)”> If fresh flowers make a good florist, a startup solution for the sector must go beyond and nail packaging and distribution too. Melbourne business LVLY proves that a fresh approach to brand and packaging is the way to cut through a saturated market. As has been a recurring theme among the 2019 finalists of Business News Australia’s Young Entrepreneur Awards, LVLY was able to gain scale fast through prioritising supply chain logistics. Being a back office pursuit, distribution doesn’t always get the credit it deserves. However, LVLY has grown its revenue by more than 100 per cent in the last year alone in large part owing to an innovative packaging solution. LVLY worked with packaging engineers in Holland to develop “a complicated solution” so freshly arranged flowers could be sent through the mainstream postal network. This lets LVLY offer next-day delivery from its warehouse in Melbourne to anywhere around Australia. “We developed the main style of packaging which would essentially keep the flowers alive, safe and undamaged in transit with enough air circulation to stay alive for up to five days, even though we only need a maximum of 24 hours door to door,” explains LVLY co-founder Hannah Spilva. “One of the key things we found, when we went out to our customers to research this, was all the research said they loved the jar. So not only did we need to find a way to keep the flowers alive, we had to find a packaging solution where the glass jar doesn’t get destroyed in transit. “It means we’ve been able to get scale really quickly. If you look at a company like Roses Only, who traditionally have dominated this market, they operate by an order-gatherer model, so they have a network of tens of thousands of stores […]