BloomOne
The closest support a flower shop can have.
An order goes on a paper slip, then gets copied into a ledger. The morning's delivery lives in a notebook. The customer whose wedding anniversary falls in March lives in the owner's head. BloomOne takes that day as it already runs and keeps it in one record — in the order the shop already works.
The page and the app are in Japanese.
Why I'm building it
The flower shop a few streets over is not short of software. It is short of software shaped like the way it already works. Most of what exists asks the shop to change its day to fit the screen; the rest is a spreadsheet. So I started from the slip, the notebook and the owner's memory, and asked what it would take to keep all three and remove only the copying.
What it does
In the order the slip is written
When, what the occasion is, roughly how much, where it goes. The fields sit in the order the shop already writes them, and an order carries straight through making, delivery and payment — so nothing has to be copied into a ledger a second time.
The morning's delivery, sorted by what will go first
Enter what arrived in the morning and the stems closest to the edge come to the top. Record what went in the bin at closing, and how much is being thrown away stops being a feeling and becomes a number.
The owner's memory becomes the shop's record
Last year's wedding anniversary, a mother's birthday, the usual delivery address. What only the owner knew is written down, so whoever picks up the phone knows it too.
It runs without a computer
Open today's deliveries, make the call, pull up the map, mark it handed over. The whole day fits on the phone already in the apron, with buttons big enough to hit with wet hands.
Screens are from the app in development, and its interface is Japanese.
The monitor round
Five shops, first come. A shop that sees the round through pays no monthly fee for BloomOne, ever. I also build it a home page — opening hours, a map, a phone number, photos of the shop — and keep that running free too, because most shops on these streets don't have one. The first setup is mine to do: shop details, hours, the flowers you carry, the staff.
Read the terms and applyWhat's next
BloomGo: a marketplace for the flowers that would otherwise be thrown out at closing. BloomOne's stock side already records what gets rescued; the marketplace itself isn't built yet.