.

What do you feel
 
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Hi and welcome. What was the impetus to get you into the floral industry?

V
 
Hello, I see you are a directory.
Who fills your orders in Los Angeles for $20.00 and $34.00?
http://www.bloomist.com/Los_Angeles_CA
I see "Fancifull Florist" in Los Angeles and the "Empty Vase" in West Hollywood.

Are you attempting to add "Real Florists" to your directory?
 
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Hmmmm... interesting....

Whois Record

Registrant:
Stanford University
51 Dudle Ln. #130
Stanford, CA 94305
US

Domain name: BLOOMIST.COM

Administrative Contact:
Abeliuk, Eduardo
51 Dudle Ln. #130
Stanford, CA 94305
US
+1.6507046531 Fax: +1.3105642007

Technical Contact:
Administrator, DNS
8520 National Blvd.
Suite A
Culver City, CA 90232
US
+1.8775784000 Fax: +1.3105642007

Registration Service Provider:
(mt) Media Temple,
877-578-4000
818-301-2774 (fax)
http://www.mediatemple.net/go/support/
To make contact, or to request technical support please first visit the
(mt) AccountCenter: http://www.mediatemple.net/go/support/

Registrar of Record: TUCOWS, INC.
Record last updated on 03-Aug-2008.
Record expires on 03-Aug-2009.
Record created on 03-Aug-2008.

Registrar Domain Name Help Center:
http://domainhelp.tucows.com

Domain servers in listed order:
NS2.MEDIATEMPLE.NET
NS1.MEDIATEMPLE.NET

And their TERMS AND CONDITIONS
________________________________
Bloomist.... I'm curious as to why Stanford University is involved in dealing with flowers, florists and the low price points on your site...

What do you hope to gain with this directory?
 
without any former experience, or training in the floral industry, how can you even contemplate "helping" florists in their fight/competition with "wire services"??...YOU cannot even begin to understand, at this point......
Bring the pudding to the table....you've got 'splainin to do.....
 
Now this is the Mike I know and love. :)

V
 
Thanks for all the questions!
To address Victoria’s question regarding why Bloomist.com exists – it actually came out of personal frustrations trying to buy flowers online. I wanted to purchase mother’s day flowers for my mom. So, I went to Google and did a search to see what came up. The results were really discouraging. Most of the results that came up were for sites like Proflowers, 1800flowers or FTD and those arrangements didn’t really speak to my interests. I wanted something more personal, more local. As I continued through the search results on google, I found that many of the sites didn’t have images of arrangements, were too expensive or didn’t offer the quality/price range I was looking for. All in all, the entire search process ended up taking over an hour and I felt there had to be a better way to find the type of flowers from a local florists that I was looking for.
To Rhonda – Bloomist does not fill orders. We help consumers find flower arrangements from local florists. When a consumer clicks the “buy now” button or on a link to a florist website, we redirect them to the florist where they complete the transaction.
Finally, to answer Mikey the Flower Guy’s question – I really appreciate you raising this point. It’s very hard for someone outside of the industry to understand what is going on for local florists. I hope, however, to hear your feedback so that we can build something that you and other florists will find valuable and useful. I’ve spoken to a number of florists to get their perspective on what is going on in the industry, and that has been really eye opening and helpful in shaping product direction. And, from a consumer perspective, the situation frustrates me as I value the uniqueness and creativity that a quality local florist can deliver.
 
Hey BOSS - I'm a big fan of Floristdetective.com :) It provided tons of insight when I was doing my initial background research.

Pertaining to Stanford University - I missed the question there at the end. Our engineering lead at Bloomist.com lives in Stanford, CA in university owned housing. There is no affiliation with the university in terms of Bloomist.com. We both are, however, graduate students here that worked in the technology industry before starting our programs.
 
Thank you for answering the questions.
Floristdetective should have made your initial problem somewhat clearer as to finding a Real Florist.
But as I state that, I must also state that this forum is for professional florists and as this forum has evolved, "listmakers" have come and gone causing friction and commotion in their wake.
I wish you the best in finding Real Florists who work everyday in their places of business serving their customers with the best of their efforts.
 
Totally understand. However, I'd love to get any feedback that anyone might have regarding Bloomist.com. You can post it through the site (http://www.bloomist.com/feedback) if this forum is not the best option given Rhonda's thoughts.

I'd be very excited to hear your thoughts pertaining to whether you think you'd want your arrangements listed on the site (why? why not?), what features/functionality would be important to you, etc. Any and all feedback would be greatly apprecaited!
 
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Charter -

You have a very interesting site. I looked around the LA neighborhoods and you're displaying the work of some very fine local florists. I really like how you've segmented the shops by service area instead of dumping them all into one LA 'pot'.

With Rossi & Rovetti and Podestal Baldocchi in San Francisco and Orchid Florist in Berkeley, you have the designs of some winning, quality shops to show to consumers.

Each florist's product links to the page on their own web site so there's a connection to the real brick & mortar store.

Don't be surprised if you're met with some scepticism from florists. The last 15 years, we've had a series of companies pledging to 'help local florists' and then really helping siphon orders, chunks of dollars & profits while leaving us worse off.

I have a few suggestions for refinement and would really like to hear more about your project. I'm also curious how you get paid for all this effort.

Based on what I see from your site, I hope you're approved for membership here. :)

Cathy
 
I think I am with Cathy on this one. The approach to this seems different than direct2florist (which we have on our forum) and the site seems like it could benefit from some constructive feedback. But all in all it does come across as a central point for a delivery area and with direct links back to the shop... Someone who does this makes me think they are supporting the brick/mortar shops and not the run of the mill OG.

So... I will throw my approval in the mix.
 
Oh, and for quick clarification, I don't think badly at all of Direct2Florist! This just seems like a different approach.
 
Cathy - Thanks for your thoughts here! I do have questions about how Bloomist will be received by florists, which is one of the primary reasons I’m excited to get feedback. The goal is to incorporate florist feedback into our decision making process so that we can build a site that is useful to florists and consumers, but that will also be economically viable in the long-run. Pertaining to how revenues are generated, it’s honestly not our top priority right now. However, we have been asking florists for input around what would be okay and not okay. Would love to get your input on this! Some florists suggested a pay-per-click model, others have suggested the ability to do onsite advertising.
 
Well Charter, since you asked...

You already know about the "Not-to-do's" from Floristdetective.

A lot depends on whether or not you decide to get between the florist and the consumer. If you do decide, for revenue purposes to intervene in the process you will not get much support from florists.

IMO, PPC is not a viable option either for a site just starting out, without a track record. There are some very good directories out there that are as little as $49.95 a year, not matter the volume.

To gain florists (talking for myself here) support, your directory will have to be current, with true local information that is *scrubbed* for outdated information, fake locations, and re-directs to non-florist businesses. There are a lot of directories, and a trained eye can recognize that many of them have simply "scraped" the internet and listed the same bogus data, as their listings are all pretty much the same, right down to out of business (4-5 years or more) locations, bogus listings and wrong numbers.

Best wishes...
 
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