On the heels of a record Valentine’s Day season for Provide Commerce Inc.’s flower business, Proflowers.com, when orders rose to more than 400,000 from 304,000 a year ago, the San Diego-based company is preparing for what it anticipates will be its biggest revenue-producing peak of the year, the week leading up to Mother’s Day.
Key to rising sales volume at Provide Commerce, which also operates web storefronts UptownPrime.com for premium meats and CherryMoonFarms.com for fresh fruits, is the freshness of its delivered perishable flower and food products. The company uses a direct-from-the-grower model that depends on an Internet-supported supply chain that starts in the fields of flower growers. The web-based operation also helps reduce costs to end customers by cutting out the middleman. The company says it’s been able to cut the delivered cost of flowers by as much as 30% below competitors, for example.
Provide Commerce has direct relationships with 30 major flower growers, of which about 50% are domestic. The company imports the rest primaily from growers in South America through its Miami facility. Growers who produce flowers under contract for Proflowers plant in varieties and volume to support the company’s forecasted demand.
The growers ship orders forwarded from Proflowers directly to the end consumer and don’t harvest and pack the flowers until orders, including a selected delivery date, are received. As a result, Proflowers says its customers receive flowers that are two to three days out of the ground versus what may be seven or more days for flowers that travel from grower to recipient via traditional supply chain distribution and retail outlets. Provide Commerce operates on a similar direct model with meat producers who supply Uptown Prime and fruit growers who supply Cherry Moon Farms.
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