Sometimes all it takes to come up with a great idea is a step back and a willingness to try something new. That’s exactly what Anne Cao of College Park Flowers in Courtice, Ont. did. For this month’s edition of Point of View, we talked to Cao to see how she developed the BloomBag. Cao says the BloomBag has made running her shop more efficient, and as an added bonus, has helped her customers enjoy their flowers faster and with less hassle.
 Florist Anne Cao was inspired
to invent the BloomBag after years of stuffing water tubes on stems and
arranging flowers in cellophane. |
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The inspiration behind the product came after years of stuffing water tubes on stems and arranging flowers in cellophane. “I kept saying there’s got to be an easier way,” Cao says. Prior to Valentine’s Day in 2006, she began experimenting with her bouquets by packaging them in a silver foil bag with a foam block and water in the bottom, so it would stand up on it’s own like a vase. She hoped that this would keep the flowers hydrated, allow the bouquets to be transported with ease and make the flowers a simple grab and go purchase for customers. The idea wasn’t quite ready for Feb. 14 so Cao decided to prepare her flowers in the silver foil bags for the next big floral holiday, Mother’s Day. “It’s such a stressful time, I just thought we need to do something to make it easier.”
When Mother’s Day 2006 hit, Cao discovered that her customers loved the foil bag idea and happily snapped them up for their moms. In late May, she was even more surprised when a number of customers came back to the shop to let her know that three weeks later, their flowers were still lasting. To top it off, the customers never even took them out of the bag – something Cao never intended. “It was developed mainly for transportation – to get the flowers home and hydrated…At first I was surprised to hear that people left the flowers in the bag. Then when they said they were lasting so long, that was shocking.”
The feedback prompted Cao and her staff to conduct tests on the foil bag bouquets versus bouquets in a vase. She found that because the flowers are packaged in a non-transparent foil bag tied together around the stems, light can’t get through to the water to activate flower-killing bacteria and the water can’t evaporate. This helped the flowers stay lively through to the two-week mark.
Encouraged by the testing, Cao further developed the bags and eventually came up with a product that she’s named the BloomBag. It consists of three layers – a polypropylene (plastic) layer, a foil layer and another plastic layer – that create a bag for the bouquets that is firm and thick enough so stems can’t poke through. The bouquet is inserted in a foam block in the bottom of the bag, water is added and the bag is tied where the bouquet stems criss-cross.
The final design was a success. Cao began packaging all her bouquets at the shop in the BloomBags and found that the bouquets were flying out of her shop. Cao says “People kept saying ‘why don’t you market these?’” Thus, Cao’s side business, Outside the Vase was born in July of 2006, a company that she’s created to market and sell the product to florists.
Cao is now in the final steps of patenting the BloomBag and says she has several florists in the Toronto area who carry the BloomBag as well as retailers in British Columbia.
The product has become an essential tool in Cao’s own shop and the BloomBag has been a big help when the major holidays roll around. “Because they last so long, we can do the flowers up to a week ahead because we expect our flowers to last at least two weeks,” she says. Outside of holiday time, whenever the shop gets a cut flower phone or wire order, the flowers automatically go in a BloomBag, which are available in a large, medium or single bud size and come in silver, tan, gold or dark green. Cao accessorizes the bags at her shop with fancy ribbon or raffia, and even hung velvet hearts on ribbon for Valentine’s Day. “You can dress them up or dress them down, but we definitely dress them up.”
The product has also helped with deliveries – her drivers can drop the bouquet off with neighbours, knowing that the bouquet won’t get dried out.
In the future, Cao hopes to expand and offer more products through Outside the Vase, but for now she’s trying to keep up with all the feedback from the BloomBag. Reflecting back on two very busy years, Cao says she never could have guessed that one “aha” moment could have led to a completely new business.
“It’s gone from a product that was just for transport to flowers you can just leave in the bag.”
Each month, this department will present a new point of view to give a fresh perspective on the floral industry.
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