SA Florist announces new ‘Zoom Bloom’ service

Online florist startup SA Florist today announced a new feature called ‘Zoom Bloom’. Announced at Tech4Africa on Thursday, the feature allows you to order flowers and have them delivered in under two hours.

The feature is the latest bid by the startup, which became a household name after attracting a R3-million investment on Dragons Den SA, to disrupt the traditional florist model.

Most big flower distributors don’t allow you to order flowers for same day delivery after 12PM. And those that do are often constrained by the delivery capacity of individual florists.

Zoom Bloom aims to change that, allowing you to order flowers for delivery within two hours any time during the day.

“As long as the florist is open, you’ll be able to get flowers delivered,” said SA Florist co-founder Nick Wallender.

In order to get the new service off the ground, SA Florist partnered with on-demand delivery startup Wumdrop. The two are no strangers to each other, with SA Florist’s developers helping out Wumdrop with its API early on.

The partnership also means that SA Florist has been able to integrate real time quotes and tracking into Zoom Bloom.

While that’s great for consumers, the SA Florist founders reckon the new feature could really prove most useful for the florists themselves.

“What it does for that small independent florist is that they can focus on executing their orders all day,” says SA Florist co-founder Fraser Black.

The product, which is set to go live in the next day or so, is also evidence of SA Florist’s continuing shift from online florist to technology enabler.

Wallander acknowledges as much. “We’re kind of getting more and more into the logistics space,” he told the Tech4Africa audience. The founders also revealed that they were in the midst of looking for A series funding to complement their investment from the dragons.

According to SA Florist, Zoom Bloom, is only marginally more expensive than its competitors’ limited same-day delivery options.