Valentine's Day and Mother's Day Are Completely Different Games
It's been almost a year since I launched this website, and honestly, the direction of the business has changed more times than I expected.
When I first started, I wanted to create beautiful flower arrangements.
I had every colour imaginable.
Different wrapping papers.
Different ribbons.
Different styles.
The whole website looked like a rainbow explosion.
As time went on, I started noticing something interesting.
Only a handful of products consistently sold well.
And only a handful of colours consistently sold well.
Red.
Blue.
Black.
Champagne.
That's pretty much it.
After our first Christmas and Valentine's Day, I sat down and looked through the orders.
What surprised me most wasn't which flowers sold.
It was who was buying them.
The overwhelming majority of customers were men buying gifts for women.
And most of them chose red roses.
Which is funny, because red roses have never been my favourite.
I personally love Champagne.
I love Dusty Pink.
When I first started Luna & Ray, my dream was to create elegant preserved flower arrangements that people could display at home like decorative pieces.
Reality had other plans.
Most of my orders weren't home décor purchases at all.
They were gifts.
Birthday gifts.
Anniversary gifts.
Apology gifts.
"I love you" gifts.
"I'm sorry" gifts.
And occasionally both at the same time.
Somewhere along the way, I realised I wasn't really selling flowers anymore.
I was selling gifts.
The turning point probably came after Valentine's Day 2026, when we sat down to review the entire season.
Considering it was our very first Valentine's Day, things went surprisingly well.
Which was honestly shocking.
Looking back now, the website wasn't great.
It looked more like a university presentation than an online gift store.
Everything was educational.
How preserved roses are made.
How we select flower heads.
Why they last so long.
How they're packaged.
Lots of information.
Lots of explanations.
Not much emotion.
The advertising wasn't much better.
I barely understood Google Ads.
I definitely didn't understand Meta.
I had no idea what kind of photos or videos customers actually wanted to see.
To this day, I'm still not entirely sure how some of those Valentine's Day sales happened.
But they did.
And I'm not complaining.
The best-selling products were all incredibly simple.
Red roses.
More red roses.
And even more red roses.
The fewer extra flowers involved, the better.
People wanted roses.
Just roses.
That's what eventually inspired the Signature 5 bouquet.
After Valentine's Day, I felt optimistic.
If we could do reasonably well during Valentine's Day with a half-finished website and a very confused advertising strategy, Mother's Day should be amazing.
Right?
Not exactly.
Mother's Day turned out very differently.
After looking through the results, I came up with a few theories.
First, Mother's Day budgets are usually lower.
And honestly, that makes perfect sense.
You can hand your mum a drawing you made yourself and she'll probably say:
"That's beautiful. Thank you, my baby."
Even if you're forty years old.
You'll still be her baby.
Try giving your wife or girlfriend a hand-drawn flower instead and the conversation might go very differently.
Second, we saw far fewer Express Delivery orders.
The urgency simply wasn't there.
My theory is that if your Mother's Day gift arrives a day late, your mum is still your mum.
If your Valentine's Day gift arrives a day late...
Well.
Your wife might become your ex-wife.
So Valentine's Day customers are always in a hurry.
Everyone suddenly remembers the date at the same time.
After watching all of this happen, the direction of Luna & Ray became much clearer.
We're not trying to become the biggest flower shop.
We're trying to become a reliable gift-giving solution for people who want to send something meaningful from anywhere in Australia.
That's why we spend so much time obsessing over details.
The gift boxes.
The greeting cards.
The ribbons.
The envelopes.
The wax seals.
The packaging protection.
The shipping cartons.
All the little things that happen before the flowers are even seen.
Because for many customers, the flowers are only part of the gift.
The experience matters too.
Our goal is simple:
You choose the gift.
We handle everything else.
The idea of long-distance gifting is actually something I've been thinking about a lot lately.
I'll probably write an entire blog post about that very soon.
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