💐 A bouquet of lessons from 1-800-Flowers

Happy Trends Tuesday (oh, and Valentine’s Day 💘)!

Today we’ve got:

• 1 strategy deep dive
• 1 piece of operator wisdom 
• 1 startup you should know about

Let's get to it.

🎯 STRATEGY DEEP DIVE

Valentine’s Day got us thinking about companies that are built around holidays. But how do these businesses make money the rest of the year?

We went deep on 1-800-Flowers to learn how they drive revenue outside of popular flower days:

Some key lessons:

1. Create recurring revenue products: 1-800-Flowers created an annual loyalty program and subscriptions that include monthly flower and food deliveries. These programs have consistently grown year after year at “strong, double-digit rates.”
   
   
2. Diversify product offerings: Back in 2008, the majority of 1-800-Flowers’ revenue came from flower arrangements. Now, the biggest earners are gourmet food and gift baskets. Their family of 17 brands offer everything from steaks to personalized keepsakes.
   
   
3. Expand the customer base: 1-800-Flowers pushed into B2B with a corporate gifting arm, a platform for professional florists, and partnerships with AAA, AARP, and others.

🧠 OPERATOR WISDOM

Trends member Yash Chavan brought in $300k+ revenue from influencer marketing using what he calls the Influencer Barbell Strategy (no, not the one for getting swole or asset allocation).

Instead of doing deals with small, medium, or mega-influencers (and potentially wasting his budget), he focuses on two extremes:

• Nano-influencers: People with <20k followers, who drive small but consistent traffic.
  
  
• Whales: People with 1m+ followers, which improve the odds of going viral.

This approach lets him make more small bets while creating space for those lightning-in-a-bottle viral hits – similar to a unicorn that returns an entire VC fund.

Plus, some of those small bets will take off, and that momentum helps him close more whales – a beautiful cycle.

He recommends starting with 90% of your budget focused on nano-influencers, then dialing that to an 80/20 split as resources allow. 

🤝 ACTIVATE YOUR NETWORK

🔥 STARTUP YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT

Who needs a valentine when you can wrap yourself in a cozy sweater made from… human hair? It’s a jump scare, but it might also be key to the future of sustainable textiles.

The fashion industry accounts for more CO₂ emissions than international flights and shipping combined. Yikes.

Human Material Loop is fighting that problem with another problem: as much as 158m pounds of human hair waste ends up in landfills or incinerators in Europe.

The Hustle blog squad broke down how they’re using those clippings to build the wardrobe of the future. 

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