Business For Sale

The island's only flower shop is for sale for the first time. Main street location with plenty of parking. Huge growth potential in the wedding and event market.
Waiheke Flower Company Ltd was founded by the vendor on 1st October 2000. She had secured the lease on a high profile retail tenancy in the main street of Oneroa in order to develop the original home based business into a thriving florist shop. This she has done with great success over the past eight years. The Waiheke Flower Company is the only florist on the island and enjoys a reputation for a high standard of its flowers and floral arrangements.

Growth
There has been natural growth in the cut flowers segment as the island’s population has increased but Lotta has developed two aspects of the business, gifts and weddings, to take advantage of the marketing of Waiheke as a tourist and wedding destination.
The tourist market, while increasing, tends to ebb and flo with the seasons. By contrast the wedding market seems to be on a constantly expanding path because Waiheke is perceived as a romantic island and therefore the perfect place for a wedding. Currently the business handles around 70 weddings a year but this is a relatively small proportion of the over 1000 weddings estimated to take place each year on the island (see below under business opportunities). This market therefore has good growth potential and has been to date an area the vendor personally does not enjoy with the result that this source of income is underexploited.

Business Strategy
In the short term the strategy has been to increase business slowly without taking on any significant debt burden to finance expansion, which has largely been funded from cash flow. This has meant a hands-on approach but has allowed the owner to reduce the number of hours worked in the shop as she has been able to employ more staff. She has two part-time staff who can be called on to help during busy days, especially for weddings, and one full-time employee, who is a European trained florist.

The long-term strategy was to have an Event Management arm to the business which would be the central player in organizing and providing services to weddings and events as new venues came on stream and established venues expanded. The vendor had a partner in this venture as far back as 2000 but the partnership broke up and she has chosen not to pursue this strategy further. However, it is undoubtedly the area of the business with the greatest potential.

The business would suit a couple where one partner had the flair with flowers and gifts and the other had the planning and managements skills to bring together all aspects of Event management. If these skills did not exist in one person or a partnership an investor with good people management skills could employ the skills needed to turn this into a lucrative and thriving growth business building on the high reputation of the existing company.

Business Overview
•The business has an excellent reputation locally.
•Location on the busiest main street in the largest village on Waiheke.
•Good on and off street parking in front of and to the side of the building.
•No other florist shop on the island
•Interflora membership
•Flexible employment arrangements with experienced staff
•The new owner needs to have an Interflora qualification or be able to pay a staff member to train as an Interflora qualified florist so that the referrals from Interflora are retained
•Systems are in place that allocate revenue to profit centres.
•The lack of a secure lease is both a positive and negative. The owners of the building are reviewing how they might upgrade the current premises. This may or may not happen depending on their ability to secure increased access to the reticulated sewage system owned by Auckland City. It is currently said to be at full capacity. The landlords have indicated very keen to secure Waiheke Flower company as a tenant (see copy of email attached) and assist the vendor with the sale of the business to a new owner. On the other hand the lack of a fixed lease allows the business owner to enter into a secure tenancy with another landlord at some other suitable site in Oneroa.

Opportunities
1.The greatest opportunity undoubtedly exists in the Event/Wedding markets. Exact data about the number of weddings on Waiheke is impossible to obtain.  Although this information is supplied to the The Department of Internal Affairs on the registration of marriages documents it is not collated in an area by area format and so is not passed on the Department of Statistics for public consumption. However, by talking to Marriage Celebrants and venues known to host a large number of weddings the figure can be put conservatively at around 1000, not including church weddings. This figure represents roughly 5% of the weddings throughout New Zealand annually (roughly 21,000 in 2007 Source: Department of Statistics). With Waiheke Island residents (approx 8000) only accounting for a negligible percentage of the total population of New Zealand (4,100,000) the number of marriages on the island is massively out of proportion. Part of this could be from the 2,000 marriages registered to overseas residents in 2007. Overseas residents marrying in New Zealand include wedding tourists and expat New Zealanders returning to celebrate their marriage with friends and family. It is obvious Waiheke gets a large proportion of this market and the wedding market in particular relative to its size.

2.The vendor provides flowers for about 70 weddings each year and does not aggressively pursue this market. Similarly there are a number of corporate events that offer growth potential. This will be greatly enhanced once the proposed Langham Hotel development at Isola Estate gets under way (in maybe 2 years time). This international venue is aimed squarely at the wedding/event/corporate market. There is no doubt that Waiheke Flower Company could be a gateway to capturing this lucrative market segment.

3.Waiheke Flower Company already has a professional website. However, it could be improved with links to a number of web-based  flower businesses that channel orders for Waiheke to the Waiheke Flower Company for fulfillment on island. Lotta already has ties to Australian company Petals and other web based sites.

Competition
It is to be noted that since the start of the business in 2000 there have been attempts made by several individuals to compete with the Waiheke Flower Company. These have all been unsuccessful as the longstanding reputation and level of repeat business have made the entrance of a newcomer too time consuming and costly to secure a financially viable percentage of the market share. Moreover the purchase of the Waiheke Flower Company may be considered to have less risk and be less expensive than setting up in opposition from scratch.

Summary
Waiheke Flower Company offers a unique opportunity for a florist or business person to invest in a flourishing local business with potential for expansion into the lucrative wedding and event market. The high profile premises on the busiest street in the main town on the island provides an excellent location from which to service the local community and tourists. The vendor has developed the business from scratch and after 8 years wants to hand over the business to a purchaser who can take the step to the next level.