The owners of Petals & Roots, a Queens, New York based artisan floral shop, are busy doing – what else – filling hundreds of orders for Valentine’s Day. ‘Planning is tremendous,’ explained Alex Avdoulos, who opened the shop along with her husband Pete three years ago. ‘We think about it all year, and prepare for it at least four weeks out. Placing orders, trying to gauge what demand will be like.’ Demand is up, now that Petals & Roots joined BloomNation, which has been called ‘the Etsy (ETSY) for flowers.’ BloomNation is a network of independent flower shops that’s set its sights on disrupting the big online florists including 1-800-Flowers (FLWS) and FTD(FTD). ‘Since we’ve joined BloomNation and developed our website within the past six months, we’ve seen at least a 20 percent uptick in business. Which is great,’ she said. BloomNation offers customized websites and marketing tools for independent florists, including floral photo shoots. The over 3,00 florists who are part of the network receive 90% of each sale placed through BloomNation, which encourages local florists to create original designs. ‘It’s all about creativity, which is so great. A customer sees our profile and the designs we actually make here and selects us to deliver them because they love the arrangement,’ said Avdoulos.
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