FNP Has Been Gearing Up For Gifting Season

FNP (formerly known as Ferns N Petals) will soon turn 30. The brand, synonymous with gifting in India, started as a single retail store in South Delhi. The founders decided to turn the brand into an organised player in the flower segment and do it with quality and scale. “Flowers are an integral part of feeling good and expressing love and emotion,” Avi Kumar, Chief Marketing Officer at FNP, tells us.

Through steady expansion, they marked their presence with 320 offline stores and by 2002, people could order their flowers online and have them delivered to different parts of the country. Soon, the brand added cakes, personalised gifts, clothing and accessories, decor and more to their roster, boasting a presence across 120 countries. 

Roots To Bloom

Considering that their highest-selling products like flower arrangements, cakes and plants have short shelf lives, operations need a lot of planning and acumen.  Analysis and forecasting are done to ensure the supply matches the demand. “Managing inventory at optimum levels is something we’ve learnt over a period of time.”

FNP runs an omnichannel model with a mix of COCO (Company Owned Company Operated) stores and franchisee outlets. Their operations are further supported by warehouses and dark stores, and they leverage the facilities of the q-com and e-com sites they’re listed with. 

“Consumers have become increasingly discerning today. They want the best quality at the best price, and most importantly, they want it delivered on time.” Avi tells us that their model makes it convenient for people to choose gifts, personalise them and deliver them on time.

Curating Experiences

When solving for the needs of a customer, today, brands need to go beyond delivering products. They need to understand the whole host of things a person expects from an experience. The fact that FNP products are bought as gifts makes the delivery experience even more pertinent. 

It starts with the ease of finding a gift, then curating gifts for value-conscious customers, getting that gift delivered on time and finally, looking into how the product gets delivered. “While there are certain products we send out in special boxes through courier, we have a fleet of specialised delivery guys who deliver these products themselves.”

The Changing Face Of Celebration 

Avi points out an interesting phenomenon about the increasing number of occasions for gifting. Apart from the big celebrations like birthdays and anniversaries, occasions like Mother’s and Father’s Day have also become bigger. 

There is also a rise in extremely personalised, quirky gifting. “There are situations where somebody has been given a pat on the back by their manager, and a colleague has sent them a special flower.” Uniqueness and personalisation are a mainstay. 

Rakhi 2024

“We start our Rakhi planning a year in advance, and the tagline for this year is: Door ho ya paas, Rakhi banayein khaas,” Avi claims that FNP is among the largest rakhi e-tailers across the globe. “We’ve been sending out sibling love for many years now. People trust us to send out their rakhis.”

FNP works with certain artisan guilds year after year. Their internal design team works together with the artisans, and then they procure the rakhis from them. “You’ll find these exclusive rakhi designs on our site along with a mix of third-party products.”

Wrapping Up

Their gifting categories extend from ‘fresh’, which includes flowers, plants and cakes; ‘gourmet’ for their private label of chocolates, mithai and baklava; ‘fashion and accessories’ for clothing, bags and jewellery; and ‘home and living’ for home decor, mugs, photo frames, lamps etc. 

Since the brand cannot specialise in every kind of gift, they’ve essentially turned into an e-commerce aggregator, providing customers with the best of branded products like Khadi Natural, Lindt, Daily Objects, Cookieman and more to curate gifts for special occasions. “Our objective is to continue to innovate to make the gifting experience convenient, personalised and delightful,” Avi concludes.