Entrepreneur Jonathan Barouch has sold Fast Flowers Group, the business he started up as a 17-year-old in 1999, to online rival 1300 Flowers.<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Barouch sold the business for an undisclosed sum and is now consulting for 1300 Flowers ahead of his next entrepreneurial move.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Barouch started the business with $10,000 that he \u201cbegged, stole and borrowed\u201d and has grown the business without any debt since.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Fast Flowers business started as a website for people who wanted to order flowers online, before setting up two bricks and mortar stores, in Melbourne and Brisbane. The business has forged partnership deals with Myer and ANZ.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Speaking to StartupSmart, Barouch says that he\u2019d had \u201cidle chit chat\u201d with potential buyers over the past year ahead of the sale.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI know Jack (Singleton, 1300 Flowers chairman) socially and they were keen to grow, so the deal made sense,\u201d he says. \u201cWe had human capital and supply chain and they have the technology, so it\u2019s a good fit.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThe business needed capital and a fresh pair of eyes. I\u2019ve done it for 11 years, I\u2019m 28 years old and I\u2019ve done university on the side. Usually, people do that for just one or two years.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cA venture capitalist would\u2019ve been an option, but this is the right time to do it. If I\u2019m going to hand over my \u2018baby\u2019, I want to give it to a professional mob like 1300 Flowers. They are very committed to the Fast Flowers vision.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Barouch says that he\u2019s looking to set up a location-based social media business, stressing that there remained plenty of opportunities in the online space.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThere is still a lot of interest in the sector, although it\u2019s obviously easier to sell a good business,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ve had 50 or 60 emails asking what I\u2019ll be doing next but there is money out there for the right opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m working on a social media location-based business and I\u2019m about to go out and raise the capital. I love building businesses that are sustainable and I want to get back into that online space.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Entrepreneur Jonathan Barouch has sold Fast Flowers Group, the business he started up as a 17-year-old in 1999, to online<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60555,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42040"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}