Flyline Search Marketing ®
Marketing For Flowers To Go & Williams Flowers
In roughly November of 2016, Will Gross hired our firm. Will heard about us through his accounting firm. He used a company called Crockett and Myers to handle his bookkeeping and accounting services. Crockett and Myers specializes in accounting services for flower shops. They serve hundreds of florists, all across the United States. In addition with Williams Flowers, they also handled the accounting duties for a number of other florists we serve. Flyline is not connected to Crockett & Myers in any way. When we heard they had recommended our firm to Will, we were truly humbled. That recommendation by Derrick Myers turned out to be a tremendous blessing to both the Gross and Lein families.
We were extremely excited to begin working with Will and his family. They are wonderful. Will and Marie are awesome and have four beautiful children. We spent some great time together over the past four years. Will’s main goal in bringing us in was to help in grow his online sales and revenues. His in-store sales from the seven design centers were reasonably good, but his overall growth had basically stalled. Expense was on the rise and profitability had become a concern.
As mentioned earlier, Will was operating 7 flower shops when we met him. He had grown to 7 locations by methodically buying up other flower shops in the Puget Sound area. At the time we began our work, Will had flower shops in Bremerton, Tacoma, Gig Harbor, Silverdale, Shelton, Poulsbo and Port Orchard. If you have never been to the Puget Sound area of Washington, I highly recommend you visit. The area is absolutely breathtaking.
When we began our work, Will was operating these 7 unique flower shops under 5 different brand names. His primary brand at the time we started with him was “Flowers To Go, Inc.” The other brands that Will had purchased over the past few years included; “Ambrosia Florist”, “Lynch Creek Floral”, “Farley’s Flowers” and “Lakewood Florist.” The online results for these brands were all over the board. Some were producing a few sales, others had virtually non-existent online sales. None of these brands were producing anything that even remotely be considered as strong online results.
Farley’s Flowers was a very old family owned brand. They had been operating in the Tacoma area for many years. The Farley’s Flower location was 1620 Sixth Avenue, Tacoma, Washington 98405. Lynch Creek Floral was flower shop Will purchased in the Shelton, Washington area. Ambrosia Florist was another Tacoma area flower shop Will purchased a few years after taking over Flowers To Go, from his father. The Lakewood Flower Shop is another example of Will’s purchases. At the time we began working with Will, he was operating a total of 7 flower shops, and at least five brands with separate websites.
Flowers To Go, Inc. was started more than 30 years ago by Will’s father. His dad originally opened as a roadside flower stand. Under his father’s guidance, The Flowers To Go company experienced rapid growth. Unfortunately, Will’s dad did not trademark the brand “Flowers To Go.” Not too long ago, one of the nations largest national brands swooped in and scooped up the URL www.flowerstogo.com. That was a major blow to the Gross family. They had been using the URL www.flowerstogoonline.com. Since they did not own a trademark, they had little if any leverage to prevent the national firm from using the URL. This issue was one of the first things that Will brought up to me during our initial discussions. I think he realized the mistake, but also realized that there was no way to go back in time and remedy the problem. In that discussion, Will also mentioned that he had always wanted to create his own brand.
One of the first things we recommended to Will was a new website. He had been running at least 5 separate websites and getting no meaningful traction from any of them. Our second recommendation was to create one new, relevant brand. To do that, we had to roll together all of the miscellaneous brands he had purchase into the new brand name. Will settled on the new brand name of Williams Flower & Gift. By any measure, consolidating 5 brands into one is a huge undertaking. There are many risks and potential land mines that we were going to have to navigate our way around. Over the past 4 years, we have taken that dream and turned it into a reality.
It literally took all of our ability, energy and talent to make this work. We successfully build and deployed the new website for Will. That site was deployed in approximately November of 2016. The URL, www.williamsflowers.com, was selected to serve as the primary URL going forward. All five brands were successfully blended into the new company. Over a short 4 year period, we have taken Williams Flower & Gift, a brand that didn’t even exist, and turned into the most recognizable floral brand in the Puget Sound. As we pulled down each of the old websites, we took the time to build an elaborate 301 redirect platform. Taking time to point each and every page of the old sites to the appropriate new website pages.
We weren’t to only ones who had lots to do. Will also had a plate full of to do’s. He had the laborious task of changing out signage and messaging in each of the 7 flower shops. While he worked on signage, forms and customer messaging, our team began the brand building process. We used our comprehensive marketing program to lead that charge. The Flyline comprehensive program is an amazing tool. We used it to build a reliable and sustainable lead stream. Then we used social media to boost brand awareness and to build brand preference. Then our content team methodically began indexing new, original and relevant content with the search engines. We created a series of micro-sites for Will. Each designed to help with the information indexing process. These micro-sites included a blog, wedding & event site and a specialized sympathy website. During our 4 years with Will, the Flyline team worked tirelessly to help the Gross family achieve their goals. Trust me when I say, our team went way above and beyond the scope of our contract. Often providing very complex services, such as the development of the micro-sites, for little if any additional compensation. Fair to say that Flyline did everything in our power to help Will achieve his dream and to be a great strategic partner.
In our first full year of working with Will (Nov 2016 – Nov 2017), we generated $225,576.52 in online revenue for him. This was a huge improvement over anything Will’s five brands and websites had ever produced before. Year one was just our warm up. In year two (Nov 2017 – Nov 2018), we grew Will’s online revenue to $329,751.76. Keep in mind, we generated year one and two results after deploying an entirely new brand. One that one body in the Puget Sound area had ever even heard of before. Year three produced even more stunning numbers. We generated $418,387.77 in online revenue in year three. Hard to believe that in just three short years, we merged 5 brands into one, build and deployed a brand new main website, designed and deployed 3 new micro-sites, created a sustainable lead stream and built and information indexing machine. Within just 4 years, Williams Flower and Gift had become the most recognizable floral brand in the Puget Sound.
Unfortunately, our working relationship with Will came to an end in late April of 2020. At the time we walked away, we still had more than 13 months remaining on our service agreement with him. Will asked out of his contract. Given our love for he and his family, we quickly agreed to do just that. This November would have marked the end our our fourth full year with Will. From January to April of 2020, we had already generated some pretty eye popping numbers. Online revenue for 2020 was already up by 58.37%, over the previous year. In other words, we walked away from the Williams Flowers contract at a time when we were on track to generate more than $600,000 in online revenue. Nice to know though that we helped Will and his family to achieve their dream. I often wish things could have ended differently with Will Gross. Getting to know Will, Marie and their beautiful children (Isabella, Liam, Juliette and Charlie) will be something we always treasure. The Lein family members who worked so hard on the Williams Flowers account are also some pretty incredible folks. They deserve a ton of credit for the fine work that Flyline did for the Gross family. By any account, we successfully helped the Gross family achieve their dream in the Puget Sound.