Wire Service Market Share - Up or Down

[Tom Carlson]

Does anyone have record of Market Share for Valentines Day by 800flowers, FTD, Teleflora.

Were your wire service incoming order for 800flowers Down, Even or Up?

Were your wire service incoming order for FTD Down, Even or Up?

Were your wire service incoming order for Teleflora Down, Even or Up?

Tom Carlson

 

[BOSS]

Guessing down

down

down

does not apply

 

[CHR]

We're pretty much removed from the WS scene so I can't help with any info about the V Day trend. Incoming and outgoing orders combined were only 6% of our V Day sales. (We did refer a bunch of consumers direct to other shops, though.)

I did run across an interesting article about the volume of drop-ship boxed flowers being sent out annually and think it has a lot to do with a trend toward declining wire-ins:
According to Memphis: 'Last man standing' in dot-com floral business,

Today, the barely 10-year-old industry generates $2 billion in sales, roughly a tenth of all U.S. flower sales, including bouquets sold in grocery stores.

And the $20B in total floriculture sales includes bedding plants so their slice of the cut flower pie is even bigger than 10%.

My guess is that wire-ins will continue to decline as FTD & 1-800 feature more and more higher profit drop-ship merchandise.

Wire-outs sold at the majority of local florists tend to be purchased by customers who are 1) old 2) have no credit cards or 3) have corporate house accounts. Group 1) is getting smaller every year and Group 3) is a big target for national marketers.

"Memphis allows us to keep flowers in the cold chain until the last second," said John Kuehn, senior vice president of planning and logistics for ProFlowers, No. 1 player in the industry, which plans to ship 1 million bouquets today.

That's a lot of orders 'direct from the fields of Memphis' that used to be local or sent through a WS. No wonder the WSs all want to be PF.

 

[Joe Mioux]

Tom,

I look at WS business volume everyday thanks to a charting feature I have on my POS.

It's astounding looking at the trend.

I just hope that the drop in wireins is coming in direct. My only measuring stick for that is that the website continues to gain usage.

hope this helps
joe

 

[MANORVILLE]

Down

Tom,

I look at WS business volume everyday thanks to a charting feature I have on my POS.

It's astounding looking at the trend.

I just hope that the drop in wireins is coming in direct. My only measuring stick for that is that the website continues to gain usage.

hope this helps
joe

DOWN, DOWN, DOWN !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!