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Flower Subscription Service Launches in Atlanta
Sometimes making your significant other, parent or even friend happy is a daunting task, but Gillian Harper says she knows what women want and she’s found a simple way for men to give it to them.
Despite men making up 35 percent of the flower buying market — a $10.5 billion a year industry, according to Real Men Buy Flowers — a majority of florists and online subscription services don’t cater to them, according to Harper. Atlanta-based startup Real Men Buy Flowers, which launched Aug. 14, not only targets those of us with Y chromosomes but simplifies the process by limiting the amount of options.
“The standard man, who doesn’t understand the power flowers possess over women, find the endless parade of choices too overwhelming and ultimately lead to decision fatigue,” Harper said. “Most guys can’t tell the difference between a peony and a carnation – let alone know what flower is right for each woman or occasion.”
The idea for Real Men Buy Flowers spawned while Harper was watching old clips of Jerry Seinfeld’s stand-up. During one of his routine’s, Seinfeld joked about how men are incapable of comprehending how much women enjoy receiving flowers. Once the idea took hold, Harper partnered with Hadi Irvani, Kenan Hill and Tony Prescott to create Real Men Buy Flowers.
“We know our husbands, boyfriends and partners truly want to make us happy and find small ways of showing us how much they appreciate all that we do,” she said. “Even though men think we are complex creatures, we are usually not that complicated and it is the simple, little things, that truly make it clear that we are thought of and cared for.”
In an effort to relieve confusion, stress and fear some men have when buying flowers, Real Men Buy Flowers limits the amount of buying decisions and designates bouquets for occasions from “anniversary,” “birthday,” “I’m sorry,” “just because,” “get lucky” and “any woman, any occasion,” as well as special options for Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day. The biggest decision men will have to make is what size bouquet to buy, which is still limited to three options.
“We discovered that women wanted their gift flowers for major life occasions (birthday, Valentine’s, anniversary, Mother’s Day, etc),” she said. “But also, 92 percent of women say the best reason to receive flowers is ‘just because.’ So we created the ultimate subscription.”
Software company plans to expand in Midtown
Itential, an automated networking software company, has announced it will expand its headcount in Atlanta as the demand for its services increase around the world.
Recent hire Kristen Rachels, vice president of marketing, said the software firm is hoping to expand by 50 or more people within the next 6 to 12 months with a primary focus on growth in Atlanta. The company currently has around 90 employees, 70 percent of whom work in Atlanta.
“I am hiring two people immediately in marketing right now but we’re hiring really across everything from engineering to product management to delivery to sales to marketing,” she said.
The firm, located in Midtown, hopes to keep its headquarters and growth in the city, Rachels said. The city, one of the largest hubs for fiber optic networks in the world and home to one of the largest data centers in the world, is the perfect place to focus that growth, she said.
“We’re really passionate and excited about founding and growing the skill sets here in Atlanta and building global awareness and skill sets on automation software and networking,” she said.
From the 5G on our phones to streaming Netflix, we generally don’t think about how we get our data and how it’s maintained, she said, which is actually quite complex compared to other tech such as cloud computing.
“The network, how it’s managed and operated, it’s still a very manual, kludgy process,” she said. “They refer to it as ‘swivel chairing,’ the action of managing the network and it’s moving between multiple complex applications…and steps to create just a single path to ensure the network stays running, and it’s powerful enough to power your life.”
Six out of the 10 largest service providers in the world and three of the top five financial service institutions use the software provided by Itential, Rachels said. Their expansion is due to increased demand for their services as network management becomes more vital in our tech-oriented world. The company has raised a total of $5.5 million in part by Austin VC since being founded in 2014, according to Crunchbase.
