Bloom & Wild

Building the leading European online flower gifting brand legend that enhances the joy of sending and receiving flowers.

Invested £15m in 2018

When looking at new brands, the first question we always ask ourselves is: ‘Is it better and different than the competition?’. With Bloom & Wild, the answer was an emphatic ‘yes!’. Founded in 2013 by Aron Gelbard and Ben Stanway, it has single-handedly disrupted and revolutionised Europe’s £14bn fresh cut flower market.

The story of commercial flower delivery goes back more than a century – and, until Bloom & Wild arrived on the scene, the concept essentially remained the same. Flowers would be delivered to your home. If you weren’t in to receive them, you would return home to a note and have to pick them up from a neighbour or local florist. These flowers normally came direct from local florists but were often not the specific bouquets ordered but ‘similar’ types, and far from being fresh, had been in transit and in the florists for a number of days.

Bloom & Wild took this model and turned it on its head. In an age where our lives are busier than ever, it made no sense to waste time having to hunt down a gift. Receiving flowers should be a pleasure not a chore. And, as for the flowers themselves, why couldn’t they be exactly the same as those ordered, and shipped direct from the grower?

So Aron and Ben pioneered the award-winning concept of ‘letterbox flowers’ – allowing customers the ability to gift fresh flowers in a convenient slim box that fits through the receiver’s letterbox. This initially involved Aron walking around London with a notebook and ruler, measuring thousands of letterboxes and typing them all up into a spread sheet. He used this to calculate how small a box would need to be to get through about 90 per cent of letterboxes.

The founders also invested heavily in technology to transform both the customer experience and the traditional supply chain. Bloom & Wild flowers do not come from local florists but direct from the producers themselves – giving customers beautiful, high quality fresh flowers. The flowers are delivered in bud, protected by a special casing, so they bloom over time and last longer than other bouquets.

The results speak for themselves. Revenues hit £10m within three years of launch and more than 50 million Bloom & Wild flowers have been shipped to date across the UK, France and Germany.

We led a £15m investment into Bloom & Wild in 2018 to help the team focus on two key growth strategies – to become the UK market leader in flower gifting and continue the brand’s rapid international expansion trajectory in existing and additional European markets.

In 2021 Bloom & Wild acquired Dutch brand Bloomon and French brand Bergamotte.

Aron’s aim is for Bloom & Wild to become ‘the world’s most loved flower gifting brand’. Being different and better has worked wonders so far – and will give the brand every chance of enduring success.