Flavourly is an Edinburgh based online snack box company. It won some notoriety when it pitched succcesfully on Dragons Den only to turn down the eventual offer.
Flavourly's ratings on Trust Pilot are hard to believe. Most recent ones go 2 star, 1 star, 1 star, 1 star, 2 star, 1 star, 2 star, 2 star, 1 star and 2 star. You can take it that these 10 customers will not be back. You can also assume that anyone reading these will not go any further down the page and will not be ordering. Negative word of mouth is a killer.
Flavourly initially raised just over £100k on Angels Den. They then raised over £500k in 2015 on Crowdcube following the events on the Dragons Den.
So why are their customers so unhappy?
We supsect that it has a lot to do with the way they use Groupon. This blog has highlighted this before. Aggressive customer aquisition campaigns on Groupon are not a good way to build a sound business. Flavourly majored on this technique and continues to do so. Their whole Crowdcube campiagn was centred on the large numbers of customers they had attracted. They just failed to say how this had been done it. You might ask why Crowdcube didnt pick up on this oversight but you'd be wasting your time.
Groupon doesnt supply customers, it supplies impulsive bargain hunters who have no brand loyalty and will desert you for the next best offer in a second.
Flavourly clearly have not designed a customer interface that works to even a basic level. So many very poor reviews indicate fundamental problems with the model. Far too much time spent on customer acquisition and not enough on customer retention. Accounts due out in May 2016 will reveal more.
PS - Flavourly are featured in this years Crowdcube Christmas Gift ideas - with a discount coupon of couse!
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