1-800-Flowers.com acquires livestream platform
1-800-Flowers.com is expanding its experiential offerings.
The specialty gift retailer has purchased Alice’s Table, a provider of fully digital and curated livestreaming floral, culinary, and other experiences to public event attendees, as well as to private and corporate clients across the country.
This expansion reflects the company’s strategic focus on developing immersive experiences, engaging content, and interactive events, as well as embracing entrepreneurial concepts that help deepen relationships with customers and create a real sense of community.
Launched in 2015 by Alice Lewis, Alice’s Table began by hosting in-person floral arranging events in homes and venues throughout the U.S. It pivoted to a purely digital model in 2020, when it began collaborating with 1-800-Flowers.com and the 1-800-Flowers.com-owned Harry & David brand to scale experiences in order to provide interactive events, such as designing floral arrangements and creating charcuterie boards, to a broader audience of both large and small groups.
Currently, Alice’s Table offers approximately 10 step-by-step workshop themes for public event attendees to choose from each month, with new themes designed and introduced seasonally.
1-800-Flowers is becoming a more digitally oriented company. In October, the retailer launched a new business-to-business solution called Hero, based on technology from SmartGift. Hero, an intelligent enterprise engagement and gifting platform, is now integrated into the 1-800-Flowers.com corporate gifting website. The solution also provides features including same-day delivery and address-less shipping capabilities, customization offerings, and white-glove service.
1-800-Flowers.com also recently completed the migration of its e-commerce platform and other services to Google Cloud. This included moving many workloads from its on-premises data centers to its Google Cloud environment, scaling both horizontally and vertically.
Since the migration, the retailer has developed efficient processes to launch new brands, improved the customer experience across all brands, and seen significantly increased site traffic.
“In our continuous efforts to inspire more human expression, connection, and celebration, 1-800-Flowers.com. is always looking to see what the entrepreneurial community is developing that will bring inspiration to our world,” said Dinesh Popat, president, 1-800-Flowers.com. “Our collaboration with Alice’s Table began right at the beginning of the pandemic, and since then it has given more than 80,000 people the opportunity to celebrate their creative capabilities -- and have some fun! Alice and her team’s passion for bringing customers unforgettable events aligns perfectly with our company’s vision. As we move forward, our focus will be on developing additional experiential concepts with Alice’s Table, creating even more exciting new ways for customers to engage with our family of brands -- and with each other.”
“I am so proud of this tremendous moment of growth for the Alice’s Table brand,” said Alice Lewis, who will remain with the company as president of Alice’s Table. “The 1-800-Flowers.com Inc. team has given us such incredible support over the past two years in helping us bring best-in-class virtual experiences to people coast-to-coast. This next phase in our relationship will allow us to expand our reach to millions of new customers and to deliver more of the next generation experiences our guests have come to love.”
Terms of the acquisition were not released.
The 1-800-Flowers.com Inc. platform features brands including 1-800-Flowers.com, 1-800-Baksets.com, Cheryl’s Cookies, Harry & David, PersonalizationMall.com, Shari’s Berries, FruitBouquets.com, Moose Munch, The Popcorn Factory, Wolferman’s Bakery, and Simply Chocolate.