- 54% of orders in the Christmas quarter were from repeat customers. They are proud of this. I view it as 46% of their prior customers didn't buy from them during Christmas. Does that sound like loyalty? I would guess that for most local flowershops, at least 80 percent of existing customers bought during the last quarter (excluding funerals and weddings)
According to
Internet Retailer the same quarter last year saw 53% of orders from repeat customers, which is a small improvement. But, considering their investment in programs to try and improve that number - "deepen the relationship with our customers", (Fresh Rewards points, reminder service) it's a very, very small increase.
In other words, excluding this mysterious 4.8M "earning increase" from H&C devision, their net income per diluted share would ahve been $0.22 / share, compared to last year's $0.26 / share. Wall Street would have killed 1800 had they reported 22 cents a share (they reported $0.29/share).
Good eye, Goldie. That H&C figure is quite suspect. Did anyone listen to the conference call?
And who is the SAVIOR that came in riding on the white horse to save their quarterly profits..................THE RETAIL FLORISTS.
I haven't seen the member numbers from the latest directory release, but my guess is that membership is not growing. This means more florists are buying products from 1-800:
- containers
- flowers
- website hosting (which has got to be the worst SEO'd of all the florist templates)
- POS
Don't forget that a few very big OGs also moved over to 1-800 since last year.
The company also invested time & money in social sites like Second Life, FaceBook and YouTube and one would think those efforts might have paid off during the holiday - but it doesn't appear to be the case.
I keep returning to
consumer satisfaction ratings since IMO they really tell the tale of 1-800-Flowers. The lack of transaction transparency, poor customer service and disappointment with what's delivered vs what was seen are repeated themes.
They can address customer service, but the other two factors present much more of a challenge. Like the other WSs, they now see florist services as a cash cow, so they'll still have to send orders to the marginal floral operations to keep them happily purchasing all those profitable add-ons.
And I don't envision them providing consumers with the names and contact information of the local filling florists anytime soon, either.
For the current FY, it appears that flowers now represent just a bit more that 40% of their total sales. I have no idea how much of that number is florist-delivered vs drop-ship.
To those florists giving more than 35% commissions to 1-800 so they can run 20% off discounts for early ordering, I hope they consider how they'd be better off in the long-term by giving 10% across the boards to their own local customers. It's the huge discounts that garner 1-800 many local shoppers in the first place.
(Note that McCann didn't include the number of Bloomnet members as he had in previous reports.) 
