Flower start-ups nipping at the heels of the big bunch

Frightening and exciting: Helen Pow is expanding The Little Posy Co.

They may be small, but these blooming businesses are nipping at the heels of the big players in the floristry market. Offering cheaper delivery and followed by thousands on Instagram, these start-ups are aiming to win the war of the roses.

Attempting to send flowers to friends from London was the impetus for Katrina Hatfield to launch her business, the little market bunch, two years ago. Ordering flowers online was a frustrating and expensive experience, she recalls.

All the growth has been organic – we haven't spent a cent on marketing 

"You'd go through all these websites getting more and more frustrated and then find something in your budget and it's taken so much longer than you intended and suddenly you'd been charged all these delivery and tax fees," Hatfield says. "So you get to the end and think, 'OK that's way over what I wanted'.

Born of frustration: Katrina Hatfield of the little market bunch.

"And then you get a picture from your friend and it's not even what you ordered!"

When Hatfield returned from her post in London working in an investment firm, feeling "over making rich people richer", she turned to flowers. She spent six months researching the market and used $8000 to get the business up and running from her shed in Windsor, in Melbourne's inner southeast.

The little market bunch, which sells flower bouquets for $30, has forecasted turnover for this financial year to be $330,000.

"We have doubled our turnover in two years, which has been quite crazy without taking on external investment," Hatfield says.

"All the growth has been organic – we haven't spent a cent on marketing. All the growth has been through word of mouth and customer loyalty.

"We're sitting at this point now, going right, we need to sort of make some moves in terms of expanding."

Hatfield says online flower delivery businesses like hers are giving bigger players such as Interflora a good run for their money.

"They just have the old school mentality – I'm almost a little bit scared for them because if they don't start reshaping themselves for the future, it's pretty clear there's a lot of similar businesses to my own that have popped up in all the cities around Australia," she says.

"I think they'll realise they need to revamp because they'll have to start seeing a drop in orders. Everyone in my generation I feel like knows about our types of businesses and that is where you go for the more affordable and easier option."

Popularity has prompted Perth's Helen Pow to expand her online florist, The Little Posy Co, into Brisbane and Sydney. The business offers flower subscriptions as well as bouquets for $33, which are delivered to more than 100 suburbs.

Pow, a former journalist, says the expansion will be both frightening and exciting.

"I don't have any investment," she says.

"I am going to attempt to pay for it from the Perth operation, but we'll see how we go closer to the time.

"There is competition in Brisbane, but it's a different style, I feel quite confident that we'll find our own market there and in Sydney as well. In Sydney, the population is so huge I think we'll have no trouble getting up to the numbers we're doing in Perth."

Australia's flower retailing industry, which includes florists, supermarkets and greengrocers, is worth $716.6 million, according to research firm IBISWorld.

Flowers are seen as a luxury and the industry has been flagging over the past years as the world recovers from the global financial crisis. IBISWorld predicts the industry will continue to struggle in the next five years, with revenue forecast to fall by an annualised 0.6 per cent to reach $694.7 million in 2020-21.

But like her start-up counterparts, Posy Supply Co's Louise Reeves can see a bright future in online flower sales. At $28 a bunch, her delivered flowers are among the cheapest of the new online breed.

Yet the Sydneysider is well aware of staying ahead of the competition. To beat the big players, she's working on her search engine optimisation. And to stay ahead of the new generation, she's keeping a close eye on her social media.

"You Google 'flower delivery Sydney' and those big players – Interflora and Roses Only – are the first ones to come up," Reeves says.

"If I could get to first page on Google, that would be epic, that would be a big game-changer I think.

"And you've got to really stay on the pulse with what colours and flowers are big; there's always the flower that's having a moment. At the moment it's the hyacinth, it was the protea last year, and the peonies are always big in the spring.

"And always keep your Instagram presence amazing and your social media on point, keeping it all really tight."