PETALS NETWORK

From Garage to Global Glory in Armidale! Starting as a small florist in Armidale in 1992, Petals has become one of the leading international florist exchange hubs, relaying orders for flowers across the world to over 70 countries through its international websites.

Petals have won many awards, some of which include Small Business of the Year, Best Supply Chain Award, NSW Regional Exporter of the Year and BRW Top 100 Fastest Growing Australian Businesses.

Petals utilises clearing-house technologies, conducts transactions in seven currencies and uses the services of 27,000 florists throughout the world. To better serve the global market, it operates three shifts with a total of 22 employees.

"We're not setting out to be the biggest but we are setting out to be the best," says Chief Executive Scott Williams. "The best to us means fast order processing, simple systems and profitability for our florists and for us. We're convinced that that if we concentrate on being "better", the "bigger" will look after itself,"

"We chose Armidale because of lower business costs but we also found that we had very low employee turnover resulting in reduced training costs," he explains. "This meant that we could ensure high service standards for maintaining real time operations particularly for our overseas market.

"But I think that one of the key attributes of Armidale is that not only do we enjoy lower business costs and access to quality and skilled staff but Armidale offers a certain lifestyle that is rarely available in other regional towns."