Our (Hi)story
Curious on how we started. Want to laught at us?
Then you are at the right place! 😂
Year 2018
November, 2018
First Free-Form Art
I’ve started to follow Mohit Bhoit – a genius artist that is creating electronic sculptures by soldering brass wire into so-called free-form sculptures. I immediately fall in love with these.
So I started to build my free-form sculptures. It’s a perfect combination of all my passions – software engineering, electronics, and 3D design. The first one I built was an Arduino based snowflake.
Year 2019
February, 2019
My Wife Is The Reason
It was the middle of frozen January and I wanted to make something. I wanted to throw myself into a new challenging project. But what? All my previous sculptures were static, no movement at all. Then out of nowehere I imagined a flower whose petals would open. I don’t even know what was the inspiration. Probably a call for spring.
Those were my thoughts at the beginning of this famous project that was eventually named Everblooming Tulip. I took it secret and I was so lucky to finish it a few days before Valentine’s Day. I gave it to my wife and shared it on Twitter.
It instantly went viral. The internet magazines and even local televisions were celebrating me as a husband of a year. That was something I’ve never anticipated. Everybody started to bombard me with requests to built one for them.
May, 2019
3D printing
3D printers always fascinated me. It’s an impressive technology that helps with fast prototyping. And I went for the best one – Prusa MK3S. Because I love his story and passion. And I want to support local brands!
Prusa printer helped me a lot to create even more complicated sculptures. I’ve used it primarily to print custom jigs, tools, and stencils for my free-form sculptures.
Year 2020
May, 2020
Floower Was Born
Bold goals need a bold team. But also some very boring legal stuff. But we went through that and Floower Lab s.r.o. was born.
June, 2020
First Customers
We are scared. But we need first real customers who will purchase the Floower for the real money. We need to test the whole process. We need the first feedback. We need to see if we have a business. So we are making the first 10 prototypes and selling them for $75 each.
The boxes are quite improvised so far. Layers of hand-cut floor insulation to perfectly fit the Floower and packed into brown boxes. Test of Floower endurance. Shipping conditions are rough.
June, 2020
Working in a Garage
So far I was creating one-time projects. They were hacked together, unfinished, and run by a crapy code. That is a terrible recipe for a production-grade product. A lot of have to change. So we are working on precise templates to make perfect shapes, selecting the correct materials and techniques, improving and testing the code. And of course, learning from the first feedback. Every Floower moves us a bit toward a production-grade manufacturing process.
June, 2020
Petals Factory
Single petal takes 45 minutes to print. It’s extremely time-consuming and needs a lot of attention. We are currently printing 6 petals at once. That is 4.5 hours. I cannot squeeze more unless I compromise on the quality. We purchase the second printer but it still requires lot of attention.
Luckily I was able to come up with the solution. Print head can swipe the petals out of the print bed and start printing again immediatelly without any attention. This way we can print approximately 60 petals a day. Of course sometimes it broke down, or fail to swipe properly or print fails. But overall this is a huge improvement! An automated printing farm!
July, 2020
Second Prototypes
Feedback from first 10 customer was really positive and helpful. The second 20 customers are coming. We made some small changes and improvements. The product feels right but we still need to test the market. Will the people buy it for $110?
It’s still hard to make one Floower. We are facing a lot of different issues with material, electronics, and software. But we are getting close! And there seems to be less and less obstacles.
BTW the Floowers were gone in 53 minutes after we opened the store.
September, 2020
Unboxing Boxes
Boxes. Exhausting chapter. Floower is a premium product. Designed and built for people who love well-crafter and detail-oriented stuff – as Apple does. Unboxing of Floower has to be a pleasure on its own. So we wanted to have an Apple-grade box.
It took us almost three months and 1/3 of our entire budget to make 100 perfect boxes for our Floowers. And boy they are amazing! I can’t wait for customers to see them.
September, 2020
Christmas Challenge
We want to deliver 100 Floower before the Christmas. It’s going to be a chalenge on all fronts. We have all the componenets and material. Let’s rock’n’roll!
November, 2020
Happy Halloween 🎃
This was super fun. Adapting Floower design to create a carnivorous flower with Jack’o’Latern instead of flowerpot. Petals are from Prusa’s Galaxy Black PLA with a teeth on sides and it’s pretty scary. I put a proximity sensor inside the blossom to detect movements when the blossom is open. So as soon as you try to touch the Floower it will eat you.
November, 2020
We Have a Business!
100 Floower sold in under the month. 130 Floowers in total this year. We have a product. And hopefully a product market fit. Now we gonna take a break, collect feedback, improve the software and finish the mobile app and the whole “ecosystem”.
December, 2020
Mobile Apps Released
Mobile Apps are finally publicly available on both App Store and Google Play. This was a huge relief. It took us several months to finalize them. The biggest hurdle was the Apple hardware we had to purchase in order to release for App Store.
Otherwise, technology is pretty neat. The mobile app is built on the Google Flutter framework which has a great community and a lot of libraries. The portability is incredible. No changes had to be made when building for the App Store.
The mobile app is extremely important for us. It makes the Floower rare geek art. Smart Art. We aim to create a unique ecosystem where your Floower gets the latest updates and can be fully personalized. We’re planning on adding more animation, seasonal features, and different preset behaviors.
December, 2020
Merry Christmas 🎄
It’s 2 AM on 24th December. And I finally came in peace with the new candlelight mod. I spent the whole day fine tuning the new animation modes for Floowers and introducing the new candlelight mode. And it’s truly amazing. It is so peaceful to just sit here in the dark living room watching the flame inside the Floower. It’s a perfect Christmas gift for any Floower owner.
With the mobile apps released and the firmware upgrade process in place, it’s incredible how easy it is to roll out new features. Can’t wait to introduce more animations, seasonal modes, and other fun stuff!
Merry Christmas, and Enjoy the Festive Season!
December, 2020
Farewell 2020, Fade in Peace
Thank you for 2020! It wasn’t the best year ever for mankind. However, it was a big year for 3 guys in the Czech Republic.
We’re building our dream company. We evolved the once hacked everblooming flower into what is now known as Floower. And we’re thrilled to have a lot of happy customers. We were able to make only 130 Floowers, and they quickly went out to all the different places in the world. And that is fine. We want to focus on quality and innovation rather than quantity and commonness.
Year 2021
January, 2021
Valentine’s Floower
The first-ever limited edition of Floower, our Valentine’s Floower, sold out. We offered you just 10 pieces of a Floower made using a walnut tree branch from our very own garden. We’re really thrilled you liked this special edition forcing us to think about what we offer you next.
February, 2021
PayPal joins Stripe
By popular demand we’re adding PayPal payment option for your convenience. This extends our current option of Stripe payment.
You can learn more details at Shopping and Shipping page.
March, 2021
Ruby Oak, Amethyst Cherry
Based on the success of Valentine’s Floower we decided we want to give you more options to choose from when buying your everblooming flower. We expand our shop with Ruby Oak and Amethyst Cherry Floower. Both stunning and beautiful. This also led us to rename our classic Floower to Crystal Oak.
Should we add more options? Like the extraordinary Topaz Yellow?
March, 2021
Custom Floower
Now you can order a Custom Floower. We were already doing custom orders and so we decided it’s the time to open this up for everyone.
Simply choose your favorite wood and petals color and you’re ready to order!
June, 2021
Maker Faire Pilsen
We had a lot of fun at MakerFaire Pilsen! We met a lot of great makers and learned something about ourselves and our product. First of all Floower isn’t for everybody. Somebody find it useless, somebody utterly brilliant. After all, it’s fine art hiding fascinating technology and fine mechanics. It’s for you, who seeks unique handmade product.
September, 2021
Maker Faire Prague
Maker Faire Prague was an exciting time for us. For this event, we have created an enormous Floower that was opening and closing throughout the day for the fair visitors to enjoy. We’ve met a lot of exciting and enthusiastic people that weekend.
