Fashion and florals often go hand in hand, but finding blooms that truly match your individual style, vision and mood can seem like a near impossible task. Enter Kellie Brown’s Fig & Bloom, a unique floral offering that put a luxury feel to modern blooms. With a background in fashion, working at a range of iconic, well-known brands, Brown would take her expertise into a completely new industry, floral design. In the years since, Fig & Bloom has become famed for its signature aesthetic, one rooted in Brown’s love of fashion. Basically, enter any Fig & Bloom boutique in Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane and you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d entered a luxe, designer store.
As part of Her Black Book’s The List, we spoke to Brown about Fig & Bloom’s success, core values, and of course, what it takes to build a successful brand.
“Some aspects of our original vision remain, like our focus on fashionable florals that move with the times. But our earliest vision was to develop a luxury flower subscription service for people who, like us, are fussy about flowers. What we discovered, and this is back in 2015 mind you, is that people are not willing to indulge themselves with high-end florals. They are content to buy a bunch of tulips from the local farmer's market but won't invest in a designer arrangement to style and decorate their home. And so while we have always offered a flower subscription service, we still find even to this day that customers are sending the subscription to somebody else as a gift.”
“We are still the only flower brand that sends each and every customer a photo of their order. One reason we do this is obvious — it's our way of standing behind the quality of each every bouquet that departs our studio. But the other reason is our commitment to what we call ‘the sender experience’. We believe the person paying for the flowers should have a beautiful floral experience, just like the recipient. Seeing the flowers is half the fun (the other half is smelling them)!”
“This is a hard question to answer but we would like think it's because of our consistency. In the seven years since Fig & Bloom first blossomed onto the scene, there has been a huge evolution of the flower retail market. With the success of Shopify & Instagram, so many more talented florists have been able to begin selling their creations online. But to this day, there isn't any other flower brand in Australia that can deliver high-end, fashionable florals to Melbourne, Sydney & Brisbane.”
“Oh gosh, we've made all the mistakes! But it comes with the territory of being an aspirational company. Three of our core values as a company (we have five) are (1) dream big, (2) embrace learning & growth, and (3) enjoy the journey. These three are all complementary.”
“Embrace learning and growth because achieving grand ambitious doesn't happen without personal learning, evolution & growth. And enjoy the journey because when dream big the truth is most time is spent trying, and failing. We believe in finding happiness by on the journey, it's not just about the destination. Or as Michelle Obama recently put it ‘becoming is better than being’.
"Our biggest mistake then? Taking four years to discover our core values! When you know who you are as a brand, it's easier to find your tribe and develop a living, breathing, thriving culture as a company."
“Passion, patience and persistence. And while it doesn't also start with the letter P, ‘Consistency’ is paramount. When you're consistent as a brand, when every day you clearly articulate your promise and you live up to it, that is what people appreciate. We want there to be zero gap between what customers expect, and what we deliver.”
