Bloom & Wild to become Europe’s most loved flower gifting brand with £75m investment
We are excited to announce an investment of £75m into Bloom & Wild, led by some of the world’s top investors in consumer brands, including US investor General Catalyst (Airbnb, Warby Parker and Deliveroo) and Index Ventures, who has backed the likes of Glossier, Net-A-Porter and Farfetch.
The funding will help Bloom & Wild become the number one online flower gifting brand in Europe and puts it on track for unicorn status in the coming years, disrupting Europe’s £14bn fresh cut flower market.
It’s a far cry from Aron Gelbard walking around London with a notebook and ruler, measuring thousands of letterboxes and typing them up into a spreadsheet. He used this to calculate how small a box would need to be to get through about 90% of letterboxes.
He and Ben Stanway went on to pioneer the award-winning concept of ‘letterbox flowers’, launching Bloom & Wild just seven years ago. Since then, the brand has shipped more than 8m flowers across the UK, France and Germany.
With our £11m investment just two years ago, the founders have invested heavily in technology to transform both the customer experience and the traditional supply chain. From a customer perspective, this means they not only have the best-in-class digital experience (their app is amazing), but also the best customer service and logistics. Bloom & Wild’s flowers come directly from the producers themselves, giving customers beautiful, high quality fresh flowers. The flowers are delivered in bud, so they bloom over time and last longer than other bouquets. Receivers love the surprise and delight, becoming gifters quickly in turn.
We have always taken pride in Bloom & Wild’s approach to growth, chiming closely with our own. They strongly believe in ensuring that the customer experience is as good as the product. This means ensuring technology is never a bottleneck by creating seamless and memorable digital experiences on the back of a distinctive tone of voice and visual handwriting that is an emotive shortcut to the brand’s mission.
Aron and his team have always put themselves in customers’ shoes (everyone has time manning the phones) and understand their individual needs, motivations and behaviours throughout their journey, from discovering the brand to unboxing the flowers. They are obsessive about delivering innovative products and experiences, all through the lens of what customers actually want, which involves speaking and listening to them regularly.
This has resulted in a world class NPS of 85, high word-of-mouth acquisition, repeat purchase rates and lifetime values, as well as an engaged online community of avid fans who are thankful for what they have built and who subscribe to their mission. In 2019, they offered their customers the chance to opt-out of emails about sensitive occasions (like Mother’s Day), on the back of which they invented the Thoughtful Marketing Movement that is now a community of over 130 businesses.
As a true brand legend, Bloom & Wild knows why it exists and why it does what it does – helping people ‘care wildly’ came out of a big piece of brand strategy work over the last year. This is about ‘celebrating the little things we all do for each other every day. Not just on the big occasions. It’s being there for the highs. Stepping up for the lows. Getting someone out of a rut with one simple message. Remembering those precious memories. Finding the courage to say sorry. Or silly ways to make them smile. After all, unexpected flowers really are the best kind.’
This purpose not only makes their customers’ lives better, but also has a positive impact on the world around them, future-proofing the brand as it scales. We are especially proud of its responsible supply chain. The letterbox packaging is 100% recyclable, they offset their carbon emissions, send zero waste to landfill from their warehouses and much more. All this has helped the brand to attract the highest calibre of talent that live and breathe its values.
All of this plus the new investment means that Aron’s vision for Bloom & Wild to become the world’s most loved flower gifting brand is now a step closer. We are excited about working with him on the next leg of his journey. He certainly deserves a congratulatory bouquet.
