The flower startups helping the industry blossom

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” – William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet.

Indeed the smell of a fresh rose is divine, and even with a hideous name, it would change nothing. In all aspects of our lives flowers are a wonderful gift for birthdays, anniversaries or weddings, this has remained constant for many years. However, startups and technology working with flowers are rapidly changing and enhancing the many ways we buy and use flowers.

According to Digital Journal, unique startup from Israel is entering the U.S. to help American farmers improve crop yields by deploying new technology that maximizes bee pollination. BeeHero strives to help bees by monitoring the health of the hive itself. The startup has partnered with three of the largest commercial beekeepers in the U.S. to put simple IoT sensors into beehives to monitor more than 25 different factors (humidity, Colony Collapse Disorder, no queen, and so on). With this technique, the buzzing startup can predict hive issues before colonies are destroyed.

Also in the US, down in Atlanta, one startup hopes to encourage more men to buy flowers. The flower industry is worth $10.5 billion a year, and while men make up 35 percent of the flower-buying market, many florists and online subscription services don’t cater to them. Atlanta-based startup Real Men Buy Flowers plans on changing this.

In order to simplify the stressful process, Real Men Buy Flowers limits the amount of buying decisions and designates bouquets for occasions such as “anniversary,” “birthday,” “I’m sorry,” “just because,” and “any woman, any occasion,” along with special options for Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day. As a result, the most pressing decision a man will have to make is what size bouquet to buy, which is limited to three options. The startup offers a one-time purchase, or a year-long subscription, reports Bizjournals.

The idea that flowers make a great gift is nothing new, however, this traditional gift does have one big drawback, a very short life span. Even if well preserved, flowers only last a few days or weeks at best. Fortunately there is a startup to solve this age old problem.

In a recent interview with Gigastartups, Hani Al-Hajari, the founder of Flower Secret, a service provider on a mission to change and improve the flower preservation process for the bridal bouquet industry, explains what they are doing to help give flowers a little more longevity.

“Nano Freeze technology freezes and halts enzymatic reactions within the flower cell on a microscopic level. This alters the chemical properties of each flower and stops the rusting process, thus, ensuring that the bouquet never loses its structure. NanoFreeze technology process has 7 steps to preserve the flowers tissue from inside out by applying 2 different treatments at different layers,” states Al-Hajari.

He adds: “We spent more than 10 years to reach the current developed technology. We focused to improve the preservation process over the years. We started our R & D in our small lab to develop new preservation process in 2005. In 2008, we succeed to introduce our first-generation preservation process. This process was good for mass production and to produce preserved flowers that last for a few years. In 2009, the second-generation process was developed which was suitable for bridal flowers hand bouquet. In second generation process, we succeeded to extend the life of flowers much longer. We utilized the recent development in nanoscience to improve our preservation. This is leading us to develop NanoFreeze technology which is considered as our third-generation process in 2017.”

Clearly the flower industry has a bright future ahead with many startups working hard to make sure this industry blossoms.

Disclosure: This article includes a client of an Espacio portfolio company