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Mangwon Flower Room

Weekly waste cut from 40% to 8% on unsold bouquets

A Mangwon florist was throwing out nearly half her weekly stock. A 90-minute end-of-day window rebuilt margins and brought her neighbors through the door on their way home.

40% → 8%

Weekly waste rate

18:30–20:00

End-of-day window

−50%

Offer discount

6 wks

To steady state

Background

Mangwon Flower Room is a 6-pyeong shop on a residential lane four minutes from Mangwon Station. Eunbi opened it in 2022 after eight years at a larger studio in Hannam. She does mostly walk-in bouquets and small event arrangements. The problem that kept her up at night was waste: roughly 40% of the bouquets she made on Monday and Tuesday were in the compost bin by Friday. On a ₩35,000 bouquet with ₩18,000 in flower cost, every unsold one was a small bleed.

What we tried

We set up a single offer: the "Mangwon end-of-day bouquet" — any bouquet still in the cold case, 50% off, pickup strictly between 18:30 and 20:00. Eunbi chose which bouquets went into the offer each afternoon based on what was starting to turn. No online delivery, no reservations beyond four hours in advance. If you weren't in Mangwon after work, you couldn't claim it.

What happened

The first week averaged 4 pickups a night. By week three it was 9 or 10, and Eunbi was selling out before 19:30 most weekdays. Within six weeks her weekly waste rate had dropped from 40% to 8%. She was still making roughly the same number of bouquets — the offer just absorbed the ones that used to end up in the bin.

The secondary effect

Something she didn't expect: about half her end-of-day buyers were the same twelve or so people rotating through. Neighbors who worked nearby started treating Thursday night flowers as a small weekly ritual. Several of them started ordering full-price custom bouquets for birthdays and anniversaries — people she had never sold to before the offer existed.

What Eunbi says

"I used to feel guilty every Friday morning. The flowers were fine on Wednesday, they were just past their best by Friday. Now they go home with someone who lives four blocks away and puts them on her kitchen table. The math works and I feel better. Both things matter."

What's next

Eunbi is testing a Sunday "bouquet school" — a 45-minute class using Saturday's overstock stems at ₩22,000 a head, capped at six people. Early sessions are filling within a day of posting.

Mangwon end-of-day bouquet

Mangwon Flower Room · Seoul
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