A London-based online marketplace and SaaS for independent florists known as Floom has reportedly raised an amount of $2.5 million in a seed funding round. The round was round led by Firstminute Capital.
The funds raised by the company will be used by the startup to continue to expand to the U.S., where it already operates in New York and L.A., and also to further develop its software offering.
Apart from this, the other investors that participated in the round were Tom Singh (founder of New Look), Pembroke VCT, Wing Chan (CTO digital experiences of The Hut Group), and Carlos Morgado (former CTO of Just Eat). Morgado has also joined Floom’s board.
Floom claims to be a curated marketplace for independent florists. Alongside this, the company’s technology platform gives florists the software and tools they need to create and deliver “beautifully crafted bouquets” to customers.
“We rely on a network [of florists], like many of the bigger competitors, so that we can offer same-day delivery without the risk of holding stock ourselves,” co-founder Lana Elie said. “But instead of telling the florists what to create and what to hold in stock, we built them an Etsy-like UI to design and deliver beautifully crafted bouquets to our online communities themselves”.
On the flower delivery front, Floom’s main competitors are Interflora in the U.K. as well as 1-800-flowers and Teleflora.
Elie stated that there is other florist software in existence, but says it doesn’t really consider the florists as a customer in the same way that Floom does. This is especially true in how the startup understands that the “brand and UI is just as important as functionality”.