Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and
Speaker 1: Tim Stenebek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: As we said, President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy met
Speaker 2: with congressional leaders today, and they both made clear that
Speaker 2: they aren't interested in a short term debt limit extension,
Speaker 2: so kind of business as usual.
Speaker 3: Matt Well, I think the interesting thing is not that
Speaker 3: they didn't come to any that they didn't break any ground,
Speaker 3: but that Mitch McConnell says the US is never defaulted
Speaker 3: and never will. So he seems, yeah, that's is it optimism?
Speaker 3: Can we call it that? Anyway? McCarthy says that Biden
Speaker 3: and the congressional leaders are gonna meet again on Friday.
Speaker 3: When they do meet on Friday, I'm gonna go ahead
Speaker 3: and recommend that they that they already on Friday order
Speaker 3: up flowers for their moms. Because typically Matt was going
Speaker 3: to go with this. I just think I think Friday
Speaker 3: is like the last day to get it in because
Speaker 3: I feel like Saturday, it's all the flower companies are
Speaker 3: too hard pressed on Saturday.
Speaker 2: There was someone who knows a lot about that and
Speaker 2: can tell you, like, what's the drop dead date? For
Speaker 2: ordering flowers for your mom. Is Christina Stembele. She is
Speaker 2: founder and CEO of Seattle based farm Girl Flowers. She
Speaker 2: is here in our interactive brokers. Dude, a little bit
Speaker 2: of a whirlwind trip back to New York. How are you?
Speaker 1: I'm great? Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: Wait, what mean back to New York? Are you grew
Speaker 3: up on a farm in New York?
Speaker 1: No, come by the mic. We want to make sure Indiana.
Speaker 1: Indiana might come to New York frequently and I get
Speaker 1: to talk to Carol. I love talking to you guys.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, and you brought flowers. We should say for
Speaker 3: listeners who can't see, we've got a couple of gorgeous
Speaker 3: bouquets up here and tho a.
Speaker 2: YouTube and Bloomberg originals can see them.
Speaker 3: Though, yes exactly, I was going to say that, let's
Speaker 3: drive the traffic there.
Speaker 1: Yea. What is the what is the drop dead date?
Speaker 1: I would say right now? Actually, when you said Friday,
Speaker 1: oh really, yeah, I mean it's the sooner the better,
Speaker 1: you know. We do do some deliveries on Saturday, but
Speaker 1: depends where you live in the United States and whether
Speaker 1: you can get delivery on Saturdays Sundays we do not
Speaker 1: have local delivery on Sunday, so really Friday is a
Speaker 1: last you can order flowers if you live in a
Speaker 1: place that is lucky enough to have delivery Otherwise earlier
Speaker 1: the better. We all know, like delivery delays are everyone.
Speaker 3: So what So all right, let's say I order flowers
Speaker 3: for my mom and for my wife who is a mom,
Speaker 3: and then do I like keep them in the basement
Speaker 3: refrigerator and break them out on Sunday?
Speaker 1: Or I mean I sent my mom her flowers, she
Speaker 1: got them on Monday this week, and I say happy
Speaker 1: Mother's Day week like you Yeah, nobody gets mad about
Speaker 1: early flowers or gifts. They get mad about late ones.
Speaker 1: So I say, it's a Mother's Day a week and
Speaker 1: pam for her all week long.
Speaker 2: What's demand like right now?
Speaker 1: It's high, It's really really high, back.
Speaker 2: To pre pandemic levels or what is no?
Speaker 1: But I well, I mean I would say that if
Speaker 1: we did Sunday delivery jests probably because everybody's last minute.
Speaker 1: But you know, the economy is definitely impacting every business,
Speaker 1: including us. But right now we have the demands thanks
Speaker 1: to the big flower companies that have spent you know,
Speaker 1: a century, you know, building up flowers as gifts, which
Speaker 1: I am really great, So we don't want to miss out
Speaker 1: on the demand, right, But it's really hard to scale
Speaker 1: a company, as you know, everyone knows. You can't really
Speaker 1: scale a company from like, you know, twenty x what
Speaker 1: it is normally without having to scale back down afterwards.
Speaker 2: So do it because like a UPS will pull in
Speaker 2: some of the executives to get out in trucks and
Speaker 2: so on and stuff with and drive during like the
Speaker 2: holiday season. Right, Like we see Amazon hires more people,
Speaker 2: what do you do?
Speaker 1: We do the same thing. Everybody is, like, you know,
Speaker 1: we're all heading into Boston from here from New York.
Speaker 1: We already have people in Boston working. We have people
Speaker 1: at lots of our Fasca main distribution. No, it's just
Speaker 1: one where we had more space. So that's why we
Speaker 1: you know, we ramp up all the places that we
Speaker 1: can get more space. We have places in California that
Speaker 1: we have you know, people at, We have South America.
Speaker 1: We have a facility in Ecuador and Qito that we
Speaker 1: scale up to full capacity, multiple shifts. We just really
Speaker 1: you know, we're not going.
Speaker 3: There are other I mean, surely Mother's Day isn't the
Speaker 3: most flowers, right, isn't Valentine's Day? No, it's not really.
Speaker 1: I mean industry wide, Christmas the holidays is the biggest
Speaker 1: reported holiday for flowers. For us, it's Mother's Day though,
Speaker 1: because the holiday, you know, Christmas holiday is more like
Speaker 1: you know, trees and wreaths, and it's.
Speaker 3: The red, velvety flowers they call those, yes, point sets.
Speaker 1: Yeah, plants, things like that, but cut flowers. Our industry
Speaker 1: and our niche is Mother's Day. Mother's Day is like
Speaker 1: it's not even just a super Bowl. I'm calling it
Speaker 1: this year like we usually do. It's literally every holiday
Speaker 1: wrapped up into one because we need it to be
Speaker 1: so big because right after Mother's Day we go into
Speaker 1: the summer slump, which means we're gonna have four months
Speaker 1: of lighter sales than normal, and this year is gonna
Speaker 1: be even worse, probably because of the economy, So.
Speaker 3: So we don't try and offset that with other programs.
Speaker 3: A buddy of mine once when my wife had our
Speaker 3: first baby, gave us some kind of subscription where we
Speaker 3: got a new box of flowers every month, and my
Speaker 3: wife has said, for the last three years it's the
Speaker 3: best gift anyone's ever given her.
Speaker 1: That's a great testimonial. Everybody listens. Yeah, we do subscriptions
Speaker 1: as well, which are great. We do some you know,
Speaker 1: weddings and events and things like that that will will
Speaker 1: pop up in the summer. We do faux flower arrangements.
Speaker 1: You know, we're just constantly trying to come up with
Speaker 1: new things that will keep.
Speaker 3: You christ state.
Speaker 2: And how much of your revenues is booked on this holiday.
Speaker 1: Over twenty percent of our annual revenue will come in
Speaker 1: one week this week, so it's a big deal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So you know, I was asking for you got
Speaker 2: in because Matt and I talked with a guest earlier
Speaker 2: about where produce and fruit are all coming from. Where
Speaker 2: do all your flowers come from?
Speaker 1: They come from all over the world, but mostly from
Speaker 1: South America and Europe and some United States. So right now,
Speaker 1: for the whole year, we'll probably be seventy percent South America,
Speaker 1: seventy percent important, thirty percent domestic. Certain holidays it'll go
Speaker 1: more to like forty sixty or fifty to fifty. But
Speaker 1: for the year, you know, we're trying to get it
Speaker 1: more to a fifty to fifty. But it's you know,
Speaker 1: flower farming is is there's a lot. We could talk
Speaker 1: here for an hour about flower farming in this country. Why.
Speaker 1: I mean it's expensive. You know, it's get your competing
Speaker 1: with other countries where they don't have the same you know,
Speaker 1: taxes and labor issues, and I mean think of how
Speaker 1: much you have to pay per hour right now, plus
Speaker 1: all of the you know, insurances and workers comp and
Speaker 1: lawsuits and legal and things like that. It's really expensive.
Speaker 3: So what is the flower to get for Mother's Day?
Speaker 3: I mean, I know on Valentine's Day, at the roses
Speaker 3: at Christmas, I get the point sets. You know, is
Speaker 3: there one for Mother's Day? What is it? Yes?
Speaker 1: But I would also say don't do roses on Valentine's Day,
Speaker 1: but that's another story.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm just so with you.
Speaker 1: I am so with you. Yes, women don't actually want roses,
Speaker 1: but paeonies. We pulled ninety two percent of our customers
Speaker 1: and peonies were their favorite. And thankfully it's peenie season.
Speaker 1: We are beholding to mother nature though, so we've been
Speaker 1: on pins and needles because you know, you place these
Speaker 1: orders and put them on for sale on your website
Speaker 1: long before you actually have the flowers in hand. And
Speaker 1: if it's too cold or too hot. It messes everything.
Speaker 2: Does that happen?
Speaker 1: It happens all the time.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Last year we had you know, thirty percent of our
Speaker 1: peonies on order didn't come in time. They came the
Speaker 1: week after Mother's Day and so last minute we had
Speaker 1: to fly them in. It was really expensive. You know,
Speaker 1: it runs our cot you know, our un economics for
Speaker 1: our bouquets like great, we just like extold all those
Speaker 1: at a loss, you know, for some of them. So
Speaker 1: this year it's looking really good. So fingerscrass me. Still
Speaker 1: have one more shipment coming in this week, but so far,
Speaker 1: so good. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean your supply chain, how complicated is it?
Speaker 1: It's nuts?
Speaker 2: And how expensive and like you know, we talk about
Speaker 2: sustainability like moving stuff in, I mean, how do you
Speaker 2: work on that?
Speaker 1: It's I often say, like anything we do after perishable,
Speaker 1: like really perishable product that we have is going to
Speaker 1: seem like a cakewalk because you can't make a mistake.
Speaker 1: You're beholden some mother nature, and we found that she
Speaker 1: always wins. You cannot fight mother nature. Literally, she will
Speaker 1: win every time. So you know you're just beholden too.
Speaker 1: Is it too hot? Is it too cold? Is there
Speaker 1: shipping issues? Like after they leave our warehouses, then we
Speaker 1: have to rely on you know, third parties to deliver
Speaker 1: them on time. And you know, people are upset when
Speaker 1: they're not, of course, and then they're dead and so
Speaker 1: have to reshift. And if you overorder, it's gonna end
Speaker 1: up in a landfill. You know, it's gonna end up compost.
Speaker 1: You know, you can't just sell a sweater like a
Speaker 1: sweater later in you know, in June.
Speaker 3: What do you do when you have leftover flowers? Do
Speaker 3: you bring them to like, I don't know, churches or
Speaker 3: shelter or the.
Speaker 1: Few times that we do, Yeah, I do a flash
Speaker 1: sa are we flash? If you see us do flash,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, that's a little bit of an in
Speaker 1: here that we over ordered. So we do flashtail to
Speaker 1: sell them really quickly. But we're really really good at
Speaker 1: our supply chain.
Speaker 2: I need to ask you because I feel like with
Speaker 2: the banking and the regional banking crisis and so and
Speaker 2: so forth. You know, we've talked with you in the
Speaker 2: past about funding evaluations and so on and so forth, are
Speaker 2: you able to access all the funding.
Speaker 1: That you need. We are still bootstrapped companies, so we
Speaker 1: are still we've never taken any outside capital. We got
Speaker 1: one hundred and four no's now we've probably could raise capital.
Speaker 3: May know now you don't need it.
Speaker 1: Now we don't need it. We're doing okay without it.
Speaker 1: We just kind of kick at old school and spend
Speaker 1: less than we may bank like banking or anything like,
Speaker 1: you don't need any of that. Yeah, we're okay right now.
Speaker 1: Banking we had some issues, but our bank with Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley Bank and First One, so we had it. We
Speaker 1: had some glitches in the last couple of months, and
Speaker 1: the First Republic was our our secondary bank. So we
Speaker 1: are now with Chase. So the yeah, you know, so
Speaker 1: we're not you know, you'd more confident, you know about that.
Speaker 1: So we'll see if there's funding options there, but if not,
Speaker 1: we're just reinvesting our profits and trying to grow kind
Speaker 1: of old school.
Speaker 2: At twenty seconds, What is the next big growth project
Speaker 2: for you guys?
Speaker 1: Next big on? I mean we now are looking towards fall,
Speaker 1: already putting orders in for Thanksgiving and Christmas and looking
Speaker 1: forward to that. An exit plan or anything. I mean, yes,
Speaker 1: I'm definitely looking for an exit as well. Sometime or
Speaker 1: I'm just going to be one hundred years old.
Speaker 2: Work one hundred hours a week, always amazing, always fun.
Speaker 2: I love talking with you because I've said this to
Speaker 2: you before. I love small business and try and get
Speaker 2: an idea, and you're not so small. I mean, I
Speaker 2: don't know what your market cap. It's tens and millions.
Speaker 3: Of dollars at this point.
Speaker 1: But yeah, and we're doing okay.
Speaker 2: Good luck with the holiday, Christina Stumble, Matt, order your flowers.
Speaker 3: I'll order them now. While Christina is in the studio
Speaker 2: She's found her and seat of farm Girl Flowers, joining
Speaker 2: us here in our studio