1-800-FLOWERS.COM Thrived Amid Need For Human Connection

CEO of one eight hundred flowers dot com. That is a NASTAC listed stock uh F l w S. I'm looking at the stock up a hundred and twenty one on a trailing twelve month basis, So up, the business of selling flowers and gifts seems to be in good shape. Let's check in with Chris. Chris, thanks so much for joining us here again five days and counting to Valentine's Day. Talk to us about your business and Valentine's Day. How

big is that? So? Valentine's Day is a very important part about business, and I appreciate you asking and having me on the show. The time of year, it's uh, it's actually our third busiest holiday because of our expansion into the golome food category with brands like Harry and David, or most recent acquisition into personalized products with personalization mall dot com, the Flower brand, which is all about Valentine's Day.

This really makes you know. The other brands make the holiday season the busiest season for us, Mother's Day second, Valentine's third. But more importantly, this is so important for our customers and it's so important for them at this point in time to really reach out and express themselves to each other. So what tell us what kinds of flowers people tend to ask for? Is it all roses

around this time year? Oh? Funny, of course, it is also about twenty two million stems this year of flowers, fourteen million of those will be roses, not all the roses of all different colors. But when you really want to say I love you and really express yourself, nothing does it like roses, Just on that I need to know what I mean at all red flowers? And how do you how do you tailor? You know, if you think demand is going to be like mostly red flowers,

how do you tailor your orders? For that. We look all the time. We're constantly doing data analytics to understand what consumer trends are, what we sold last year, working with our growers to make sure we have the supply. And besides red, which is a coarse staple, we're seeing lots of pinks and pastel colored roses, so so it runs the gamut and people looking for something yellow roses are very comics. They really expressed friendship at this time

of year and the Valentine's Day. It's not always about love, it's just recognizing the people who are important in our lives. Chris talked to us about your business and the pandemic. So many businesses we've seen I've been really really disrupted and upbended. Um tell us about how the gift giving business has kind of, you know, reacted to the world we're living in now. Yes, Paul, I think you know, as we look at how we reacted to the pandemic.

When the first hit, no one knew what was exactly what is going to happen, But we saw early on from our customers that they recognized the need to maintain relationships, to build reach out and connect to the import people in their lives. And as a company whose vision is to inspire human expression, connection and celebration, we were so

well positioned for that. So while many businesses have been really dramatically hampered by this pandemic, it's been a pivotabal pivotal moment for our company as we've embraced and leaned into the sentiments of the consumer to shift from offline sales to online sales that were so well positioned for the trend of nesting, where we see companies like Personalization Mall just doing really, really well. So for us, we were accelerating our revenue for the past couple of years.

It's accelerated more on now as we've gone into the pandemic, and we're just so honored that customers turned to us to help us help to help them express and connect with the important people in their lives. Sure, did your growers have trouble getting enough people to pick their flowers?

There were there any kind of bottlenecks like that? I think overall retail and supply chains, we've all had our challenges, but luckily we've been able to work together in partnership and really overcome those challenges, whether it's working with the growers here in the United States or in other parts of the world where some of our product comes from. So we've been able to do collaborative partnership. We've been able to overcome many of those challenges and not really

be to be uh disrupted in the industry. So one eight flowers dot Com. That brand has been around uh forever, Chris. But you guys are also really diversified into simply chocolate, Sherry's berries, the popcorn factory. What's the next avenue of growth for your company? Well, again, I think well, as we look to say what we're really about, people look at this as a gifting company. But what we're really about a company to help you express and connecting to celebrate.

So our most recent acquisition that we did in the midst of this pandemic, believe it or not, was a large att acquisition ever personalization all uh, and that brought us into a whole new product, Candor, because that's a trend we saw developing people looking to personalize everything with being able to put their photographs on things, personalize the message, etcetera.

So we will be continuing to grow into that category and then just looking for why it else helps you to say something to someone who is important to you, whether it be something for free, whether it be something that costs five dollars like Cheryl's cookie cards, where you could send a personalized box with a single cookie, and it's just the same thinking of you. So our emission, our vision is to just keep people connecting and find more and more ways to make that easy for them.

So many things on the personalization mall that I have ideas for Chris, I'll be in touch, Thank you so much. That is Chris mcan And of course if you are ordering flowers or something more personalized for any of your loved ones, to call one eight hundred flowers before Valentine's Day. We have a Secretary of State now. Is name is Anthony Lincoln, and one of the first things that he is doing is trying to end the war in Yemen.

He says it's priority and that the humanitarian crisis is no longer just palatable, which it hasn't been for a long long time. So the U s planning to provoke terrorist designations on Yemen, Yemen's hoodie rebels. Let's bring in somebody who knows a lot more about this and about what Biden's foreign policy is likely to look like more broadly. Ariel Cohen is senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and from a founding principle of international market analysis. Ariel, thank

you so much for joining. Obviously, Lincoln feels very strongly about Yemen, which is great because it's been ignored for many, many, many months. What happens here does he be? Is he successful in trying to end Yemen's war? Or is this the case of the U. S Getting involved where it shouldn't um. The Yemen war is a humanitarian disaster. What is important to remember is that Iran is projecting power to Yemen UH and mobilizing, arming, training, equipping UH the

Houthi rebels. These are pretty um uh, pretty underdeveloped folks UH in the Yemen who never ever had their own missiles. So now the Hoothies are shooting the Iranian missiles into Saudi Arabia. And whether you like them or don't like them, there's a lot of things we dislike about Saudi There our allies, and they have been our allicense. When President Roosevelt and the founding King of Saudi Arabia, Um Belazi

abdelaziz Um agreed on a strategic partnership. So to just um say we're going to stop the war in Yemen is great, but you need a commitment from the Hoosies to stop firing missiles, add the Saudis to stop attacking their um oil fields. And for the from the Iranians who supposedly want to join rejoin the Nuclear Agreement j c p o A with the United States and the others to commit to pull out of Yemen and stop

supporting the Hooties. If these elements are in uh, kudos to the State Department, to Tony B. Lincoln, to President Biden for resolving a bloody and horrible conflict in the Yemen. All right, Ariel, let's broaden the foreign policy out a little bit here under the Biden administration. Um, here the Biden administration and the President said he wants to re engage in global diplomacy after four years of Presidents Trump's

America First Agenda. How do you believe America's will be embraced by the world once again as a leading voice in global diplomacy or does it have to work to get a trust back. Well, first of all, we should remember that Trump came as a symptom of the fatigue. A lot of folks in this country have with long wars commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan that we're going on for twenty years. Families law their dear ones. It cost us probably trillion dollars to be engaged there. So there

was a reaction. It didn't happen in an empty space just because Donald Trump had very poor, poorly thoughts through ideas about the world, which he did. He did. He's a nationalist, he's an isolationist. Doesn't work like that. In the twenty one century, however, the rise of China and UH, the wariness of our European allies to work with us, standing up to putin in Russia, standing up to seize and pin in China. You see what the Europeans just

did just before Biden was inaugurated. UH they signed a huge UH investment in trade agreement with Europe and the Chinese Rush and signed a similar agreement in Asia. So this is not Barack Obama's world. This is not the world where President than Vice President Biden was hugged by everybody. We have more challenges, bigger challenges, and we need to have, among other things, money UH to confront the rising China

and other things. And instead what I see is um a commitment, almost an hysterical commitment to spend more and more money on things that are not directly applicable to this conflict with China and to boosting American engagements and presents around the world. Money is fungible if we spend all this money on let's sake, the COVID package for the environmental policies, which are necessary as well. Clearly they're necessary.

But we need to keep the whole picture um in mind and see the huge challenges in front of us in terms of international engagement, in terms of how we bring back the allies in Asia, India, Japan, the Philippines, and in Europe. Yes, we only have a minute left. How will Biden approach China? Relations are not good between the US and China right now. Well, this is a part of a huge systemic challenge to the United States.

Chinese arising power. China thinks that they're going to become the greatest economic power on the planet in this decade before and uh spin the Chinese leader is more authoritarian, more dictatorial than anybody since Mouth Setong, and he compares himself to Mao. He wants to bring Taiwan back by hope, by group, either politically or militarily. This is a huge challenge for president by Dr Ariel Collen, thank you so

much for joining us. Dr Errol Cohen, he's a senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, also founding Principle of International Market Analysis based in Washington, D E. C. Let's get to our next guest, who is Austin Carr. He has written a great story about Apple being the two point three trillion dollar fortress that Tim Cooke built. We know that we have a meeting of business leaders with Joe

Biden today. One of them won't be Tim Coke, not this time around, but he did have a meeting with Joe Biden back in twelve and that's where Austin's story starts out. So Austin, tell us what the sort of the the drift of your story is. If you're like, what is it about Cooke and Apple that administrations really want to talk to? Yeah, I mean one of the things that we wanted to focus on with this story,

which was Tim Cook's diplomacy skills. Um. So much attention when it comes to Apple is often centered on their products and their design approach. But one of the things that him has been incredibly uh depth dad is deflecting

political pressure. UM. The opening scene, as you just mentioned, of the story, is actually a look back at dinner between Joe Biden when he was Vice president and Tim Cook when he was really pressuring Apple to make the iPhone in the US, UM, which for a lot of folks might just out a little bit like deja vu, because he went through that with four years during the Obama administration or eight years I should say, another four years with the Trump administration, and just recently Biden has

been talking yet again about trying to move US manufacturing back to the US and what administration seemed to be in love with the Apple uh with Apple about and and Tim more specifically, it's just the Apple brand. Um. They see it as an engine of American innovation, job creator, and they want to attach themselves to that. And that's one of the things that we sort of dove into during the the the Obama era as well as a

Trump era. Just how Tim Cook navigated that, leaned on and his sort of diplomacy skills as well as trading optics to get his way when it came to navigating Washington,

d C. So it's it's interesting. I mean, Tim Cook, I'm just looking at the you know, the chart, the ten year charts since you know, the end of the fiscal UH financial crisis two thousand nine two stocks just been extraordinary in terms of returns and out performing the market here, Tim Cook, I mean, he's navigated so many land mines you mentioned, you know a number of them. But one of the big issues is the regulatory risk here. What's the concern here within the company UM about regulatory

risk from the United States? Is that a potential big risk for this company? I mean, I think definitely so. I mean, if you look at the October House UH Anti Trust Subcommittee, you know they cited Apple, along with Facebook, Amazon, and Google as having monopoly power and regulating regulars UH step in when it comes to their up store, UM just because of the dominance of the platform on when it comes to mobile software and the sort of control

it has over software makers. UM. At the same time, if you sort of zoom out, I would say Apple has been less scrutinized versus the other companies out there, like Google and Facebook, especially if you saw her the testimony UM some months back, a lot of the ire from from Congress was focused on Mark Zuckerberg or Sin Darpachai rather than Tim Cook. And I think one of that reasons is just the narrative he's able to build. UM. He's been very public and very vocal and sort of

not being on the defensive but actually attacking UM. He's most recently been counterpunching and saying, uh, you know, just that just in in recent weeks that uh, you know, the government should be focused on reforming social media companies because of their data exploitation, that that's a larger issue

than perhaps Apple might be with its app store. UM. And they're very just clever again about deflecting those politics and winning that public messaging war a sent really using the Apple marketing that's so famous, but for political issues exactly deflecting well. Once I mean, obviously the social media companies are in for a few months of toughness, I

would imagine both here and in Europe. But once that's over and sort of the way, we'll be free for regulators here and in Europe to to go after Apple in a big way on everything from taxes to app store to how it treats its customers and competition and so on, What are the most vulnerable in well, I mean, I think that remains to be seen, just because you know, especially in the US, we haven't really gotten a clearer picture of how much the Biden administration is going to

press this issue. He's spoken most vocally about Section two thirty, which is an issue that would affect Facebook and Google

more than it did Apple. But if you look at the Trump era for just lessons, um, I mean, just just consider how how uniquely vulnerable Apple was during that time frame, considering how reliant its supply chain was on China and how much Trump administration was going after UH that dynamic through trade war pressure, tariff threats, UH and so forth that some analysts really thought would blow up the company's supply chain and really forced them to have

to find new geographies to manufacture things, which it could not have done overnight, especially amid the COVID nineteen pandemic. Um Yet Apple did better than ever. I mean, this market cap sor to just past two trillion dollars, and that's just a testament to both the operational skill as well as the political maneuvering. Again that Tim Cook did personally with Trump, who was, according to officials, you know,

constantly meeting in Washington with Trump. Was willing to do these big events with him, whether that CEO Summer's summits, dinners at the White House, or visits to a factory in Texas, which was sort of an infamous scene in the story. Um to really just avoid the harshest penalties of what could have been a disastrous four years under Trump. Austin, thank you so much for this. This story just a fascinating story. Austin Carr, Bloomberg Technology reporter. His story Bloomberg

Business Week Magazine. Apple is a two point three trillion dollar fourtress that Tim Cook built. It is time for Bloomberg Opinion today. We're joined by Timothy O'Brien, senior calumnists for Bloomberg Opinion, coming to us from the foodie capital of Montclair, New Jersey. Tim, we've got the impeachment trial kicking off today. By all accounts, a conviction is highly unlikely. What would constitute a win or a good showing on

the part of the Democrats. Well, I think I think there's still a lot that voters and citizens don't know about what occurred on January expects in terms of who planned the event prior to it occurring, who coordinated what occurred there, did the White House know? How much? Did Trump know? What it? What? It is a campaign? No, Uh, it would be a useful exercise if this trial got at that, because it's vitally important for the law and I think the historical record. But political concerns are driving

this one, obviously, and I don't know. You know, there's a lot of debate on that very issue within the Democratic Party itself. There's some folks pushing for a speedy trial and there's others asking for a more deliberative process that airs everything. Um. I think the White House seems to prefer a speedy trial as well. But again, these are political issues that are driving that debate, not not the legal values. I think for sure, Tim, if there are no witnesses allowed, how would we find out some

details of the type that you just annunciated. I don't know, I frankly don't know. I don't know why witnesses aren't being subpoena and uh required to testifying her oath, including

uh Donald Trump. I don't know why there isn't a more aggressive effort to collect that kind of evidence I should say, I do know, but I think it's it amounts to a travesty that I think historically people will look back on this and see it as as Democrats once again caving to more savvy and street smart Republicans who know how to muscle procedure alogue um at the expense I think of better outcomes. Tim, What role, if any,

is the White House playing in this process? Well, well, certainly Biden has sat back and has not had any comments about it. But but behind the scenes, UM, there certainly has been a lot of indications that the White House would prefer that that the trial is expeditious and that it doesn't uh gum up the machinery. And I think their concerns are it could derail Biden's ability to get um more COVID nineteen legislation passed. It would your

his ability to form his cabinet. Um. It's not clear to me that that's actually the case, but there's a there's a concern about that in the White House. Will Trump's defense be able to, you know, put forward a case that will will defeat the case of all of the managers. So there's what two four, six, eight nine, managers from Jamie Roskin to Madeline Dean, and surely they'll have, you know, a good case. Will will the defense be

able to to knock that case down? Well, I think, you know, an acquittal is pretty baked in here now, Vanni. The Democrats would need sixty seven votes finding Trump guilty, and I don't think there's any possibility they're going to get there. It looks now like UM Republicans are going to you know, march and lockstep on this one. So unfortunately, it looks like whether or not Trump's defense mounts a good case, maybe it irrelevant to the outcome, But in

terms of their raw argument, uh, it is. It is a pretty ridiculous one. It's it's founded on two things. That a president can't be impeached and I'm sorry, a former president can't be impeached, even though Trump was president

at the time he was impeached. But which makes that claim I think irrelevant, And that Trump was merely exercising his free speech rights when he uh told marchers in Washington and he would lead them down Pennsylvania Avenue and they needed to fight to make sure their country wasn't taken away from them. UM. Free spool. We all are protected by free speech, but no one's allowed to go to a movie theater and screened fire. So I think on legal grounds, both of those issues aren't very strong,

but they had to say something because Trump is getting tried. Tim, do we know for a fact that no witnesses will be called? You know, we won't know, Paul, that's a great question. It appears that that's not going to be the hat. But but uh, the procedures around this has been very murky up until the very moment that we're speaking right now. We may see when this launches this

afternoon that they will begin calling witnesses. Um. You know, Lindsey Graham was on Fox saying that if the Democrats call witnesses, he's going to make sure that the Republicans call lots of witnesses to I think the threat there is that he would try that That would then amount to slowing the whole thing down. Um, But all indications

are that witnesses aren't going to be called. We know that there's going to be a sort of a four hour initial proceeding on the constitutionality of the whole thing, and then sort of sixteen hours for both sides to present cases and so on. Will this be wrapped up extraordinarily faster? You think, Tim will? We will. We know most of what we're going to find out by Friday. Even that's possible, I think it really depends on how it it moves procedurally van in it it could be

wrapped up in a few days. I think it'll be unfortunate if that's the case from a legal standpoint. But again again, I think some of the political realities around there mean that may happen. So Tim, outside of these impeachment process You've been found the president Trump for for decades. Here, what is this greatest legal risk outside of these impeachment processes? Um, you know there's a there's a there are at tax and financial fraud investigations of foot in the state of

New York. One is with the New York State Attorney General. That's a civil case. I think the more threatening case to him is with the Manhattan District Attorney, which is a criminal case, and it would bring criminal charges and penalties if if it if it goes all the way to the finish line, and that involves again possible tax fraud, accounting fraud, financial fraud, campaign finance fraud, and I think that's very fun of mine. For Trump, I think it's

one of the reasons. I think the legal perils that were faking him was a very significant reason and for him steering losing the installation of the of the Oble Office when he lost the election. Yeah, it's fascinating, is vinyal question? Tim? What about the rest of his family? Are they once this is over, open to some kind of action as well? Well? The um the children are all part of the business and they're involved in those

they're there. It's likely they may be swept in in into some of the problems their father faces in New York. The consequences may not be as graves, but they're they're on that same rate our screen. And of course one final thing, Tim, we don't know if there were pocket parsons, do we We do not know that. That's a good question, but we do not know that. Well, we shall find out. It all comes to the surface eventually. Tim O'Brien, thank

you so much for joining Tim. Of course always with some wonderful columns on Bloomberg opinion and things that you may not have thought of, and something's examined that you did think of. And a full gamut. Tim O'Brien there of Bloomberg Opinion. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Markets podcast. You can subscribe and listen to interviews at Apple Podcasts or whatever a podcast platform you prefer. I'm Bonnie Quinn, I'm on Twitter at Bonnie Quinn. And Paul Sweeney I'm

on Twitter at pt Sweeney. Before the podcast, you can always catch us worldwide at Bloomberg Radio