Your home begins at Floralux
Floralux is a very strong brand in West-Flanders, known for very sharp pricing and a very wide assortment of plants. A garden giant. But price competition increased, with others offering products cheaper than themi. As a result, Floralux had been losing customers year over year and couldn’t find the right way to stop the decline.
An extra complexity: Floralux had acquired two stores in Ham and Sint-Pieters-Leeuw and rebranded them as Floralux, but they have a different type of customer and a different assortment than the flagship in Dadizele. Furthermore, there was a steep decline of French clients, who make up half of the Dadizele store’s footfall.
We got one very simple KPI: win 5,000 new clients in three months. Same budget. Same products.
So how did we end up here?
We decode the culture
First, we adjusted the value proposition. We stepped away from the promotional “Jester” style and moved toward a warm “Everyman” brand personality. We focused on the large community of people who aren’t hardcore gardeners, but who love creating a warm, beautiful home, inside and outside.
So we repositioned Floralux as a “home” center rather than a garden center, and embedded the promotions (which we still run) into this new tone of voice and community mindset.
01
We detect and activate communities
We investigated the client data and made a list of cities where Floralux had fewer clients than should be expected. We also trimmed the part in the North of France we wanted to communicate on, spending our limited budget only where we believed we could make a difference.
That’s why we went fully digital, with local posters as visibility reinforcement in “opportunity” cities such as Dilbeek, Halle, Waver, Roeselare, Tourcoing, Villeneuve d’Ascq and Hasselt. This enabled us to build storylines and repetition to create engagement, instead of a limited awareness push.
02
We design experiences online and offline
We used sonic branding as the backbone of the entire rebrand, designed for theatre-of-the-mind formats. This audio-first branding let us create an entire brand world for Floralux, so people can imagine how it would look at home. We proved it with three 30-second radio spots, each opening on the recognizable sound and painting a scene you can picture without seeing it, then switching to an actionable end card: chrysanthemums, Christmas decoration, Nordmann.
From that backbone, everything aligned. We worked shoulder to shoulder with the design team to create a new brand identity and execute it step by step across all touchpoints. The products in the promotion didn’t change, but we focused more on the result, a great place to live, rather than focussing on the products themselves, and lowered the number of price stimuli to make the brand icons more visible. Special kudos to our friends: Poum tchak for the sonic branding, Studio Henry for the sound engineering, Pomelo for the performance marketing and Supersimpel for the media.
03
We build hype
We created the creative system together with the client’s internal team at our offices, and then we ran it. We installed an always-on mindset with weekly 30-minute footfall and sales evals, anticipating what we saw in our campaign and sales dashboard.
One example: we added a TVC in France on digital channels. The decision was taken in the morning, the briefing was made by Defiant (copy and image references), the commercial was made from Floralux footage by the Floralux team with feedback loops from Lode, and the sound was added by Poum tchak. The next day everything was ready to plug in, and we launched the commercial that same evening on TF1. It is the focus and flexibility that Floralux needs. Because rain, snow and competitors’ promotions can make a big difference.
04
We generate cultural currency
It was not a KPI, but something shifted once Floralux stopped leading with the price. We saw an increase in reach-out from the media about Christmas trends (Libelle, Radio 2, WTV) and a strong increase of new social media followers, both in Belgium and in France. Floralux moved from a promotion-driven company toward a community storyteller that offers great products at great prices.The homecenter for people who want to create a cosy home inside and outside.
05
We measure business impact
We had an objective of winning 5,000 new clients and winning back French clients. This is a specific target, as half of the clients of Floralux Dadizele are French.
06
7,246 new customers in 3 months (44,9% above target).
For the first time in years, we saw an increase in French customers shopping at Floralux. All this with a budget equal to the 2024 budget for the same period, with similar products and promotions.
“Defiant stays close to the action, adjusting the plan weekly based on in-store results.”
This approach shows Defiant’s ability to merge cultural relevance and brand heritage into a creative brand platform that resonates emotionally and commercially. And it proves that co-creation can deliver great results.