E15 > MARKETING > PEOPLE > WORKING WITH FLOWERS IS ALL SMILES, SAYS…
Working with flowers is all smiles, says the owner of the Květiny Expres online shop
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The doorbell rings, a courier is standing outside, holding a bouquet of roses with a love note. Miroslav Dušek has been successfully bringing this romantic image to life for eight years now. He built one of the best-performing Czech flower e-shops, Květiny Expres, starting from a small, originally transport-focused company.
What's the path from a transport company to selling flowers?
There was a good deal of pragmatism in it. With transport, I disliked the long payment terms — you sometimes wait up to three months for the money. So the original idea was to do something where people pay right away. When that came together with the fact that I grew up in a family house with a big garden where my parents always grew roses, it all became clear to me. That said, transport and flowers are two completely different worlds. While most clients grumble when anything is being delivered to them, with flowers everyone is all smiles — it's pure joy. I also like that we're now a family business — my right hand is my wife Monika, who comes up with new additions to our range and takes care of promotion and administration.
But your pragmatism was also paired with vision — alongside your brick-and-mortar flower shop, you opened an e-shop back then, even though online sales were completely uncharted territory in the Czech Republic eight years ago…
Yes, back then there were roughly eight e-shops operating here. Payment methods essentially didn't exist, everything moved very slowly, we photographed the bouquets for the website at home in the living room — but I told myself I'd keep the e-shop going no matter what. And the last three years have proven me right. Our annual turnover has grown from the two million (CZK) that Květiny Expres started with as a family business, to seven million last year. In just the last two years our company has grown by two hundred percent, and this year we're aiming for twelve million.
What is your main strength?
We're fast. That's the advantage of having our own courier service. Thanks to it, and a handy mobile app that connects our florists with the dispatcher and all the couriers, we guarantee delivery of a bouquet within ninety minutes. While other flower shops are tying a bouquet and at the same time trying to get hold of some courier on the phone, ours immediately know who is where and where they're headed and with what. In cities outside Prague we also have partner flower shops, so the flowers are always as fresh as possible. And most importantly, we have a great team of people I can really rely on, from the florists and dispatchers to the couriers.
What sets you apart from other flower e-shops?
We're the only flower e-shop that also has a web chat, where from eight in the morning until six in the evening a client can, with no obligation and anonymously, get information, ask for advice, or place an order right away. We also have a loyalty points system, and we were the first to introduce free shipping on orders over a thousand crowns. Unlike other flower shops, here a customer can put together their own bouquet according to their own taste, flower by flower. Lately gift baskets have also been doing well, as have bouquets with chocolates or a bottle of wine, and flowers arranged in tin jugs and various retro milk churns.
In 2010, alongside a group of friends, you were also one of the founders of what are now the legendary Farmářské trhy na Kulaťáku (farmers' markets at Kulaťák), which other city districts later started holding too. Have you ever thought about connecting the market with the e-shop?
Not only have I thought about it, I actually tried to launch an e-shop with farm produce called Farmenu. We built a website with beautiful photos, but we ran into the way the farmers worked. Their way of doing things simply didn't fit with the somewhat virtual world of an e-shop back then. But I still have a vision — I'm not a caretaker. As soon as a business settles into too comfortable a routine, I need new challenges. So I'm planning to open one or two more brick-and-mortar shops, and after that I'd like to graft something new onto the flower business again. I enjoy coming up with and carrying out new things.
