Creating a sustainable, flourishing industry: digitizing the traditional cut-flower industry

Project Information

FLOURISH

Grant agreement ID: 888156

DOI

10.3030/888156

Project closed

EC signature date 13 November 2019

Start date 1 December 2019

End date 31 May 2020

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs

Total cost

€ 71 429,00

EU contribution

€ 50 000,00

Coordinated by

BLOOMY BV
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - FLOURISH (Creating a sustainable, flourishing industry: digitizing the traditional cut-flower industry)

Reporting period: 2019-12-01 to 2020-05-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

BloomyPro, located at the flower the variety of flowers at a supermarket is drastically minimized compared to the endless number of flowers that are available. A result of the risks associated with managing inventory and profit margins of short life products as flowers. Trading of flowers in this market still happens via time-consuming, old-fashioned steps involving physical selection of bouquets that fast, customer demand-based decisions on assortment impossible. While emerging digital technologies as AI could greatly improve processes, the current way of working does not allow implementation to this. At Bloomy, we want to change this and embark on a digital revolution with our software platform that facilitates the interaction between retail suppliers and supermarkets. Our team has a solid track record with >25 years in the floral industry combined with experience in entrepreneurship, marketing, and commercialization of in digital solutions. BloomyPro has >6000 3D images to design and present your digital flower assortment connected to real-time day-prices and inventory. The platform is designed for a new way of trading to overcome current risks with flower sales and give supermarkets a larger role in determining their assortment.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

BloomyPro has received a SME instrument Phase I grant from the EC to perform a feasibility study within the FLOURISH project. The main goal of the FLOURISH project is to strengthen our market insight and priming for growth, both of our company and our product. To do so, we defined 5 tasks which we have executed and successfully completed during the last 6 months, including:
• Task 1: Market study and user engagement: we have (1) evaluated the cost savings and benefits that digitization can bring to supermarkets regarding cut flowers,
(2) identified the pain points in the value chain which we can address with our BloomyPro platform, and (3) evaluated potential barriers and the willingness of
users to adapt their way of working and switch to digital solutions.
• Task 2: Refining the business model for supermarkets: we have evaluated the subscription model we currently used for retail suppliers to refine the business
model towards supermarkets.
• Task 3: Refining the marketing strategy to enter the supermarket-user engagement: we have refined the marketing strategy software to maximize the likelihood
of successfully achieving adoption of our BloomyPro software by supermarkets.
• Task 4: Technical feasibility: we have translated the user needs into future technical improvements in user-friendliness, an intergrated cost-price tool and finally
the develoment of a digital catalogue.
• Task 5: Consolidating a business plan: we have used the results of task 1-4 to update and optimize our business plan in the form of a consolidated pitch deck.
A special source of information we used for this study has been interviews with 4 experts in different aspects of the cut flower and retail industries. Overall, we can say the FLOURISH project has proven highly valuable for us as the desired outcomes have been achieved and we now have a clear and dedicated strategy to further develop our software platform and subsequently enter the supermarket segment of the cut flower industry.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Due to the change of landscape across the retail industry and cut flower market there is a vast number of opportunities from BloomyPro that are driven by a drastic need for innovation as pointed out by our KOLs. By implementation of the BloomyPro platform retailers will obtain valuable insights into their customers behavior. As such this will put them into a unique position to tailor their product mix and inventory to their customer needs which puts them into an advantage opposed to their competitors that have to rely on traditional systems.

In the short-term implementation of BloomyPro will increase overall profits across supermarket chains by increasing turnover and profit margins while reducing waste and thus costs in the flower section which is a significant value proposition as demonstrated in our financial forecast for a major Dutch retail chain.

BloomyPro Platform Overview