Sure you can use Facebook and Twitter to promote your businesses, but one entrepreneur is using them to do business. Reynolds said she can afford to be experimental and irreverent,
Slingflower is the world’s first “Twitter-driven floral delivery
service,” according to the company’s profile @slingflower and its
Facebook page.
The face behind that page is Jennifer Reynolds, an entrepreneur in
Boise, Idaho, who started Slingflower about a month ago by combining
the spontaneity of social media with inexpensive, fuss-free flowers. A
former dental hygienist and stay-at-home mom, Reynolds said necessity —
her need to get flowers from her husband — was the mother of this
invention.
“My husband never bought me flowers, and one day I called him on
it. He said if he could find an easier way to get them, without having
to go get them himself, he'd do it,” she said. “And that's where
Slingflower was born.”
The “slinging” works like this: Reynolds sources pre-made custom
bouquets from local growers and others about two to three times a
month. She takes photos and features the flowers on her Twitter site,
Facebook page and Web site.
She specifies the day they’ll be delivered (usually the day after she
receives them) around Boise and starts encouraging her fans and
followers to order or nominate someone or deserves a bouquet. (Reynolds
recently gave a bouquet to a deserving recipient nominated by her fans
and followers.)
The supply is limited, the bouquets are simple, the overhead is
negligible (Reynolds does the deliveries), the delivery is free and the
bouquet prices are between $12 and $15. Because she only stores the
minimal number of bouquets overnight, she keeps them in water in her
dining room. Reynolds delivers only to offices or workplaces.
In her second sling, delivered May 21, Reynolds sold out of 11 Pink
Pearl bouquets, which included one pink gerbera, three bicolor/pink
mini carnations, two bicolor/pink alstroemerias. An employee at a Boise
childcare center received the giveaway bouquet.
Her first sling put 50 small bouquets in the hands of Slingflower’s
fans and followers. So far, she has 110 fans on Facebook (including
many curious florists) and 163 followers on Twitter.
Reynolds is the first one to acknowledge the seemingly wacky idea.
In fact, she beats naysayers to the punch by rattling off the following
facts on her blog:
having invested less than $1,000 in launching her business. She does
not, she said, want to open a retail operation.
“I've never considered it, mainly because there's plenty of them
around,” she said. “I wanted to do something different, to get some
attention.”