House Floral: Growing Beyond Brick & Mortar with a Mobile App

After 15 years of building their brand around personal connections and in-store experiences, House Floral needed a way to bring their unique personality-driven shopping experience to customers' phones. 

With MobiLoud, they found a solution that let them maintain their carefully crafted brand while expanding their digital reach.

Key Takeaways

• Achieved 50-50 revenue split between retail and online channels
• Maintained 40% year-over-year online growth for consecutive years
• Successfully transitioned from previous app platform with zero customer disruption
• Extended their personalized shopping experience to mobile customers
• Leveraged push notifications for targeted engagement and cart recovery

The Personal Touch at Scale 

House Floral started as a brick-and-mortar business founded by three partners who believed that personality should be part of the product.

Jeremy Rice, co-founder of House Floral explains:

"We focused on the product but we started focusing on the three of us and our identities and really making us one of the products as well."

Their store became known as customers' "happy place" – somewhere they could visit for joy, color, and personal connection. 

While this model proved successful locally, they faced a challenge when considering expansion: how do you scale something built on personal relationships?

Jeremy added:

"We were approached by a lot of people about opening franchises or other stores in other cities but because we are part of the product, how do you duplicate that? That's when expanding online really helped – we can integrate ourselves into the marketing and maintain those connections."

Finding the Right Mobile Solution

After successfully building their online presence, House Floral knew they needed a mobile app to stay connected with customers. 

However, their first attempt with another platform created more problems than solutions.

Jeremy explains:

"I was taking all this time putting apps into Shopify, but with our previous app provider, it was so limited. If I did the work on Shopify and it was beautiful, when I went to the other platform it felt really clunky. I had to redo everything two or three times."

The maintenance burden became so significant that updates started slipping:

"I realized I hadn't changed any images on that platform in almost a year because I wasn't used to thinking about having different platforms! It was just too much work."

The MobiLoud Difference

What drew House Floral to MobiLoud was the seamless integration with their existing Shopify setup and the ability to maintain their brand experience.

"When I discovered MobiLoud, the ease with which changes on our site would automatically be reflected in the app was amazing. With the same price range as what we had been using, it was a no-brainer."

The transition process was smooth, with particular emphasis on maintaining their existing customer base.

"I didn't want customers to have to delete and re-download a new app. MobiLoud made that transition seamless."

Impact on Daily Operations

The switch to MobiLoud has dramatically simplified House Floral's digital operations.

Jeremy explains:

"Before, we were basically maintaining two separate stores. Now, any changes we make to our Shopify store automatically reflect in the app. It's saved us hours of repetitive work."

Push notifications have become a crucial tool for staying connected with customers.

"Having that direct line to customers is really important. When they abandon carts or first download the app, we can reach them instantly with relevant messages. We're careful not to overdo it – there's nothing worse than notification spam – but it lets us stay connected in a meaningful way."

The app has also transformed how customers shop with them. Regular customers particularly appreciate the improved navigation and filtering.

"People actually prefer using the app to shop and filter products. Just like I prefer using Wayfair's app over their website because the filtering works better, our customers find our app easier to navigate than the website."

Looking Forward

House Floral is leveraging their app as a cornerstone of their digital growth strategy. They're planning several initiatives:

• Expanding their live shopping features based on strong customer engagement
• Developing more sophisticated push notification strategies for different customer segments
• Integrating the app more deeply with their loyalty program
• Exploring new ways to bring their in-store personality to the digital experience

Jeremy added:

"We're seeing online and retail revenue split almost exactly 50-50 now, trading off each year who makes more. The app is becoming a crucial part of how we grow the online side while maintaining those personal connections that made our store successful in the first place."

"We've learned that you can scale personality-driven retail – you just need the right tools to do it. Having an app that feels as premium as any major retailer while still letting us be ourselves... that's been game-changing for us."

Curious about launching a mobile app for your retail brand like House Floral?

Get started with a free preview and see your store transformed into an app with:

• Seamless Shopify integration that maintains your brand experence and all features
• Push notifications for customer engagement and cart recovery
• Native mobile shopping experience for your best customers

We can have it ready in as little as 24 hours - no technical work or commitment required.