Love is in the air: How 1-800-Flowers delivers smiles and builds meaningful relationships
Author: Joan Lim, Senior Manager, Product Marketing at Oracle
It’s Valentine’s Day! The National Retail Federation estimates that consumers are expected to spend $25.9 billion to celebrate, up 8.3% from 2022. It will be one of the highest spending years on record, with more than half (52%) of consumers predicted to spend an average of $192.80.
Changing the gifting game
Consumers are not just buying and spending more, but are also becoming more creative with their selection of gifts and services. Gone are the days when one would simply visit a flower shop and buy a dozen red roses. Consumers now expect more personalization, and this may include a combination of specific flower varieties, chocolates, and customized mugs – all wrapped in one gift basket and delivered on this one special day. While customers are provided with a seamless experience when ordering online, behind the scenes lies a very complex operation. It’s their superpower ability to manage the end-to-end fulfillment process efficiently that helped 1-800-Flowers stay resilient to disruption and change. 1-800-Flowers is a digital gifting marketplace, and for them, happy customers are the lifeblood of their business, and innovation is in their DNA. It is very important for them to continue investing in innovations that enable automation for growth, and adopt vertical integration strategies where appropriate. This is why 1-800-Flowers chose Oracle Cloud and Accelalpha to help modernize their transportation and fulfillment operations.
Focusing on excellent customer service
With humble beginnings that started with one flower shop in Manhattan, 1-800-Flowers has continuously disrupted the floral industry by being one of the first companies to sell products online. Currently, with 17 brands under their portfolio of products, including Harry & David, Cheryl’s Cookies, The Popcorn Factory, and recently, Alice’s Table, 1-800-Flowers’ multi-category and multiple brand focus brings additional complexity to its supply chain. Most of their flowers come from South America, they harvest over 14,000 tons of pears each year, and manufacture products at popcorn plants, bakeries, and chocolate factories, while assembling, packing, and shipping an assortment of gifts – from flowers and wines to seafood and steaks in various warehouses. Their supply chain process also needs to consider temperature requirements, food safety, and handling of perishable items. But what’s kept 1-800-Flowers on top of their game is their focus on the customer experience. Their drive for innovation comes from understanding how highly emotional the gifting experience is, and the need to provide excellent customer service.
Facing logistics and fulfillment challenges
With varying systems across multiple and siloed business units, 1-800-Flowers needed a way to unify their processes. They were faced with challenges as their operations required a high volume of labeling requirements, they needed to manage import and export multi-modal shipments, and they had to have the ability to efficiently handle peak season demand and seasonality. They were also faced with high costs coming from manual processes, especially from delivery partners.
Delivering smiles to relationships
With Oracle Transportation Management and Oracle Warehouse Management, 1-800-Flowers not only standardized their logistics processes, but cloud technology also gave them the flexibility they needed to operate efficiently. 1-800-Flowers partnered with Accelalpha, who brought a significant amount of value to the table, having a very experienced team who collaborated with both the internal IT group, and external operations teams. Further adding to the challenge was the need to go live before the peak season to minimize further disruptions. Despite the aggressive timelines, the team managed change carefully, but proactively, which was the key to success. The first project went live in just 12 weeks, and productivity has already improved through the standardized processes.
Now, 1-800-Flowers has fully automated warehouses and distribution facilities and is reducing reliance on seasonal labor. They are also expanding their warehouse and fulfillment footprint to bring products closer to customer locations, decreasing fulfillment time for shipments, and reducing transportation costs. Overall, achieving this end-to-end supply chain visibility led to higher shelf-life accuracy, lowering customer inquiries by 30%.
By modernizing its supply chain, 1-800-Flowers is not just able to deliver gifts, but to connect people, and deliver smiles to relationships that matter most.
Watch this webinar to learn more about how 1-800-Flowers was able to centralize and automate its logistics processes.