DON’T Buy Them Flowers…

I can’t actually believe it’s been nine years since I started Don’t Buy Her Flowers from our spare room; with three packages, a tape gun and absolutely no idea what I was doing. I didn’t have a plan, I just had an idea. When I’d received eight bouquets when my eldest was born, I thought it was a terrible gift. I couldn’t work out how flowers had become a ‘go to’ for someone that has had a baby. And the gifts were generous and well meant; people wanted to give me something and recognise that I’d just given birth, but when you pause and think about what a new mum might be feeling – physically, mentally, all the emotions and exhaustion – it makes zero sense to give her another thing to care for and THAT was the lightbulb moment behind DBHF.

Gifting empathy – It turned out that there are many many occasions for which the same can be said, when flowers aren’t the best gift and someone needs some looking after. Bereavement and get well, anytime when a person is having a hard time, but also for the celebrations. Birthday has become our biggest ‘reason’ for someone sending a DBHF gift, followed by TLC. Because of the world we live in, most people could do with some TLC and encouragement to pause for five minutes at anytime, not just when they’re going through something difficult. A DBHF gift lets someone know that someone recognises you need that TLC, and conveys empathy. In the first weeks after we launched, I remember receiving messages from customers saying ‘she cried when she opened the package!’ and realising that the thoughtfulness and empathy is what people want to give to someone else, and what makes the recipient feel like someone has really thought about them. That’s what makes our customers the best – they’ve tuned in to that.

Remembering our ‘why’– My kids have grown up with Don’t Buy Her Flowers being a big part of our lives – my youngest wasn’t even born when I started the business. In the early years, when I was packing boxes in my spare room, one of the biggest challenges was stopping my eldest two coming in and unwrapping everything. They would often burst in and start moving precious orders around, and I had to pack them both up in the car to drop packages off for the courier. Then I used to get them to bed and start wrapping orders whilst listening to Magic FM – 80s ballads seemed to spur me on. It was full on but I loved it – the excitement of every order, and because each gift has a handwritten note, we get this glorious insight into the exchange – the ‘why’ of the gift, the connection between the customer and the recipient, and often the empathy from one human to another. It remains my favourite thing to look at when I’m finding things hard or worrying about numbers and the team. It can be really grounding when you read something that shows a customer is supporting someone clearly going through a difficult time. It reminds me why I started this.

Keeping it in the family – In the early days it became especially exciting when the customer wasn’t a name I recognised and I started reaching people that weren’t buying out of loyalty or pity for me! That being said my very first customer was my brother Chas, who became our Ops Director. And I mean this in the nicest possible way, but Chas was notoriously crap at buying gifts when we were growing up, so the fact he supported me right at the start says a lot! Little did he know that two years later, when he joked ‘I could run the business from here’ while I was back visiting the family in Stroud where we’re from, that I would take him up on it. Seven years on, I don’t think he regrets it?! We’ve definitely had to work on our communication – it’s a very different thing to work with and speak to your adult sibling every day compared to fighting over who gets to sit in the front seat or watching Karate Kid and trying to recreate the Crane Kick. Ultimately we have each other’s backs and I feel really proud of how we’ve evolved as well as the business. He is also very, very silly and that helps, even if he does mercilessly mock my clothing choices in a way only a big brother can.

Highlights – Moving into a warehouse – moving the business out of my house – and having a proper space and then building a team will forever be a highlight. If you’re familiar with the Julia Donaldson book ‘A Squash and a Squeeze’ it was exactly like that – our little house felt massive once the business had moved out. Also, from that point it wasn’t just on me to ensure customers received their packages. There were other people with some responsibility and who want the business to succeed. Two of my oldest friends work with me, plus my brother, plus a really good friend I’d met in a previous job. I completely understand that people are nervous of working with family and friends, and they have to be the right personalities. I couldn’t work with all of my family or friends, but this group work and the biggest thing we have is trust. I know that they’re in it with me, and given that running a business can feel really lonely, it helps. We also know each other very well, so if someone is moody or looking worried, it’s instantly picked up. Plus it’s nice to have work calls that often end with ‘bye, love you’.

Another highlight is talking to someone who doesn’t know me and then when I mention DBHF they say ‘oh my god, I used you when my sister was having a terrible time’ or ‘I was sent one of your boxes and it was so brilliant’. That feels amazing. During the Pandemic, I remember going out for a run (in our allotted outside time – remember that?!) and I ran past a house and spotted DBHF tissue paper in their recycling. I ran back and just looked at it for a while, and it really bought home that our packages are going out to people and into their lives, and that was very cool. I ran home buzzing and Doug said ‘this must be what a popstar feels like when their song is played on the radio’. And tragically, it probably was a bit of a moment for me in lieu of the singing career taking off.

‘We’ve learned a lot’– It’s a bit of a motto of mine, that probably drives the team nuts. Recently, as we’ve expanded to do fulfilment for other small businesses and we’ve grown our Corporate Gifting revenue, we’ve had to do things different. Rather than ‘just’ doing B2C website sales, everyone’s roles require them to jump between those three areas of the business – B2C, B2B and Fulfilment – with new systems, different customers, different products, and it’s been a steep learning curve. If things go wrong, or we realise we need to improve something, I’ll usually say ‘well, we’ve learned a lot’. And I think that’s key. The last year has been the most challenging year we’ve had, with retail across the UK being hugely impacted by Cost of Living crisis, Brexit and world events. But what it has done is made us think about what else we could be doing, and longer term that gives the business more opportunity, more resilience, than relying on one revenue stream and sitting back hoping all the things we did previously would continue to work for growth. And that’s a massive part of running a business. You’re never done, you can always improve, there is always more to do. And you never stop learning. Probably if you feel like you have, it means it’s time to stop.

Can anyone do it all? – The other big ongoing challenge is the juggle. This week I’d been at our warehouse in Stroud and was driving back home late to Richmond. It had been a busy week and I’d stayed to finish a job in the warehouse, and my daughter rang to ask how long I’d be. I was still more than an hour away, she was going to have to go to bed, and I could hear the wobble in her voice. I asked if she was ok and she did the ‘I’m trying to be brave’ quiet crying that makes a parent feel awful, because she wanted me to watch Bake Off with her. I have a responsibility as a parent and wife, and I have responsibility to a team of people that are working really hard for Don’t Buy Her Flowers. I try not to feel guilty most of the time because I work, Doug works, and we do our best to split it so one of us is here; but this one did pang. The next day, I went and got cakes (every time we watch Bake Off we say that we really should have a selection of cakes to eat while watching it), I left a work event early to get back and we got on pyjamas and ate cake while watching Bake Off, and everything is ok.

Sometimes people, women especially, feel the need to say ‘well me working is setting a great example for them’ and maybe that’s true, but probably mostly they just want their mum there and that can’t always happen. I think it’s also ok to admit if you love working. I don’t know what the answer is, except that we’re doing our best and the way it works best is when Doug and I are a team. I should probably mention him at this point – he has been unfalteringly supportive of me with the business, my biggest champion, the one that has to listen when I start talking through something worrying me (I have a habit of pausing the TV mid-episode of some series we’re watching to ask his opinion on something work-related, or just ramble on about it, and he pretty much always listens without complaint). I can’t neglect the kids, I wouldn’t be rude to friends, and he probably suffers the most because my brain is almost always in some part on the business. Thanks Doug. You can stay.

Staying thoughtful – A big part of my job now is to make sure that we stay true to that initial idea. That the products and packages we create are thoughtful, and we really think about the recipient and how they might be feeling, how a customer wants them to feel. It’s also about how we are with each other, the suppliers and companies we work with. Regardless of whether it’s orders through the website, our Fulfilment clients or our Corporate clients, that is what makes us different. The detail, the care and empathy from the team.   

And I have to end on that – the team. The very best. Just thank you to each and every one of them – past, present and future. I’ll bring the good biscuits this week.

Steph x

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