Key Takeaways The Bouqs is an online flower startup that was rejected by Shark Tank investors in 2014.
Since then, the startup has expanded to over $100 million in annual revenue.
The Bouqs’ primary growth strategies are a flexible subscription engine and a selective shift into brick-and-mortar stores.
When The Bouqs Company walked off Shark Tank without a deal in 2014, the online flower startup looked like another reality TV disappointment. Instead, the business quietly kept building, ultimately crossing $100 million in annual revenue last year by reinventing how flowers are sourced, sold and subscribed to.
The Bouqs story starts long before the company appeared on Shark Tank. Co‑founders John Tabis and Juan Pablo “JP” Montúfar met at Notre Dame, connecting around a shared frustration with the traditional floral industry. The two founded The Bouqs in 2012 and designed the company to ship bouquets directly from farms to customers’ doors. The choice cut out middlemen and pushed against legacy models, where orders bounce from website to wholesalers to local florists.
“Selling flowers online is not a brand-new concept, but the challenge with some of the other players in this space has always been that they are more of a wire service, so you can order on the site, but they don’t know what the inventory is of any local florist at any time,” The Bouqs CEO Kim Tobman explains in a new interview with Entrepreneur. “So what you order online might not be what you get from the local florist.”
The Bouqs set out to address that concern and make sure that what you order is what you get. If a customer loves lilies, that’s what shows up. If they want orange roses, that’s what they get.
By the time Tabis appeared on Shark Tank in 2014, The Bouqs had already logged $700,000 in sales in its first year. The Sharks balked at his ask of $285,000 for 3% and questioned everything from margins to the name. Every Shark passed, and Tabis left without a deal.
The exposure was ultimately good for the brand — and one Shark, Robert Herjavec, later invested in the company after recognizing its value. Herjavec reached out to The Bouqs to do his wedding flowers in 2016 and later made an undisclosed investment in the company based on his positive experience. A year later, Mark Cuban called The Bouqs the one deal he regretted not making. By 2019, The Bouqs had secured $55 million in funding and expanded to 80 employees. Today, the company has scaled to over $100 million in revenue.
Subscription model
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