From Zero to Millionaire: The Incredible Journey of Aron Gelbard, Co-founder of Bloom & Wild

Aron Gelbard, 40, ordered some snacks through the mail, then wondered if he could sell flowers through the mailbox.

He co-founded Bloom & Wild in February 2013 with former fund manager Ben Stanway, 41, using £30,000 in savings. Turnover has risen from £400,000 in 2014 to £145 million in the 2021-22 financial year. Always popular are bouquets with roses and peonies, and small Christmas trees.

Today the Bloom & Wild Group, based in Vauxhall, South London, employs over 400 people and operates three brands in the UK and seven European countries. These are Bloom & Wild, bloomon and Bergamotte. It has offices in Amsterdam and Paris and flower shops in France, the Netherlands and Germany, as well as Nuneaton, UK.

Did you think you would get to where you are?
I am pleasantly surprised that I was able to build a business of this scale, but I have always hoped to work for myself.

My dad has been an entrepreneur for 50 years, now in plastic recycling, and three of my grandparents had their own businesses. When I was a teenager my father had a difficult time in his business, so I understood firsthand the responsibility one has.

That’s why I went to college and worked in consulting. He was more risk averse than my father, who dropped out of college after his freshman year. I didn’t want to do that. I spent 10 years improving my education and work experience.

I chose to sell flowers because I was always disappointed every time I tried to order them online as a gift. With flowers, it’s important to me that the recipient never feels disappointed. He hadn’t worked with flowers before. I have learned along the way, from very creative florists.

Has the coronavirus pandemic affected your business?
Yes, in a positive way. Commercially, people sending flowers as gifts was a substitute for giving people hugs. With massive customer demand for flowers, the size of the business tripled in the first year of Covid. We didn’t need to suspend anyone, but we did face challenges.

We had no idea if we would still be able to get the flowers, especially from the Netherlands. We didn’t know if our warehouses or the producers could continue. We needed to fill millions of unexpected orders and had to hire another 50 employees.

Did you need to diversify to survive?
No. The pandemic gave us the opportunity to focus on our core business. There were many more “thinking of you” and “just because” messages sent with our flowers. Many of our customers are women who give gifts to their close friends, mothers, and grandmothers, and that remains true. Our flowers gave a lot of pleasure to the recipients who were self-isolating. The average spend was the same: £30 to £40.

Was your first £1 million a major milestone?
Until the pandemic, we deliberately allowed the business to make small losses every year, to prioritize growth over profitability. However, once the lockdowns came, we made a profit of £26m in the year to March 2021. We reinvested this sum in growth, partly through acquisitions in the Netherlands and France to strengthen our presence on the continent. .

I was aware of how lucky we were at such a terrible time for many. So we supported those in need, donating to the National Emergencies Trust Coronavirus Appeal, and then we started our partnership with the Carers Trust.

In December 2020, when we first knew we would be profitable, we raised £75 million in equity financing from General Catalyst and Index Ventures.

Has it been difficult for you to hire staff in the last few months?
It’s been difficult in areas like data and software engineering, because of the demand for that skill set in the UK. We try to create a positive culture and good career progression and eventually find the right people. Sometimes it takes months longer than we would like.

Are you planning for the tough times ahead?
Some consumers buy flowers less frequently. Our goal is to expand what we sell by adding standalone gifts other than flowers. We are diversifying our range, taking into account people’s low disposable income. We offer chocolates, cookies, brownies, diffusers and scented candles.

We want to give people more choice, especially male recipients, which hasn’t been our focus until now. I am very satisfied with the initial response.

What did you have to sacrifice to start the business?
I walked away from a high paying job and a comfortable lifestyle. I gave up my rented flat, moved in with my then girlfriend (now wife) and we share the rent. During the first year I had no salary. Changed my office and PA to meter mailboxes and 6am start at New Covent Garden flower market.

Ben and I spent weeks measuring over 1,000 mailboxes to get an idea of ​​the size of packaging we would need. We found that we could design a box that would fit 90 percent of letterboxes and would fit a generous bouquet, with traditional flowers like roses and freesias, and eucalyptus foliage.

What was the most challenging period of your career?
For me it was the first year of Bloom & Wild. He was doing something that might not even work, and he had just proposed to Caroline, so he was trying to think ahead. The moment I knew we were onto something big was our first Mother’s Day in 2014. I had to process over 1,000 orders, compared to dealing with 100-200 orders in a typical week. I realized that we would need to invest in further automating our system. That’s what made me want to create custom technology for our business, which we started in 2014.

What is your basic business philosophy?
We strongly believe that satisfied customers, as measured by customer review scores, correlate with loyalty and business growth.

We have created technology that calculates, using data from our courier services such as Royal Mail and DPD, where our flowers may not arrive on time for occasions such as Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day. If this is a possibility, we send replacement flowers in advance despite the additional cost, to avoid leaving recipients empty-handed on the big day.

We have other technology that analyzes all customer reviews to identify the themes behind positive and negative feedback so we can address issues immediately. If we have 5,000 customer reviews and 200 are unfavorable, technology helps us track the most common words and which bouquets were ordered. Assuming the problem was the lilies not opening, we would contact the grower to fix things.

Do you believe in leaving everything to your family?
No, I don’t, but I do have a will that I wrote at 35. While I believe it is essential to leave my family well provided for, I wanted to start giving to charity now, rather than putting this in my will.

In 2021, I personally donated a significant sum to 10 charities through the Founders Pledge, an organization that helps business founders give something back. I’m proud to support FareShare, which redistributes food that would otherwise go to waste. I have also helped causes that are doing humanitarian work in Ukraine.

Do you want to continue until you fall?
I don’t want to retire. I really enjoy my job, and there is still a lot we can achieve. Two-thirds of our business is in the UK, but we can really change the gift experience for people in our other seven European countries. We operate in the largest flower markets in Europe: the UK, Germany, France, the Netherlands and Belgium. I would rather grow our business in these countries than expand elsewhere.

Have you made any pension forecast?
I don’t have a pension. As the founder and main shareholder of the company, my financial profile is different from that of a pure employee, who is automatically enrolled in a pension. I take a lower salary, but I have an appreciable asset.

Earlier in my career, I had to pay for my MBA, over £100,000. When I was a consultant, I got into a lot of debt to go to business school. He wanted to prioritize paying that off over a long-term pension. So with every job I took, I opted out of the pension plan.