1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Inc. minted non-fungible tokens (NFTs) containing original, digital floral artwork (one example of which is seen here) and held a Mother’s Day sweepstakes to give them away. The company and one NFT expert believe NFTs have applications in the floral industry. Artwork courtesy of 1-800-FLOWERS.COM.
Your customers might soon need to give two floral gifts to a recipient for a special occasion — one for the real world, and another for the virtual one.
This year, 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Inc. released a new offering for Mother’s Day — non-fungible tokens (NFTs) containing original, digital floral artwork and held a sweepstakes to give them away.
“We want to help our customers build meaningful relationships, whether in person or virtually,” says Jason John, chief marketing officer of 1-800-FLOWERS.COM. “Our NFT collections blend the physical and virtual worlds, bringing heartfelt sentiments into the virtual environment.”
NFTs contain unique digital assets — such as artwork, music, or videos — in a blockchain, which serves as a shared ledger to track ownership. The digital assets in an NFT may only exist digitally, or the digital asset may represent ownership of a physical object. NFTs can be bought and sold on a secondary marketplace, but they cannot be replicated. Unlike cryptocurrencies, they cannot be traded or exchanged at equivalencies. Like art or collectibles, the value of an NFT is determined by the market.
1-800-FLOWERS.COM chose to test out NFTs to gauge consumer interest and stay ahead of the curve, John says. It also gave the company an opportunity to explore the possibilities of using the Web3 platform (the idea of a new type of decentralized internet service built using blockchains) and experiment with how the technology could be used by the floral industry.
“We need to be where our customers are going next,” John says. “…It is vital for any retailer to stay ahead of tech trends that could impact the customer experience, and even more so for companies like ours focused on the gift-giving experience as well as the recipient experience.”
The response to the contest was “overwhelmingly positive,” John says. There were thousands of entries, and the company saw a ten-fold increase in Twitter engagement, where news of the NFT mint was first announced. The sweepstakes’ grand prize was flowers for a mom for a year.
Merav Ozair, Ph.D., blockchain expert and FinTech professor at Rutgers Business School, says that the more industries and companies see the value in NFTs, the more mainstream they will become. NFTs are appealing to businesses because they are authenticated on the blockchain and can’t be duplicated, unlike digital artwork, photos or videos uploaded to social media platforms, which can be downloaded, shared, etc.
“The whole idea is that the NFT concept really opens up a lot of business models that we couldn’t have before the blockchain technology,” Ozair says.
Although she doesn’t work with floral companies, she sees potential for NFTs in the floral industry. For instance, as the metaverse — a virtual-reality space in which users can interact with a computer-generated environment and other users — grows, florists could offer virtual flowers, Ozair suggested.
“You’re going to have a physical space and a virtual space,” Ozair says. “And you’re going to have NFT flowers and you’re going to have real flowers.”
Or, florists could offer an NFT for each arrangement sent out the door, Ozair says.
“You can create an NFT for every time you send the real bouquet and have a collection of all the bouquets that ever received over, say, the year,” she says. The NFT of the virtual flowers could also include a special note to the recipient, almost like a virtual greeting card.
1-800-FLOWERS.COM is exploring similar possibilities.
“We believe that relationships matter, and we’re continually focused on creating unique ways for customers to engage with each other and with our family of brands,” John says. “We’re still at the very early stages of understanding the opportunities and challenges associated with Web3 platforms, including NFTs, but we’re excited to explore this and more as we work to define the future of gifting. ”
Nicole Stempak is a contributing writer for the Society of American Florists.
