800 356-9377

It looks like an ordinary toll-free telephone number, but for florist Al Felly it spells 800 FLOWERS -- and trouble in the form of a legal and marketing war of the roses.

 

When the phone rings at Al Felly's floral headquarters in Madison, Wis., something it does five, maybe six hundred times a day, each ring suggests a number of interesting possibilities. The call might, for instance, be from the Felly's Flowers Inc. greenhouse or from any of four other Felly's branches scattered around the Madison area, perhaps to report on a sudden shortage of gloxinia at the east side store or to place a rush order for one of Al's custom funeral wreaths. Then again, it could be from Minerul Point, Wis., 40 miles away, where Felly is opening a retail outlet in conjunction with one of his pet projects, a colonial restoration site known as Shakerag Alley. Often, too, it is from one of the hundreds of fellow florists around the country who know Al Felly from his 35 years in the business and need some quick advice on, say, the ideal temperature at which to pump deionized water to maximize the shelf life of Colombian carnations.

Occasionally the call is from or about San Pedro, Belize, an obscure little atoll off the coast of what used to be British Honduras in Central America, which Felly first visited 14 years ago, and where, in periodic visits since then, he has become angel of mercy, ambassador of goodwill, patron of the arts, director of athletics, and unofficial secretary of health, education, and welfare. More often it is from Mary Felly, asking her husband who he is bringing home for dinner this time.

Any of these possibilities is inherently likely, just as the odds are high that Al will field the call himself down in the bouquet asseimbly room where he loves to play, and boom his end of the conversation halfway from here to Milwaukee. Felly loves to yak while he works and work while he yaks, and his style is a strictly high-decibel, no-holds-barred, how-the-hell-are-ya' kind of networking. At his happiest when toiling among exotic flora -- and who would not beam when surrounded by African daisies, Japanese hibiscus, and New Guinea impatiens -- this paunchy, affable fellow, whose new television commercials promote him as "Mr. Florist USA," hangs by the phone in his preferred business garb of blue jeans plaid work shirt, nnd tooled western belt. He looks us someone once said, like a guy wbo just dug your flower order up out of his own backyard.

Since November 15, 1982, however, most of the calls coming in to Felly's main emporium are of a more directly commercial nature. These calls are the ones made to 1-800 FLORIST a toll-free, 24-hour, flower-by-wire service Felly's Flowers installed in spacious new quarters directly above the main office eight months ago. Up here, where a Mercury Network computer system hums out orders to more than 9,200 florists nationwide, and where room for as many as 100 operators has been reserved the sweet ring of Ma Bell sounds like money in the bank. No one yet knows for sure how much money will come in, but retail florists did more than $3 billion in sules last year, including $725 million in wire orders, and Felly has serious designs on 10% of that wire-market share. (During Easter Week alone, 24% of 1-800 FLORIST's callers got busy signals, yet the company still handled 1,856 orders, with gross revenues of $53,378. Projecting the same rate, Felly hopes to clear as much as $438,000 for December, his busiest month). He is obviously not dreaming of pocket change. For his half-million-dollar capital investment, Felly expects big things.

"I think anagram numbers are the greatest thing in the world," says Al, a life member of Optimist International. "And I think their potential for the flower business is tremendous. If Americans can ever be conditioned to buy cut flowers the way the Europeans do, I'll die a rich man."

Not that he is wearing pauper's robes now. Felly's Flowers is already generating revenues of about $2.5 million annually, far more than the $113,000 average for each of the industry's 30,000 other florists nationwide. But Felly also expects competition, and that is just what he has gotten.

Sending flowers by pbone is nothing new. After all, Teleflora Delivery Service and Florists' Transworld Delivery Association's FTD, the two giants of the flower-by-wire industry, have both been doing it successfully for years, and both are used by Felly's Flowers today. Nor is the telemarketing concept new with its copyrighted Felly slogan "Where there's a phone, there's a florist." What wasn't anticipated was the confusion some of that competition has created. Because right now, where there's a phone, there are actually several florists, and it isn't always easy to tell who is who. Two of them, in fact, are about to go petal to petal in federal court over an alleged trademark infringement. So when the phone rings these days at Felly's headquarters, it is apt to be his lawyer.

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