Just last week, UKTN covered the £50m funding round of UK’s online florist Bloom & Wild and now another online subscription-based florist from London is in news for their latest investments.
Freddie’s Flowers, the quite-famous flower subscription service that delivers bouquets anywhere in the UK, offering customers floral arrangements for £25 a pop has now got an investment of $60m from The Craftory.
Based in London and San Francisco, The Craftory is a $375M global investment house focused on cause-driven CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) brands that positively impact the categories they serve, society, and the planet.
“At Freddie’s Flowers, sustainability is a core focus of what we do” explains William Gee, Head of Sustainability at Freddie’s Flowers. “As a business, we strive to actively demonstrate climate leadership and account for our environmental impact. This has been shown both through our commitment to carbon neutrality, third-party verified by the Carbon Trust, and through our greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets via the Science-Based Targets initiative.
As per the company press release, having seen a huge spike in sales during lockdown, Freddie’s Flowers has quickly grown to become the largest flower box subscription business in the UK. Launched in 2014, Freddie’s Flowers delivers beautiful selections of flowers each week to homes across the whole of mainland UK and Germany. The startups already has around 130,000 customers in the UK and nearly 25,000 in Germany.
Ernesto Schmitt, The Craftory Co-Founder explains: “We’ve been blown away by Freddie’s trail-blazing approach to democratising access to great flowers for everyone. They’ve deconstructed every wasteful step along the value chain, and with confidence, creativity and CPG best-practice pieced together a new kind of service that sets the gold standard for the category. Freddies’ are a true CPG challenger brand and we’re proud to have them in our portfolio.”
“I have loved brightening up people’s homes up and down the country over the last few years and am delighted to have The Craftory onboard to help us spread the joy of flowers in a sustainable, ethical way” adds Freddie Garland, Freddie’s Flowers Founder.
Freddie’s Flowers operate a ‘grow to order’ model where growers only cut the flowers they need thereby significantly reducing waste. The brand’s iconic delivery bikes complete two-thirds of London deliveries, and their packaging is eco-friendly, prioritising recyclability and biodegradability wherever possible. To top it off the business is newly certified carbon neutral and has a strategy in place to deliver ever more sustainable solutions.
“Within our industry, we are working hard with key stakeholders through the Floriculture Sustainability Initiative, developing new tools to measure the environmental impact of our flowers and ensure fair working conditions for the sector globally.
Finally at home, we are proud of the responsible sourcing and biodegradability of our packaging, along with our electric bike fleet that makes circa 20% (soon to be more) of all our deliveries around the country, with electric vans soon to follow.”
— Press release
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