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