Bloom Or Bust? - online bouquets - Brief Article

Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine, May, 2001 by Sean O'Neill

GIFTS Gather ye rosebuds for Mother's Day, and order early ONLINE BOUQUET.

A NICE arrangement of trusty flower e-tailers has blossomed in recent years, unaffected by the withering of dot-coms selling other goods. So it should be no surprise that nearly a half-million online orders for Mother's Day bouquets are expected in May, contributing to the $1.3 billion in online flower sales expected in 2001.

When choosing among the sites, the biggest decision you face may be how you want the flowers sent: arranged in a vase or shipped in a box directly from the grower via Federal Express. Bouquets that skip the retailer's display case stay fresh longer, say Hallmark.eom and Proflowers.com, two of the largest vendors of flowers sent by FedEx. The trade-off is that the recipient must arrange the flowers herself, dampening the thrill. Yet Hallmark and Proflowers earned high marks from customers for accurately describing, fairly pricing and properly delivering bouquets, according to a survey by BizRate.com, a ranking firm, conducted during the 2001 Valentine's Day rush.

The two online florists with the most sales, however, don't use FedEx, choosing instead to pass orders to local florists to fulfill and deliver. Both services, 1-800-flowers.com and FTD .com, have good track records: Each refunded or replaced fewer than one in 25 orders last year. Both offer to save customers' credit card information for repeat orders, unlike Proflowers and other top sites. According to ranking firm Gomez, 1-800-flowers.com edged out FTD.com as the easiest Web site to use in the gifts-and-flowers category.

Online customers pay a slight premium for convenience. The bouquets themselves are about the same price as those found at local vendors. But service fees average $8 an order, a couple of dollars more than those charged by many florist shops, says Eric Beder, an analyst at the investment firm Ladenburg, Thalmann who tracks the online-florist business. All sites mentioned here allow senders to call a hotline for a refund or replacement if the bouquet arrives wilted or damaged. Proflowers has the longest satisfaction guarantee (seven days).

Belated valentines. To test these services, Kiplinger's compared four leading sites. We picked two that use local florists, 1-800-flowers.com and FTD.com, and two that send via FedEx: Hallmark, for its unique presentation, and Calyx 8, Corolla, for its exotic blooms. To see how the services perform under pressure, we placed the orders on February 12 to be delivered on Valentine's Day to three addresses across the country.

We sent comparable bouquets. The FTD Angelique bouquet ($56) contained several lilies, roses and other blooms. The 1-800-flowers .com bouquet had ten multicolored lilies for $68. Hallmark sent three lilies, daisies and roses inside a maroon gift box, along with a greeting card, for $55. Calyx & Corolla delivered nine "enchantment lilies" in mixed colors for $49. The service fees ranged from $8 for FTD and 1-800-flowers to $14 for Calyx & Corolla.

Our three recipients liked all the bouquets and no favorite emerged--although we confirmed that the flowers sent by FedEx did stay fresh several days longer.

Buying belatedly caused 1-800-flowers.com's bouquets to arrive a day early (which it had warned us was possible). The other services delivered on the appointed day.

Sites may stop taking orders as early as May 8 for Mother's Day (May 13). And because Mother's Day is on a Sunday, FedEx will not deliver on the holiday. FTD.com and 1-800-flowers.com plan limited Sunday delivery, depending on the bouquet's destination. --Reporter: JOSEPHINE ROSSI