Bespoke gift delivery business, LVLY, has partnered with Hardie Grant Publishing to introduce books, puzzles and yoga cards to its gift offering for the first time.
Hannah Spilva, LVLY co-founder and CEO, says the collaboration with the Australian publishing giant was a natural fit and marks a new chapter for the business with a market-leading service offering.
“To me the combination of books and flowers just seems so natural and appealing―they’re both timeless and universally loved gifts,” she enthuses.
“We worked with the Hardie Grant team to curate a range of books and puzzles by incredible Australian authors and launched just in time for Mother’s Day. You can now bundle any of our beautiful Australian-grown flowers with a Beatrix Bakes Bakebook by pastry extraordinaire Natalie Paull, Rise and Shine yoga cards by visual artist Georgia Perry, and a 1,000-piece Diverse Women puzzle by contemporary Aboriginal artist from Goreng Goreng Country, Rachael Sarra.”
Founded in 2015, LVLY is a direct-to-consumer flower and gift delivery business offering same day delivery, seven days a week, across Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide, as well as national next day delivery.
“LVLY (pronounced lovely) is a collaboration between my business partner, Verity, and I. The idea for LVLY started with a purpose rather than a product. We wanted to build a business that would help keep loved ones connected and spread a bit of joy in the world.
“We were living away from home, missing friends and family, and saw an opportunity to create a flower and gift brand that bucked the trend of the red rose, fluffy teddy bear cliché. Our mission is to become Australia’s most loved and most used flower delivery service.”
In the early days one of the company’s biggest challenges was figuring out how to get its product out to people across the country. With a perishable and fragile product like flowers it’s a logistical nightmare.
“The solution was to develop our iconic ‘someone thinks you’re awesome’ packaging which allows us to safely ship fresh flowers through the postal network. We worked with flower and packaging experts around the world and were the first business in Australia to send flowers through the mail.”
The company has a big focus on locally sourced products. Spilva says that most people don’t realise that around 40 per cent of flowers sold in Australia are imported from overseas.
“Flowers can be in transit internationally for weeks, which not only creates a huge carbon footprint but also means nasty pesticides at border control and a reduced shelf life.
“At LVLY we are committed to sourcing locally, which means longer-lasting flowers for our customers, keeping Aussie flower farmers in business, and better outcomes for our planet. It’s our Paddock To Posy promise.”
The business experienced a 500 per cent sales increase in 2020 following the rise of e-commerce and delivery services off the back of national lockdowns.
“We learned so much from our rapid growth last year. People relied on us to help connect with loved ones in times of love, support and celebration. It feels like LVLY has never been more relevant or more required. With not much notice, people are having birthdays and weddings cancelled, and when you can’t physically ‘be there’ LVLY helps you turn up to support in a different way. It’s beautiful to play a part in keeping people together,” she enthuses.
To make sure they’re always available when their customers need them, they have extended their same-day delivery service to seven days a week and pushed back the order cut off to 5pm―customers can now order right up until 5pm and get their flowers by 9pm the same day.
“I’m grateful that Covid forced us to innovate our service offering and pushed us to try new things, we’re a better business as a result. In fact, our delivery offering is now world class, there’s no other online retailer in Australia doing what we’re doing.”
