Thanks to a big, vibrant branded Botanica International tote bag, a beaming bride, en route to her honeymoon, lets all her fellow travelers know who styled her wedding.
Walking through an airport terminal or grocery aisle, it’s hard to miss Botanica International’s jumbo-sized kelly green tote bag with the company’s name and cymbidium orchid logo.
Botanica, based in Tampa and Orlando, Florida, uses these not-so-subtle bags to deliver brides’ and grooms’ personal flowers, then leaves them with the bride as a little wedding present. The bride hauls the bag off on her honeymoon and later on errands around town, all the while advertising for her favorite florist.
Brad and Cheryl Denham, owners of Arizona Family Florist, used a similar strategy to grow their wedding line (called LuxFlorist). Back in 2011, they began affixing the Lux logo, which appears in a color that immediately implies luxury (Tiffany blue), and tagline (“Live. Love. Lux.”) on about every item they could think of, including trucks, banners, folders, pens, polo shirts and water bottles.
By 2012, the Denhams nearly doubled the number of weddings they booked a year (from 57 to 112) and increased their annual wedding revenue by nearly a factor of six ($38,000 to $225,000). As a bonus, Arizona Family Florist’s retail sales increased 41 percent. Their branding efforts and spectacular growth earned Lux the title of Floral Management’s Marketer of the Year in 2012.
“We have a lot of seasoned wedding vendors tell us it’s like we came out of nowhere,” Lux manager Katie Easley told Floral Management editor in chief Kate Penn in a 2012 interview. “It’s because of our very strategic, specific mega branding.” For the full story, check out “Lux Gets the Ladies.”
