Business blooms for Flying Flowers

In a world where the uptake of technology can lead to a rise in efficiency and market reach for a business, O'Connor-based florist Flying Flowers believes it's the personal touch and a specialised customer tracking system, not the internet, that has led to the company's strong recent growth.

Katie Pascoe, who started the company locally in 1989, established a relationship with a former employer in the UK, with her company sourcing clients in Australia who wanted to send flowers to family and friends overseas.

The orders and customer base quickly grew, and after two years Ms Pascoe used her overseas connections to allow UK customers to send flowers to Australian recipients.

"After two years we had around 3,000 customers and then I had to sort out couriers, growers, packaging and the logistics of actually getting the flowers delivered for the whole of Australia," Ms Pascoe said.

While she established Flying Flowers in Australia, the company was 55 per cent owned by the director of Flying Flowers in the UK. Ms Pascoe's hard work soon paid dividends, however

"For the first two years we had a written agreement that I owned 45 per cent and the director in England owned 55 per cent (of the business) and then after two years he said, 'You know what Kate, you're doing such a great job, here you go'," she said.

With the company growing to have a database of 50,000 customers, Ms Pascoe said while an online presence had made life easier, particularly with regard to communications with overseas counterparts, the internet accounted for just 11 per cent of the business' new customers each year.

Ms Pascoe's husband and the business' co-owner, Roger Tarrant, who joined the operation in 1995, believes that while the internet has a great reach, its loyalty is not as strong as other customer acquisition methods.

"The internet really has just given the customer another vehicle and a way of communicating with us," Mr Tarrant told WA Business News.

"We do acquire new customers [through the internet] but generally it's through other acquisition means."

The pair said while web orders were predominantly high end, they were usually only single purchases.

Though the internet has not led to a major increase in sales, Ms Pascoe and Mr Tarrant attribute Flying Flowers' growth to the ability to track its clients' history, wants and needs through a specially developed computer program, costing around $70,000.

"We analyse the database because that's our lifeline," Mr Tarrant said.

Ms Pascoe said the database figures showed that the best means of attracting new clients was though personal contact with existing clients and delivery recipients, leading to positive word of mouth to others.

"Recipients and referrals, in a 12-month period, (accounted for) 43 per cent of our customer acquisition," she said.

Mr Tarrant said the database system also allowed them to work out a cost per customer of new acquisitions.

"Its cost effective acquisition because when you go out to pay for a print ad, acquisition costs over $25 a customer, where we can get them for $2 or $3 a customer," he said.

"When we do that follow up we get very good customers coming to us."