Launched just this year, Floraly was established in a bid to reduce the amount of wastage in the florsitry industry. “We had kind of done a lot of looking into the flower industry and realised how wasteful it is,” co-founder Alec Ramsey told My Business. “The stats that I’ve been reading from overseas … are that about one-third of flowers that are destined for florists end up going to waste.” He said the start-up’s business model is based on similar ones operating overseas, whereby orders are received online as the first step before any stock is purchased, enabling a more direct channel between growers and customers. Packaging is done in the company’s Sydney warehouse, by its team of four permanent employees, bolstered by casuals for seasonal requirements. “For us, it’s not possible to actually order flowers for same-day delivery, and that’s a choice we made when deciding between wastage and freshness, and convenience,” said Mr Ramsey. Living Christmas tree gift boxes The start-up has since opted to employ the same model to living Christmas trees, as part of a push to expand beyond the customer market into corporate gifting. Trees are packaged as a complete gift set, including a 60cm tree with its full rootball and soil, lights and decorations as well as a gift card. All of the trees are sourced from a grower in Victoria. SPONSORED CONTENT “They all come from a little farm called Coolwyn, so all locally grown and they ship them up to us here,” Mr Ramsey said. He confessed that the idea is not entirely new, and is based on a similar offering discovered in the UK. But he felt that it could also work in Australia, and could be used as a means of it expanding into the corporate gifting space. “At the moment, it’s about 90 per cent [of our business] is direct to consumer. The business relationships is something we’re just starting to roll out now,” the founder said. “What we really want to do on the corporate business side of things is not just get into the kind of […]