Why We Invested in The Colvin Co. 🌻

WHAT DO THEY DO?

The Colvin Co. is a cut-to-order flower delivery service based in Barcelona. The startup is seeking to change the way people purchase flowers online by providing its customers with an intermediary-free product with quality assurance and a competitive price.

Flowers are a notoriously expensive product, and unfortunately the quality of each bouquet upon delivery tends to vary significantly. This is a pain that the guys at Colvin Co. recognised immediately and have invested all their resources into fixing; they’re offering beautifully designed, premium quality flowers for around 25 euros per bouquet with free delivery and 100% assurance on freshness!

WHY DID WE INVEST IN THEM?

TEAM, TEAM, TEAM 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦

Andrés, Marc, and Sergi met each other at their alma mater, ESADE Business School, in Barcelona, and were co-founders at a previous floral startup.

• Andrés, CEO, has a history in entrepreneurship; he started his first floral startup, AG Roses, at just 18. Andrés gained tremendous experience working at Citibank in their investment banking division.
• Marc, CMO, co-founded AG Roses back in the day and ran the sales and strategy divisions. He got to train his strategic skills and abilities during his career at Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK).
• Sergi, COO, was also a founding partner of AG Roses. He is passionate about entrepreneurship and an operations killer! He gained significant understanding and admiration for the ever-evolving tech industry whilst he worked at Amazon.

The role differentiation in the management of the startup makes for a fantastic fit. They all have a cavernous understanding of the product and market and, more importantly, they’re driven by passion!

In a matter of just a few months, they’ve proven to obtain admirable traction levels, however the ambitious trio seek to continuously outdo themselves to truly set a benchmark in the industry.

MARKET OPPORTUNITY

By eliminating the need for storage, Colvin Co. can deliver long-lasting and inexpensive flowers as they don’t need to account for the ludicrous wastage levels. After thorough research, here are a few trends we’ve detected:

• The Southern-European cut-flower market represents +€9.0 billion.
• Currently, nobody connects flowers with a brand; we see an opportunity to build a brand within a current commoditized product.
• The industry is seeing a rapid switch from offline to online; in Spain, it represents 10% and is growing by the day!
• The offline industry is heavily saturated and experiencing limited growth.
• Global trend towards fair trade and organic flowers.
• Overpriced offline market, as offline florists increase their retail price in order to compensate for the significant wastage levels from the unsold products.
• Lifestyle brands successfully consolidating among millennials.

BORN ON THE WEB! 👶

A DNVB (digitally-native-vertical-brand) is a brand, who’s primary source of interaction is through the web. A DNVB may expand beyond the web, i.e. into brick-and-mortar, however the brand must always have a frantic focus on customer experience and customer intimacy.

The Colvin Co. is looking to disrupt the floral industry by transforming the way people purchase flowers. What makes them stand out is that they work day by day to improve supply chain efficiency and connect with growers to deliver ‘farm-to-table’ products.

The Colvin Co. is a fantastic example of the unavoidable and inevitable digitalization of offline industries!

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED 💪

We are truly overjoyed to welcome them to the SV family! We want to help The Colvin Co. become the reference brand for cut-to-order flowers in Southern Europe. So, the next time you think of flowers, think of Colvin 🌸

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‍At Samaipata, we are always looking for ways to improve. Do not hesitate to send us your thoughts. We strive to partner with early-stage founders and to support them in taking their business to the next level. Check out more ways in which we can help here or for all our other content here.‍

‍And as always, if you’re a European digital business founder looking for Seed funding, please send us your deck here or subscribe to our Quarterly updates here.

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