began to close stores when leases expired. By 2008,
the company was down to two locations—its original
flagship location in Marietta and another, which,
eventually, was also closed.
While Carithers consolidated the company's real-
estate holdings, he also adapted to ecommerce and
invested in online efforts, focusing on building the
company's online presence with SEO and social
media. at shift fundamentally changed the way
Carithers Flowers does business today.
While delivery costs increased as the company
shuttled more flowers around the highly congested
Atlanta metroplex, the savings from commercial
rents more than offset those increases. To make
doing business with the store easier, Carithers
Flowers started delivering items such as corsages and
boutonnières for free. Rather than having to drop by
a nearby location to pick up their orders, customers
could have these items delivered to their doors.
"e business model we have now is completely
different," Carithers explains. "It used to be that
customers would call to order flowers, and we would
create custom arrangements for them. But we found
that customers preferred to see pictures online,
probably due to the increase in online shopping.
People are now conditioned to shop this way. ey
want to order from a picture because they feel like
they know what they are getting. We fought it at first,
but, eventually, we evolved and realized we needed to
put all of our brand images online.
Extra Features and Video Online FloristsReview.com
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