London-based Bloom & Wild is one of the largest and fastest-growing European online flower delivery and gifting platforms. Recently, the company announced that it raised fresh funding and reported massive growth in revenue during the pandemic crisis, making it the company’s first profitable year.
Intends to expand in Europe
In a recent development, Bloom & Wild secured £75M Series D funding in an investment round led by General Catalyst along with participation from Index Ventures, Novator, Latitude Ventures, D4 Ventures (established by Hanzade Dogan), and existing investors including Burda Principal Investments.
Founded in 2013 by Aron Gelbard and Ben Stanway, Bloom & Wild aims to become the pan-European market leader in flower and gift delivery. The company continued its expansion into more European markets and added bricks and mortar retail for the UK. By entering into a retail partnership with Sainsbury’s, Bloom & Wild sees an exclusive range of premium bouquets available in selected superstores nationwide.
Besides expansion, the flower and gift delivery business is focused on broadening and enhancing its range of products and services to better serve customers’ needs and build shopping missions outside the traditional flower industry peaks.
The latest investment is the fourth round of institutional funding for Bloom & Wild following rounds led by MMC Ventures, Burda Principal Investments and Piper, its existing shareholders.
Aron Gelbard, Co-Founder & CEO, Bloom & Wild said: “With this new backing from General Catalyst and Index we start 2021 with renewed energy to pursue our vision of becoming the world’s leading and most loved flower company. “
“Bloom & Wild has infused the traditional flower-giving experience with predictive analytics and technology to deliver a fresher, less-travelled bouquet to the people you care most about,” said Adam Valkin, Managing Director, General Catalyst.
Martin Mignot, Partner at Index Ventures said “Bloom & Wild team have reinvented every aspect of flower delivery and gifting, challenging the status quo at every stage. Through relentless execution, Aron and his team have created a delightful experience for customers, becoming the fastest growing flower business in Europe. We’re thrilled to partner with them as they scale internationally.”
Impressive growth in revenue
In addition to the Series D funding round, Bloom & Wild, the pioneers of letterbox flower delivery witnessed 160% year-on-year growth in revenue in 2020. The company claims to have fulfilled over 4 million deliveries in 2020 across five countries in Europe. Its large markets include France and Germany. Notably, this is more number of orders than it had made in all previous years combined.
This growth has been driven by a team of almost 150 people, which includes over 50 who joined in 2020. These new employees were hired remotely as the head office team worked from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. Bloom & Wild welcomed Marta Jasinska as its new CTO in October 2020 to oversee the company’s plans to scale up in the next 2 years.
Committed to sustainability
The London-based online flower delivery service has adopted innovations that have helped it deliver sustainable solutions. The company works towards achieving 100% recyclable packaging, reducing single-use plastic and polyester by over 60,000 kg this year. Bloom & Wild announced it is now offsetting emissions to be carbon neutral, and committed to reducing emissions further and maintaining zero waste to landfill.
Reimagines flower delivery
Bloom & Wild reimagines the flower delivery business as this category is growing on a global basis. As customer satisfaction in this industry is low despite high prices, unreliable quality and limited differentiation, this company wants to redefine the same with innovation in supply chain and investment in technology, data science and new product development.
The company has changed the experience of sending flowers by offering consistently high quality, reasonable pricing and a seamless digital purchase experience, making sending and receiving flowers the joy that it should be.
In 2020, Bloom & Wild launched a new creative platform called Care Wildly. Along with its Thoughtful Marketing Movement to promote industry change, Bloom & Wild saw an increase in its charity donations throughout the year besides special occasions. It donated 15% of profits from the ‘Our Florist’s Pick’ bouquets to the National Emergencies Trust Coronavirus Appeal and offered over £2M discounts to frontline workers. With a new annual partnership with Carers Trust, the company aims to raise awareness to support millions of unpaid carers in the UK.
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