Pick’d Flowers Re-invents the Floral Industry with a Modern Twist
Have you ordered flowers for your Valentine yet? If not, here’s a fun new approach from an exciting Ohio-based startup.
Pick’d Flowers, a technology business that launched in 2020, offers an innovative option for sending the perfect flowers—a platform that allows customers to easily customize their own bouquets or cut stems based on meanings, colors, and varieties. The flowers are delivered exactly as designed.
Co-founder Jacqueline Rinehardt is technology entrepreneur with nearly a decade of using software to solve real world problems. Growing up in her grandfather’s florist shop was Rinehardt’s inspiration for this latest venture.
“My grandpa was a second-generation Italian-American, a super-super hard-working entrepreneur,” Rinehardt said, “who put himself through horticulture school and opened the shop in the eighties.”
Rinehardt’s grandfather built a business that has lasted more than forty years; Rinehardt’s uncle and aunt run it today. But running a successful floral business has challenges.
Flowers are memorable. Surveys report that 80 percent of Americans say receiving flowers make them feel happy while 88 percent say that giving flowers makes them happy.
“I love flowers, and I fell in love with the way they make people feel, but floral industry is old school,” Rinehardt said. “Not much has changed. I kept thinking there must be a better way—to operate, track profitability, and manage stock.”
There is, and Pick’d Flowers delivers it.
Pick’d Flowers Prototype Delights Both Customers and Local Florists
Most of us have ordered flowers online. The photographs are lovely, but they can be cookie-cutter. Too often the flowers received don’t match the pictures in style or quality, and the worst thing is that the sender may never find out because the person receiving flowers doesn’t want to complain to a friend or loved one kind enough to send a bouquet.
Pick’d Flowers combines the convenience and cost efficiency of online ordering with the customization and attention to quality of local florists. Pick’d Flowers entire business is based around delivering unique arrangements and cut flowers from local florists.
Local florists create bouquets from the flowers that are available to them. Their blooms will be many and beautiful. Rather than forcing them to “come close” to a tops-down 1-800 design, Pick’d Flowers enables florists to design and deliver differently.
With Pick’d Flowers, customers can personalize their flower bouquets based on meaning, rather thanclicking and sending a bunch of daisies in a vase. Evenbetter, flower senders can be sure that the bouquet they think they are ordering is actually the bouquet their Valentine receives. Not only that, the order will be fulfilled by a local florist, not an impersonal 1-800 service in the cloud.
“Our online system keeps track of what florists have in stock,” Rinehardt said. “It is super easy to interface with our software. We have a mix of pre-picked bouquets which are locally designed by each florist, or customers can use our Build-A-Bouquet feature. Pricing includes delivery. Customers receive photo confirmation before their order ships. ”
From bouquet of the month to clever Zodiac-themed suggestions, Pick’d Flowers makes it easy to give appropriate flowers to anyone—a sweetheart, a colleague, your own Grandpa, or a friend.
The company is in prototype in most areas in Columbus. Visit the website, enter the delivery zip code to make yourself and someone else happy.
Pick’d Flowers Is Market-validated and Built to Scale
Rinehardt and Co-founder and CTO Kevin Carrabine have designed and bootstrapped a protype that is built to scale. The benefits to florists are many.
“We help florists leverage existing inventory, improve their business model, and use their own floral creativity every day,” Rinehardt said. “Our immediate goal is to gain market experience—Valentine’s Day will be a big test—and then get in front of and get feedback. Feedback from customers is super important.”
Pick’d Flowers helps customers with the meaning of flowers. “If you want red roses for Valentine’s Day, we have those,” Rinehardt said. “But if your are looking for something a little less traditional, Pick’d Flowers is a great option for people who want to share something a little more personal with a little more sentiment.”
In this cold month of February, there isn’t a better way to show “heart” than to support an entrepreneurial high-growth company by ordering Valentine’s Day flowers created by a local “Main Street” florist.
