Is Your Product Worse Than Plastic Flowers at a Wedding?

13 Aug.,2024

 

Is Your Product Worse Than Plastic Flowers at a Wedding?

Is Your Product Worse Than Plastic Flowers at a Wedding?

Link to Shuoliang

Eric Lippincott

·

Follow

Published in

Agile Insider

·

5 min read

·

Jun 1,

--

Photo by Sofiya Levchenko on Unsplash

Artificial flowers solve two customer problems &#; they live forever and cost less than real flowers. Also &#; fake flower companies have made great strides since the invention of silk flowers, in replicating the look and feel of a real flower. Manufacturers have added realistic looking fake dirt also, that&#;s a nice touch.

Plastic flowers can bring everlasting beauty to a sad looking office, convention hall, or hospital lobby. They can save your company thousands of dollars in care and future purchases. Plastic flowers can be a great option when you just need something fast.

If you look at revenue &#; fake flowers are a total success. The industry is measured in Billions of dollars as of .

But &#; you know artificial flowers are copycat of a product much more valuable and delightful.

In The New York Times published an article about the rise in popularity of artificial flowers, and they mentioned something that struck me, &#;plastic flowers are not much in demand for those two great American status events &#; weddings and funerals&#;after you look at them for a while, a lot of the beauty is lost.&#;

Are your customers choosing your product because it solves only the most visible or immediate problem, but in time they realize they would prefer a different product? Is your product just a temporary fix or copycat of something more authentic?

Pros of fake flowers as a product:

Lifetime cost low

Ongoing maintenance is low (zero water, pruning/cutting)

They never die, and people have a fear of death

Ease of purchase/use (go online and buy them in 2 mins)

Cons of fake flowers as a product:

Fake flowers do not clean your environment/air

If you are looking for more details, kindly visit Artificial Flowers Supplier.

You and your guests know they are not the real thing

There is no joy derived from actions like cutting fresh flowers and planting them in new places

Fake flowers look worse over time &#; unlike real flowers that grow more beautiful and flourish in new ways in front of your eyes

Fake flowers are harder to clean than the average person realizes

Fake flowers do not have a beautiful fresh aroma

You would be embarrassed to use fake flowers at your wedding or loved ones funeral.

Where am I going with this?

If you are indexing your product roadmap and outcomes to keeping up with the joneses and not solving real long term customer problems/business outcomes in a contextual chain&#; then you might end up with some great short term products for novelty seekers.

These types of users are very low LTV and churn out fast. You should rather focus on delivering more delight and long term contextual value to your core (high LTV) customers/users.

I do product for an independent research and analytics firm called KLAS Research. We measure HIT vendors to help benefit healthcare organizations (providers) in their quest to purchase the right technology or services for their health networks. The data we own is vast and we have a proven method for gathering feedback from customers of HIT vendors.

We rate HIT vendors across a variety performance metrics and can predict long term success and an ability to drive meaningful outcomes for their customers. Think one hit hit wonder vs The Beatles.

A colleague of mine (VP of Customer Experience) at KLAS who happens to be an expert in this space &#; mentioned that sometimes HIT vendors who are scoring lower in their market segment will react by hastily building cheap widgety dashboards like a machine gun approach of trying to hit every customer target. This can be agnostic of their actual product/market fit and product roadmap.

Example &#; we have a question in our software survey that asks the provider if they are getting their &#;Money&#;s Worth.&#; Having a very high score on this question and average scores on other questions could be a strong indicator that the vendor is going downhill or will lose market share very fast. They might be heading down the fake flower of HIT functionality tunnel.

&#;Product Functionality&#; is another category that providers rate their vendors on &#; and if the vendor is filling a very specific and very niche need, and they do it really well, they stop there.

What happens is the market matures and the problems that healthcare providers have evolve&#; so they want to unlock more features and successive functionality. But this vendor has put all its product eggs in one basket so they scramble and get passed up.

These cheap widgety dashboard approaches result in short term spikes in NPS scores and then burn out. I.e. they put the feature factory on overdrive and its not sustainable or tied to a north star goal.

How do you build the anti-fake flower Product Roadmap?

Did someone say North Star Strategy? Why was your product built to begin with? What is the product/market fit?

Instead of overusing vanity metrics like downloads/DAU/MAU try indexing against an NPS/CSAT score, or feature adoption rate, and back it up with lots of qualitative research with your customers phrased like, &#;Do you know there is a product that solves your problems better, and you are already leaning towards replacing us with that product?&#;

Look at counter metrics against your success metrics and work harder on roadmap strategy.

Don&#;t just measure session time, but look at events per session, and look at behavior flow more forensically. You can balance traffic with conversion rate.

The New York Times article mentions that after you look at the fake flowers for a little while, the beauty is gone.

Its all about utility!

This all points back to a different article I wrote about value being dependent on utility, and the concept of diminishing marginal utility, see here: https://medium.com/agileinsider/thank-you-but-ive-had-enough-value-for-today-2cdb3acd881

If your product strategy is basically reduced down to having UX ask some early adopters, &#;What&#;s the quickest win we can get for you, what's hot right now in the market?&#; And its not tied to the north star goal and long term roadmap &#; the value and utility diminishes.

If you aren&#;t building products that leverage the past choices while also thinking of the future outcomes &#; then you will end up with digital plastic flowers.

https://www.nytimes.com//08/23/archives/the-flowering-of-fake-flowers.html

Explore Every Benefit of Artificial Flowers in Your Home

Artificial florals have been a part of humanity for thousands of years. Ancient Egyptians replicated florals using thin slivers of horn, and silk floral replications date back over one thousand and five hundred years ago in China. Ladies of the Imperial Palace ordered silk florals to be worn in their hair, a trend that spread through Japan, Korea, and further. The Victorian era saw lavish arrangements, floral bouquets, and an entire language of flowers through artificial and genuine florals.

Fake flowers and plants have come a long way since their origins over a thousand years ago! Today's technology and craftsmanship allow us to enjoy the glory of full blooms, luscious leaves, and delightful greenery so realistic it is hard to tell the faux from the real. And there are so many beautiful benefits with faux florals in our homes.

Today we're excited to share an extensive dive into every benefit you can enjoy with artificial flowers in your home.

 


1. Evergreen
When fake plants are made by a company that cares about every detail, you will enjoy your artificial flowers for a long time. In many cases, decades or more. With some simple steps to care for your faux blooms, you can keep them looking fresh and as realistic as the day you brought them home.

Dust weekly with a craft or paintbrush, and as long as the florals or plants are not created from latex or foam, you can even clean them with a damp cloth.

Are you tired of the same arrangement? Change it quickly by rearranging your florals into a new statement piece and recycling them into a craft project&#;the sky's the limit! Artificial plants and flowers are truly evergreen, as they can be reused, repurposed, and reinvigorated in countless ways.

2. Nothing to Sneeze At
Those of us who suffer allergies, especially those triggered by pollens, know the misery of pollen season and spring. Allergy symptoms for many people can be severe. Just a few of the symptoms of fragrance allergy or pollen allergies are:
&#; Headaches
&#; Difficulty breathing
&#; Wheezing
&#; Tight feeling in the chest
&#; Worsening asthma symptoms
&#; Runny, stuffy nose
&#; Sneezing
&#; Nasal congestion
&#; Runny, itchy eyes
&#; Itchy throat
&#; A skin allergy like contact dermatitis, which is an itchy, red rash

Artificial flowers are 100% pollen and fragrance-free, allowing many with severe allergies to decorate their home with beautiful plants they may never have been able to.

3. Time and Money Saving
Our time is precious and sometimes limited in today's fast-paced and hectic world. Maintaining healthy, happy live plants requires time and effort. Certain types of plants require specific amounts of sunlight, direct or indirect. Other plants require watering at particular times or special nutrients for their soil and monitoring humidity. At the end of the day, whether you frequently travel for work or have a long shift&#;many of us can't commit to caring for natural plants.

Artificial flowers and fake plants don't require sunlight, watering, unique placement, or soil monitoring. The only care artificial plants need is the occasional dusting!

When it comes to saving money, artificial botanicals never fade or whither. You don't have to worry about what florals are in or out of season, and there's no need to worry about fungus or gnats or purchasing a new bouquet every week for your home.




4. Mental and Emotional Impact
Including plants in your interior design provides an uplifting and welcoming ambiance and positively impacts the health and well-being of those in the home. And yes, artificial flowers, plants, and even faux trees and shrubs can offer the same benefits.

While artificial plants cannot filter the air in your home, the visual appeal, mood improvement, and stress reduction are shared between real and faux flowers. Green has long been known as a soothing color, and many plants and flowers mimic fractal patterns. This naturally occurring repetitive pattern is aesthetically pleasing to the eye and calming and relaxing.

Faux flowers and plants used to have a bad reputation for being fake. Today, thanks to technology and innovative materials, faux botanicals look natural and can feel real to the touch.

5. Pet Friendly
Some plants and flowers can be highly harmful to pets. Lilies, members of the Lilium spp. family is, in fact, highly poisonous to felines. Even the smallest amount of lily can cause severe and sometimes fatal kidney damage. Parts of the Sago Palm, Tulips and Narcissus bulbs, Azaleas, Oleander, Yew, Amaryllis, Autumn Crocus, and even Chrysanthemums are also highly toxic.

Artificial florals and plants, however, carry none of the toxicity risks, meaning you can display any of your favorite plants and flowers without the worry of pets nibbling something that could be dangerous to them.

6. Environmentally Conscious
While not every faux floral company is reputable, many companies strive to be more environmentally conscious daily. Companies that care about the environment are working to reduce and reuse many materials that would otherwise take up landfills and decades to degrade.
Additionally, many real flowers are grown overseas in South America and Africa, where the climate is more conducive to growing flowers year-round. However, those countries have little to no guidelines on the use of pesticides, as flowers are not considered food.

Since more cut flowers are imported, they have often flown thousands of miles in refrigerated airplane holds. The transport of flowers grown in Colombia and flown to the US is estimated to generate up to 360,000 metric tons of C02. That would be roughly the equivalent of 78,000 cars if they were driven for one year.

The idea is to get blooms from the field to a vase in your home within three to five days. On top of the carbon emissions from importing, flower growing contributes to high water use and pesticide chemical runoff. In some parts of Africa, flower farms are being blamed for consuming alarming amounts of fresh water.

Artificial flowers require no water or chemicals to last, and in colder climates, they do not require heated greenhouses.

Faux botanicals look great, help improve your mood, brighten up your space, are allergen free, pet-friendly, and better for the environment. What's not to love? Artificial floral arrangements take the long view of sustainability and beauty over the genuine any day.

For more information, please visit Wholesale Artificial Carnations.