Melbourne mum’s flower business takes off in lockdown with $35m in revenue

The Melbourne florist never dreamed that a decision costing a $500 investment would turn her into a multi-millionaire in seven years

Courtney Ray never could have imagined that a $500 investment would turn her into a multi-millionaire just seven years later.

But that’s exactly what happened to the Melbourne mum-of-two after her business grew to eight times its size during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Ms Ray, 37, started a flower e-commerce store called Daily Blooms in 2014 with just $500 in her pocket.

By the end of this financial year, the online business will have turned over $35 million in revenue.

She told news.com.au that she created the business as a passion project and its staggering success has “exceeded expectations in every way”.

“I went off to do this mad little project and it’s turned out quite well,” she admitted.

The former financial consultant thought the arrival of the coronavirus on Australian shores in March last year signalled the death knell for Daily Blooms but in a fortuitous twist, it turned out to be the exact opposite.

Instead, as loved ones were separated through lockdowns and border closures, sending flowers became one of the only ways to stay in touch.

Courtney Ray turned $500 into a $35 million empire.

Ms Ray grew in the small regional Victorian community of Freshwater Creek which she described as “pretty idyllic” because she was constantly “surrounded by flowers”.

When she was in school she would often tell people she wanted to be a florist when she grew up but instead “went down the sensible finance career path”.

She moved to Melbourne after landing a graduate job at international consulting company KPMG and stayed there for several years before moving to the merger and acquisitions team at Orica. However, on her honeymoon she made a big decision.

“I had this epiphany that I really didn’t want to go back into finance and I really wanted to give floristry a go,” she said.

However, she knew traditional florist shops had to throw out a lot of flowers at the end of the day’s trade which she described as “heartbreaking”. So she came up with a different business model.

“Going to the market and hoping a person walking down the street saw a bunch of roses and wanted them, that’s madness and leads to an enormous amount of waste,” the entrepreneur said.

“I came up with the concept of buying flowers from grower’s everyday, the very best seasonal flowers, I would create an arrangement, I’d take a photo, upload it to social media and my website.

“Very quickly I was able to buy my inventory knowing how many I would sell for the day. It created a bit of scarcity, it managed the waste, I could keep my prices reasonable.”

Essentially it was a same-day delivery e-commerce service for flowers rather than a brick and mortar store relying on the foot traffic of passers-by to stay afloat.

She makes more money than her husband who is an investment banker.

Ms Ray bootstrapped the business; “It was literally $500, it was absolutely nothing,” she said.

The cash went towards building her website, buying a heap of flowers and floristry tools which she said was “all very basic and amateur”.

For the first week friends and family were ordering from her “to be nice” she said with a laugh. This soon followed with friends of friends.

“It was probably around the third or fourth week and I started to see customers come through and I couldn’t trace them back to a friend or a connection,” she said as the first indicator things were taking off.

In its first year, Daily Blooms made $500,000 in revenue.

Fast forward from then to the present day – during which time Ms Ray had two kids, now aged 5 and 6 – where the business is going gangbusters.

Daily Blooms went from 120 daily deliveries around Melbourne before March last year, to more than 1000 every day.

She has 82 staff members who are a mix of florists, wrappers, customer service or operations officers and in-house drivers.

There a total of 53,000 likes on the company Instagram page.

Ms Ray said her best months to date have been September and October, when Melbourne was once again plunged into lockdown.

Daily Blooms made $500,000 in its first year of business back in 2014.

However, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing.

Ms Ray launched a Sydney warehouse in 2016 to supply the NSW populace with her flowers but decided to shut it down because of the uncertainty surrounding the pandemic.

She admitted this was a “massive mistake” as flowers could have been in high demand over the last 18 months, especially after Sydney’s 106-day lockdown that just ended.

The brand is planning to relaunch their Sydney warehouse in January next year.

“People couldn’t catch up and see each other, they couldn’t give each other a hug (in lockdown),” the millionaire florist said.

“Instead of doing those things, people were showing that they cared through flowers. It was really just the vehicle for human connection.”