Fleurs d’Ici, the first 100% French brand of ethical flowers

A former reporter for the French press and the BBC, Hortense Harang co-founded Fleurs d’Ici with Chloé Rossignol, the first ethical, 100% French flower brand. A first French illustration of an Anglo-Saxon movement called slowflower, with the aim of raising the profile of French flowers and the work of French horticulturalists and florists.

How did the fleur d’ici concept come about?

“We drew a lot of our inspiration from food industry practices. Short distribution channels have enabled us to re-season and re-localize consumption of fruit and vegetables. Today, 9 out of 10 flowers are imported from developing countries. We therefore felt it was important to give consumers a better idea of the seasonality and origin of flowers.

What is the ecological impact of irresponsible flower consumption?

“Today, a bouquet of 30 imported roses is the carbon equivalent of flying from Paris to London. In France, the flower market is quite large, around 3.5 billion a year, so we’re talking about fairly massive impacts. What’s more, all these imported flowers are grown out of season in lit, heated greenhouses”.

What do you think are the essentials of an environmental charter?

“At Fleurs d’Ici, we want to take the whole value chain into account in the way we draw up our environmental and social charter. Not only do we have a section dedicated to the environment, we also pay a great deal of attention to the distribution of the value of the products we sell. So we try to create a product that is sustainable from an environmental and societal point of view.”

Very committed to social issues, you won the Boston Consulting Group’s Social Entrepreneur Award 1 year ago. Why is it important for you to be both an environmentally and socially committed company?

“We believe we need to take an ecosystemic view of problems, markets and consumption. Think about the redistribution of value as well as environmental impact.”

What problems did you encounter when creating your concept?

“The most complicated thing was to give consumers another vision of flowers. For example, the traditional Valentine’s Day flower is the red rose. However, in France, the red rose doesn’t grow in February, it grows from May to November. On the other hand, there are other flowers in the month of February, but for this to happen, the consumer had to agree to rethink the product, to trust us on the codes of beauty and luxury that symbolize love. People are no longer buying a product, but the values attached to it.

Are you planning to repeat this operation for the upcoming holidays?

“Every year, Fleurs d’Ici replaces the red rose with another local, seasonal flower. Our idea is to bring every year a new incarnation that is just as beautiful but more sustainable.”

Where do your flowers come from and what are their stages before you receive them at home?

“When you order flowers from Fleurs d’Ici, they are prepared by an artisan florist whom we have selected for the quality of his expertise. The florist will source the flowers from local growers. They will then be delivered by a delivery driver who uses a low-carbon means of transport and earns a decent living.”

Are there any indicators to monitor these points?

“We look at the number of tons of carbon saved, i.e. every flower that passes through our service corresponds to as many fewer imported flowers. We know that we divide the carbon impact by 30, so the economic and environmental performance indicators are very closely linked.”

What are your next goals or biggest dreams?

“We’re in the process of completing another round of funding, because we’ve discovered that through the flower market, we’ve developed a digital suite and a very particular know-how that enables us to aggregate local agricultural producers with local artisan processors and local delivery companies.

Unfortunately, many agricultural products still have to travel 50 times around the world. Our idea is therefore to relocalize all the agricultural sectors and all the other sectors that may be suffering from the effects of globalization today.

When collaborating on an event, is it important to you that your partners share the same vision as you, and why?

The advantage of the flower is that it’s a small step for man, but a big step for mankind. In other words, it’s something that’s easy to change, because we offer a solution of the same high quality and at the same price as those who don’t make French flowers. There are only good sides to it, but we often see with our partners that it’s the start of a more global reflection on what they could change in their way of doing things. The idea is to be the driving force. The flower isn’t necessarily at the heart of everyone’s activity, but on the other hand it’s often the start of a process of reflection to try and make the whole ecosystem people work with more sustainable.”

What message do you want to get across through your ethical, 100% French flowers?

“Our idea is to show that today there are alternatives to the ways we consume that are neither more expensive nor more complex to access, and that are just as qualitative.”

Many thanks to the Fleurs d’Ici team !

Also check out our interview with Moitié Moitié, the new committed thrift store we love!