[The article has been updated with the announcement from A Better Florist].
According to their “We’re Sorry :(” blog post, they have issued a lengthy explanation on why their delivery system failed, noting that they had received a huge surge in orders as compared to the previous year, and despite working overtime and roping in extra help, they were still unable to the cope with the orders.
They have also included a link in the blog post where customers can fill out an expedited refund request.
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Valentine’s Day should be a day of heartwarming moments, spent with the people that you love from your significant others to family and friends.
But for some unfortunate locals, Valentine’s Day ended on a less romantic note when things started to go missing… specifically flowers.
As with every Valentine’s, it is not uncommon to have your orders surge days, maybe weeks, before the occasion as people starting buying roses by the bunches for their partners.
But excited as you may be for the business spike, it is also crucial that you be able to handle the spike, or things might just start looking a little less rosy.
Valentine’s Gone Missing
Early Vulcan Post readers might recognise A Better Florist from when we featured the startup’s co-founder Steve Feiner, post-resignation from Google Singapore.
Today’s Vulcan Post readers might recognise the company from when their flowers went missing on what was meant to be the most romantic day of the year.
According to their Facebook page, orders started going missing in the late afternoon, and for those that did arrive, flowers did not come in the most pristine of conditions.
It also certainly did not help when the startup deleted yesterday’s main thread of complaints from their Facebook page.
Safe to say that things were not looking good for the A Better Florist team by the time the complaints starting surging, but deleting comments is never an acceptable response.
So What Went Wrong?
It is likely that this was a case of biting of more than you can chew.
The startup built up a lot of Valentine’s Day hype pre-event with influencers and promotion campaigns, and in all likelihood they were not able to manage all the orders.
As of the moment, the team has yet to give a full explanation of what exactly went wrong, but have instead issued an apology message on their Facebook wall, apologising to Valentine bouquet customers.
On co-founder Steve Feiner’s Facebook page, he also reflected on how it had been a true nightmare of an occasion for the entire team.
But before we all start jumping onto the bandwagon of netizen slamming, we have to remember that the ones running around behind the startup brand are human too, and they are not infallible.
Granted, they might have not handled the Valentine’s fiasco as adeptly as they could have, but if you’ve read any of our previous startup stories, then you’d know that entrepreneurs are some of the hardest working people.
Before this event, the Singapore startup had a sterling reputation, unlike other brands we can name. And so if this event hit you hard, it definitely would have hit them even many more times worse, and their one-time faux pas is guaranteed to see rippling after-shocks.
We have reached out to A Better Florist and will update this article as we go along.
Featured Image Credit: A Better Florist Facebook, Vulcan Post.
