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Something Borrowed Blooms, a Lafayette company that rents out premium silk flowers for weddings, was named one of the fastest-growing companies in the southeast by Inc. Magazine, the company announced Tuesday.
The company, which unveiled an expanded facility in 2021, ranked 74 on Inc. Magazine’s third annual list for the southeast region, including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Puerto Rico, South Carolina and Tennessee. The southeast region list included 173 companies.
Lafayette businesses: Something Borrowed Blooms unveils expanded warehouse
“We founded this company on the foundation of cost savings, offering our couples savings upwards of 70% compared to fresh flowers,” said Lauren Bercier, the CEO and co-founder of the company. “In doing so, we’ve created a business model that’s truly unique and providing more value than ever before in this new world we’re living in.”
Since its founding in 2015, Something Borrowed Blooms has provided silk flower collections for more than 15,000 weddings. Laken Swan, the co-founder and chief marketing officer for the company, said it had a growth rate of 35% in 2020 and 85% in 2021, despite significant disruptions to the wedding industry by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The company is preparing for an even bigger 2022, which is expected to see a record number of weddings across the U.S. after many were postponed over the last two years due to the pandemic.
“The growth was largely due to the fact that we were more nimble and flexible with our terms and availability compared to the rest of the market,” Swan said. “Today, we’re providing flowers for over 900 weddings monthly from coast to coast, but we are anticipating order volumes of 2K+ per month with the wedding boom of 2022.”
When the company held a ribbon-cutting on its new 15,000-square-foot facility in December, Bercier said it was expecting to see 100% growth over the course of 2022. The warehouse expansion tripled the warehouse space.
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If Something Borrowed Blooms meets its expectation of shipping around 2,000 weddings a month in 2022, that would account for about 1% of the total wedding flower market in the U.S. Bercier said in December. She believes the company can capture 10% of the market when its brand gets strong enough.
The company expects weddings to be at a 40-year high in the U.S. during 2022, setting the stage for a spike in flower demand. The rent-and-return business model allows brides to save more than 70% on flower arrangements, the company estimated.
Something Borrowed Blooms saw its headcount double in 2021, and it expects to continue growing in 2022. As of December, the company employed 28 workers, all of them women.
Three other Louisiana companies made Inc. Magazine’s list for the southeast region, including Tempest Energy in Covington, Susco Solutions in Metairie and Peanut Butter and Jelly TV in Covington.
