Today, I'm fired up. I want to talk about third party websites and brands. Before I dive into what happened this morning, here's a little context.
My definition of a third-party website is an organization or company that is listing, posting, or selling the products, services or content of another website or brand. Examples might be hotels selling rooms on Expedia or Booking.com. In this case, the third-party is Expedia or Booking.com and the hotel is the brand. Another example would be a shoe company selling their shoes on Amazon or Walmart. Amazon and Walmart are the third-party. The shoe company (the brand) partners with the third-party to do business on their site. This is a very very common form of ecommerce. I actually worked for Expedia for 5 years and very much understand the relationships of brands and third-parties.
Third-parties get a bad reputation. Sometimes, it's totally justified and sometimes it isn't.
If you aren't familiar with the history of Lora Bloom, I have been a floral business owner for over 10 years. I own First & Bloom, based out of Issaquah, WA. I started working out of my kitchen in 2014 and grew my brand and community loyalty from there. In 2018, I began a new venture. I set off to create a new brand called LORA Bloom. It was an online floral marketplace. Customers could order trusted, local and sustainable flowers from verified local florists in the Greater Seattle area. I built both brands from scratch. A marketplace website is far more complex than a stationary site. I'm pretty proud of the brand I built as it helped nearly a dozen florists generate more revenue and visibility during its time. However, LORA Bloom was a third-party site. Unfortunately, Covid times wore me down, and I halted LORA Bloom. I had dreams of going big, breaking into other states, but it didn't happen. I might try to pursue the concept again someday, but that's a story for another day.
I can't blame it all on Covid, though. There was a lot I didn't know and even more money I didn't have! However, I soon realized local delivery was flourishing in my area. I shifted gears again and pressed on selling flowers in the Issaquah and Sammamish, WA areas. I worked my ass off and finally turned a profit after all those years! Like I was actually paying myself a chunk of money that helped my household again. It felt amazing! But I didn't do it all by myself. I had help from a third-party.
Partnering with Lovingly.com
I didn't even know Lovingly existed, but a sales guy reached out to me one day. I agreed to talk. I knew I didn't want to partner with some of the other big retailers like FTD or Teleflora. They did not align with my brand. However, Lovingly let me do something unique. If you've ever talked to BloomNation, FTD, Teleflora, 1-800 Flowers, they want you to sign over your website or domain. They will sell you on all sorts of perks to the moon and back just so they can manage your site, a.k.a. CONTROL YOU! I'm going to tell you this straight. DON'T EVER DO THIS!
Luckily, I know a thing or two about how third-parties work.
Let's go back to my time at Expedia. Back in the day, one of my jobs was to manage the relationships Expedia had with hotels or as we called them, hotel partners. It was my job to negotiate rates, room inventory, and even sign on hotels in my target market, which happened to be Orange County in Southern California. In fact, at that time OC was the 4th largest market in the US generating $22M+ a year in room sales. But here's the kicker. Expedia NEVER owned the hotel's brand site. The partnership wasn't about managing or owning the hotel's website or domain. It was about securing a set number of rooms and rates at a hotel each night. Either the hotel or myself, would load the rates and inventory onto the Expedia website. That was it. Then, Expedia would keep a portion of the total sales of the rooms, the commission, or as we called it margin. At the time, it was just part of my job. However, it wasn't until years later when the tables turned, and a company was pursuing my business to sign me up.
For years, BloomNation hounded me on the phone. I had an initial conversation to learn about this third-party but quickly realized they wanted to CONTROL my site. Here's how it's done. They say they will give you an online platform to run your floral business. All you have to do is hand-off your domain and they will manage it for you. Easy templates, all the SEO handled, convenient ordering platform so that you can design beautiful flowers and not worry about it. Here's the problem with a florist using their platform. The third-party owns it all! They take a percentage off of every sale you make on that website. THEY OWN YOUR BRAND! This isn't cool. After that initial conversation with BloomNation, I was onto them. There was no way I'd let them own my brand like that, EVER.
But, Lovingly was a little different. The sales rep I worked with caught on quickly. He saw that I knew what I was talking about with websites. He even told me so. The conversation changed. Soon after, I pitched an idea to him. I wouldn't let him have my First & Bloom domain, but I would buy a new domain for Lovingly.com to manage. This is where the magic happened. I was now going to sell flowers on two sites. I would continue selling my brand on First & Bloom, but I launched a new site called SammamishFlorist.com. The contract was all signed with my legal business name, but I was doing business as Sammamish Florist. Set-up was fairly easy. After a couple weeks, the site was up and running. The templates are pretty easy and completely dialed into SEO. I decided my delivery range, pricing, products and most terms. Lovingly advertised how they offer over 600 different arrangements. Some were absolutely hideous! I disabled all but 20 different arrangements. I also had the ability to load my own products, but I kept these separate. Staying loyal to my brand and my customers was important. It also differentiated First & Bloom on search engine results. However, I always used the same flowers and integrity as on First & Bloom. Customers had no idea they were getting such premium flowers. At my peak, Lovingly orders accounted for roughly 25% of my business and helped increase my gross sales by 265%! They were also very hands off. Rarely did I hear from anyone. Would I work with Lovingly again? Absolutely.
It was exactly one year ago; I started to rethink what I wanted for the next 5 years. A lot has happened in my life personally. First & Bloom still profited in 2023, but I was ready for a new direction. Hence, the shift to business consulting in 2024. No longer selling local delivery meant I needed to shut down FirstandBloom.com as well as SammamishFlorist.com.
Are you ready? Here's more valuable information!
ALWAYS read the contract in detail. Honestly, I hadn't paid attention to the Lovingly contract for a while. Turns out, I needed to finish my contract, or I would have to pay Lovingly $400 a month until the contract expired. Ok. Ok. I was initially pissed! After cooling down, I decided to continue selling on Lovingly for the duration of the contract. This meant I'd sell flowers until October 2024. Inconvenient, yes. But, I decided to stick it out. Plus, I was able to shut my products on and off as often as I needed as long as I didn't shut down for longer than 6 continuous weeks. But, there was one other curveball Lovingly threw at me as an option. They said I could sell my domain to them for $1 and be released from the contract immediately without further penalty. I couldn't believe it!
That sounded tempting, but I knew better. You see, the domain Sammamish Florist could be pretty valuable in the future. I specifically chose those words for a reason. It's one of the top keywords a person types into a search engine when looking to order flowers in Sammamish, WA. The keyword was built into the name. It also just so happens that Sammamish has the highest household median income of any city in all of Washington State. What if I want to pursue the floristry idea again in the future? Paying $5 a month for the domain was 100% worth it. Lovingly knew it too. To hell with that. I own that domain and there was no way Lovingly was going to own me.
Here's the real kicker. Tomorrow, my contract officially comes to an end with Lovingly.
I'm sad. I'm happy. I'm also relieved to know what I know. I spoke to a new rep, Zach. He didn't realize I owned my domain from the start. He said the normal process was for a florist to sign a contract with Lovingly to be released. Lovingly would get to keep the domain and the florist would be released. Absolute Bullshit! When he told me this, it was an immediate red flag. The only thing Lovingly should be releasing me from is the contract with them. I own the domain. I gave them permission on Register.com, and now I need to pull that permission back.
Lovingly also offered to buy my domain. I directly declined.
You have no idea how this makes my blood boil. It's almost exploitive. But, it's not. I actually think utilizing a third-party is a great strategy for a business. However, you gotta know the game and understand the contract. You have got to know what you are signing up for and have an exit strategy in the end. Otherwise, they will OWN you! Imagine if I had given them my First & Bloom website years ago. All the hard work I put into building that business would have disappeared. Or worse, been converted into a different business with another florist. Uggg, that absolutely pains me!!
This is 100% why I want to shout from the mountain tops why I do what I do. What if some unsuspecting florist comes along, thinking Lovingly is going to solve their problems as a business owner, only to find out years later that Lovingly was using them? This is terrible, and I know it happens every day. In fact, one of my clients experienced a similar situation with BloomNation. One day she had a site, the next she didn't. Poof! Gone! (Of course, now she has her own brand site... and I built it for her!)
Wrapping up, I actually think third-party sites are great to partner with.
They can be a very profitable strategy for businesses to utilize and not just use. Businesses should diversify on multiple platforms, increase online presence, and even grow a larger customer base. But, businesses also need to take contracts seriously and always own their brand. Did you know Expedia owns Hotwire, Travelocity, Orbitz, and Classic Vacations to name a few? They actually own thousands of affiliate sites. I think it's genius.
Are you in a contract with a third-party now and wanting to break free? Or maybe you are wanting to explore partnering with one? I can help. Let's build out a Digital Marketing strategy. Maybe you'll find you don't need a third-party to survive. Maybe you'll discover how profitable one can be.
