Coinbase partners with 1-800-FLOWERS

While the tech world was all abuzz with the news that Newegg is now accepting bitcoin, Coinbase quietly announced a partnership with an eye towards the mainstream audience: 1-800-FLOWERS. The floral and gift delivery service isn’t exactly small a mom-and-pop flower shop, with a net revenue of $735 million in 2013. Perhaps more importantly, however, 1-800-FLOWERS is well known to the general public, and is easily one of the best-known brands to directly accept bitcoin. The company will integrate Coinbase payments starting this fall.

Speaking with CoinDesk, 1-800-FLOWERS CEO Jim McCann said that the primary motivation behind the move was customer demand:

As a customer-centric company, we are always looking for new ways to engage with our customers and enhance their shopping experience for all of their celebratory occasions. Bitcoin, together with our other payment options, offers our customers another highly convenient way to help them deliver smiles to the important people in their lives.”

Although this may seem like a marketing move by the company, it’s worth noting that 1-800-FLOWERS has a long history of early adoption of tech trends. In addition to being an early adopter of the wire-service technology allowing the company to build up a network of local flower shops to take orders nationally, 1-800-FLOWERS was also an extremely early adopter of the internet, partnering with CompuServe and AOL in the early 1990s. 1800flowers.com was registered in 1995, well before most major businesses even had public email addresses.

In addition to 1800flowers.com, bitcoin will be accepted at the company’s network of related sites: FannieMay.com, Cheryl’s.com, ThePopcornFactory.com, 1-800-Baskets.com, FruitBouquets.com, and Stockyards.com.