Any retailer will tell you delivery is complicated, whether what's being delivered is office paper or sandwich bread. But outside of all the logistical challenges already inherent in the delivery moment, imagine this: the product you are delivering is incredibly fragile, highly sensitive to temperature changes and absolutely must be delivered in the promised time frame. That's exactly what 1-800-Flowers.com and the network of local florists do thousands of times every day across the country.
"Florists have been doing same-day, door-to-door delivery for as long as flower shops have been around," said Abhay Patel, Brand President at 1-800-Flowers.com in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. But now the new raft of delivery service platforms that have sprung up in the past few years are now helping florists do it faster and more efficiently. 1-800-Flowers.com works with many of them to help the florists in its BloomNet network take their service to the next level.
"When someone gives us the privilege of placing a gifting order, making sure that it gets there in a timely manner that meets their expectations is a really important part of the overall experience," said Patel. "From my vantage point, same-day and next-day is only becoming a bigger part of customers' expectations. Ultimately we want to ensure that the customer feels like they can get floral anytime they want, so finding the right partners is crucial for us."
One of those partners is Walmart's white-label delivery solution, Walmart GoLocal. Through their work together, the partners have been able to expand local florists' delivery reach while in many cases decreasing delivery costs, through order batching and other types of optimization. In fact, during the recent Mother's Day rush (which beats out even Valentine's Day as the company's biggest sales moment of the year for flowers), despite order volume increasing 4X, Walmart GoLocal deliveries had a 99% on-time delivery rate.
Read more at retailtouchpoints.com