The Super Bowl of Flowers

Nick Smith and I are in full swing for Valentine's Day at In Bloom Flowers in DFW. I wanted to share a few behind the scenes pictures, Operations considerations, and Valentine's Day info that might be interesting to someone not in the industry. For scale/context, a normal 'good' day is 100 deliveries. On the 14th alone, excluding in store sales, there will be ~1,000 deliveries. The logistics involved in doing 10x a normal day are hard. Normally there are 5 drivers. For the 14th, we need 50. The article below walks through some of the Operations considerations/processes for this annual ramp up.

The beginning

Orders are placed with the wholesaler months in advance. This carries a tremendous risk because we don't know the Valentine's final demand until sometime late in the day on the 14th and flowers have a shelf life. Nick takes the inventory risk of ordering early because it provides the best pricing and allows him to offer the best value (most & highest quality flowers) for the price. This is Nick taking delivery of the stems. The stems are flown in from farms in Ecuador, Colombia and the Netherlands. They land in Miami and then are brought by truck to Dallas. For a data point - we ordered 21,000 roses.

Next

1,850 arrangements are built in advance by a fantastic team of designers in our corporate headquarters/design & production center. When an order is a placed, the order information and the note for the card prints out. Company personnel pick the right arrangement, attach the order forms to it, and package the arrangement after adding add-on products like candles, bath bombs, chocolates, stuffed animals, bows, etc. The orders then need to be sorted for delivery. Some orders need to be delivered by a time (3 PM for schools & hospitals and 5 PM for businesses). The tall arrangements can only fit in certain vehicles. Then it's an issue of route density vs. only having so much space for orders to accumulate on the table before matching them into a 'trip'. Once a group of 10-15 arrangements is scanned into a 'trip', they are wrapped and brought out to refrigerated trailers we rent for the holiday.

Loading Up

Our flowers awake to me and Nick's smiling faces at 5:15 AM as we roll them out and start deciding which 'trips' (10-15 arrangements grouped by geography, size and delivery deadline) will go in which vans. There is another consideration of which trips will be done by temp/contract drivers and which will be done with In Bloom employees. Drivers are paid a mix of a daily rate and a piece rate. Trips that are close, higher density and have more orders are more lucrative. However, we have a broad service area and we simply cannot wait until 5AM on the 14th (which would be optimal to get the absolute best trips) to plan our trips because we'd run out of space and it takes time, so some trips are less lucrative/attractive. With temp/contract drivers, there is a risk they won't come back after their first trip.

As an Operations person at my core, I appreciate flexibility and simplicity. The floors of the vans are a grid and we use cut up pieces of 1/2" PVC pipe as pegs. This makes the vans infinitely configurable, it's cost effective and it's reusable. The flowers are pegged in place to keep them safe during delivery.

Sustainable Innovation

Nick and his dad (a former design engineer at Texas Instruments) designed durable and reusable delivery containers. His dad built 715 of these in his garage. #ittakesavillage Before this, the flowers were transported in recycled cardboard boxes (the boxes the stems shipped in) which worked but they can get soggy, don't support the flowers as well in transport, and risked falling apart while carrying them. In Bloom will be able to use this innovation for the next 20 years. It's the essence of lean - creativity over capital. The bins get stored on hooks on the ceiling when not in use.

The North Star

The flowers get sent off for delivery to their recipients. While we are operating in the thousands (>3,000 arrangements, 21,000 roses, 3,000 tulips, 2,000 deliveries, etc.) for the orderer and recipient, this is the only arrangement that matters. It's small consolation to the customer who spent $100 to do something thoughtful for their person that the other arrangements came out perfect while theirs has an issue. From the initial arrangement design ideation 6 months ago, to inspecting the flowers on receipt, to how the person is greeted and treated on the phone, to quality check at the production center, to the way they are hand delivered to the recipient, it all matters. Nick and In Bloom have an amazing mantra which is "Every Arrangement Like It's The Only Arrangement." None of these were staged photos but rather candid snapshots taken 2/12 and 2/13 to give a behind the scenes look.

Closing

The logistics of designing, marketing, ordering, producing, selling, and delivering an item with a long lead time, subjective quality standards, that is fragile and that is perishable is an enticing challenge for us. Our belief is that people send flowers to show they care. On the personal side, Nick and I met serving together as Submarine Warfare Officers 15 years ago. I like to say Nick walked down the gang plank and into my life. Being in business with Nick is a dream come true. We couldn't be more excited to be a way our customers show they care and to get better each year for the next 30+ years.