In January 1991, 1-800-Flowers got a call from cable pioneer Ted Turner’s office. Antsy advertisers were threatening to pull their commercials from CNN on the eve of the first Gulf War. If they had holes in their commercial schedule, Turner executives wanted to know, could they run 1-800-Flowers spots? Mr. McCann agreed, war broke out, CNN’s ratings soared, and 1-800-Flowers’ message was drilled again and again into the public consciousness. “It’s the war brought to you by 1-800-Flowers,” Mr. McCann says of the “branding event.”
Ha! The irony of war "making" a flower businsses. Nothing quite like having brave Amercan's die to help your business grow...talk about disgusting. If I was McCann I sure would not be bragging about *this*.
Comments on search strategy from FTD CEO Michael Soenen in a recent conference call are like reading tea leaves: FTD has been “generating some really great yields” in search, he says, and has “found better ways to hedge our exposure to the volatility in the online market space.” Rather than stretch what it will pay for a search term, Mr. Soenen adds, the company avoids trying to “chase a number” and tends to “take what we can get profitably.”
So this is a look under the hood about the what is really going on in the online flower business these days. Sounds more like day trading then the flower business that I know about.
FTD’s consumer business had revenue of $75.7 million, while the florist segment posted revenue of $54.3 million. Looking at pre-tax operating income, however, the florist business contributed $17.3 million, more than five times the $2.9 million of the consumer business. Net income for the third quarter of fiscal year 2006 was $7.4 million, or $0.26 per diluted share. Standard & Poor’s gave FTD stock a five-star rating recently based on growth in consumer-side revenue and improved margins from its florist network.
So, mathamatically, consumers are about 10 times more savvy then florists. The profit margin on consumers is 3.8%, but on florists its almost 34%. Maybe some of you FTD people should think about this.
Thanks, mlou, for this really informative article.
