Lily's Florist's Location

Here Is The Long Version

If you want the short version please scroll to the bottom of the page.

Lily's Florist started as Kingscliff Florist, in Kingscliff NSW, we were located at shop 1/98 Marine Parade, Kingscliff NSW 2487, for around 3 years from early 2007 until around mid-late 2009. Funnily enough the same shop is still there and is now called Kingscliff Surf. Buying stuff there now is a little surreal we have to say. The visions of our 1 year old baby crawling on that floor at the time still seems so recent, we could not afford air-conditioning at the time, so now doubt watching her covered in copious amounts of sweat.

When we bought Kingscliff Florist, it was actually a gift shop also, it was painted in the most gross lime green you have ever seen, and we had our hearts set on expanding the gifts side of the business to organic skin care and food, plus a bunch of baby products - pun intended as, at the time that was still a relatively new field and we thought it may be a good idea to supplement the flowers side of the business. So, we were more or less 'all in' with gifts. For a time we ran Down to Earth Organics side by side with Kingscliff Florist and also a Baby Bottles business, like BPA Free, before it was a thing.

Flowers Were Born from Gifts

What we didn't know was the previous owner of Kingscliff Florist had literally just paid for an advertisement in the Yellow Pages, yes the book. Around 3 months later the current book at the time was printed and delivered Australia-wide and our world changed in an instant. From getting the odd call a day, and a few walk-ins for flowers we got completely bombarded with calls for flowers from all the way from Pottsville, out to Murwillumbah and even Tweed Heads and Coolangatta. Then, later on, we were getting calls from locals who were asking us if we could send flowers for them to really random places all over Australia which was always answered with "no, sorry...".

For some time we tried to get the flowers out ourselves as we had a great florist working for us too. But, we were only a tiny business in country NSW and really struggled to keep up, especially as we had just had a new baby girl. We did all the driving and flower deliveries ourselves!

Late one night, sitting together reflecting on the day, we had a bit of a 'light bulb' moment, remember this is 2008 now so most florists didn't have a website. What if we approached florists in major NSW, QLD, VIC & SA cities and asked them if they would like to help us to with our flower orders, without membership fees and we will build a page on our website on Lily's Florist. There was a resounding 'yes' from every florist we spoke to and there was at least 150 florists that agreed to work with us initially. 

While we contacted florists we were also building a platform that could support so many delivery locations from Melbourne all the way up to Darwin, and everywhere in between, and Lily's Florist was then born - at that point an 'almost' national flower delivery service, and we moved away from the Kingscliff Florist brand.

From Retail Store to Australia-wide Flowers

Not too long after building Lily's Florist we decided to sell the organic side of the business to fully focus on flowers and we did that in approximately 2009 and moved out of our shop in Marine Parade in Kingscliff. In fact an article on Practical Commerce was done about us in 2012.

In 2010 we moved fully online with flowers and converted our homes' double garage into an office so that we could employ staff to handle all our incoming calls for flowers. We hired an unbelievable ex-florist named Will who became our call centre manager and a few other local people in North NSW, including another ex-florist Anna (who still works for us 14 years later), all working from our humble garage/office.

The Move to Armidale NSW

After a few years of staff working from our garage it became clear that holidays were out, we would never get any peace and quiet and that our little street would be littered with cars from our staff, much to the dismay of our neighbours. Also, finding staff in a small NSW town was proving very challenging.

In 2013 an amazing opportunity presented itself to move our call centre to Armidale in NSW. We took that opportunity and our call centre is still in Armidale as of October 2024. All staff that answer calls are Australian and we do not send any of our calls or services offshore.

All our flowers come from, and are delivered by, Australian 'bricks and mortar' partner florists, Mum and Dad businesses like like Lily's Florist. Unlike some of our competitors, our flowers are not made in a warehouse or on a production line, our flowers are not sent by Australia Post overnight. Our flowers are made and delivered by fully trained, real florists, with real florist shops dotted all over Australia in big cities and small. Our partner florists, some have been with us for 15 years, take great pride in the work they do for us and the couriers they use great pride in delivering them, fresh and on time.

Australian Owned & Operated

Lily's Florist is Australian owned and operated by a Mum & Dad. We don't have boardrooms, conferences, we don't have a marketing team, we don't have strategic plans, HR departments, employ an SEO company, or a team of solicitors. Business decisions are made by us, while watching the kids play netball, or whilst driving them to school - that is Lily's Florist. 

Here Is The Short Version

Lily's Florist does not have a location, and has not had one since about 2009. We are online flower and gift delivery service who delivers flowers through a network of partner florists all over Australia. Lily's Florist is still a family, Australian owned and operated business as it was, 'back in the day'.