Mission de Flores II
I didn’t know anything about the flower business. I was working in the stamp industry; collectable stamps, a business I have been in and out of for many years. Zeke was going to be the only employee until we could afford another. He was going to be open 6 days a week, and also do some marketing to help grow the business. In exchange I was going to give him ½ of the business, and I would pay all expenses.
The numbers looked pretty good, $3000 for rent, $2000 month draw for Zeke, a retail store in San Francisco for around $7000/month. Zeke had told me the markup on flowers was around 4x, so that we would profit even with sales of a little more than $10,000. Seemed easy for the only florist in the Mission.
But it was not so easy, and the store did not sell much of anything for the first few months. Zeke was complaining about how hard the work was. I hadn’t realized how much work there was in addition to working the store; you have to go to the market to buy early in the morning, at least 2–3x/week, then come back and process the flowers, make bouquets, etc. Of course with not a lot of business there was time, but it was still a grind 6 days a week. We had no other choice than to press on though, as we were losing nearly all of our expenses every month, which was unsustainable for me. So I told him to start working less on retail and more on marketing, maybe close the store another day a week, and dedicate that day to getting customers.
Those were contentious times for us. I was getting sick of losing $7k/month, and needed something to change. He was generally a very sweet guy, but on occasion he would go off on me, usually on text or Facebook Messenger, and start saying crazy things. I wish I remembered more but he would call me an absentee owner, to which I would respond yes, that’s what you were getting into, I have another job, etc. He would threaten to quit often, he would say he couldn’t go on, and I would tell him what a shitty thing that would be to do to me, I was on the hook for a lease, $100k in losses, and no knowledge of the industry.
We had discussed what he would do on his first ‘marketing day.’ He wanted to make a few bouquets and deliver them to big tech companies like YouTube, and try to get customers that way. Looking back, this was not a great way to start marketing a flower store.
The next day I asked him how it went; not very good. The day started with him getting a parking ticket, and he had quit smoking. He made 8 bouquets to bring to companies, but by the time he went to the market and made them, there wasn’t much time to distribute them. He tried YouTube first, but wasn’t allowed in or to drop off the arrangement. That made me realize what should have been obvious earlier, that Zeke was an artist, and maybe it was better to find someone who specialized in marketing to help.
So I started looking for a marketing consultant with some retail experience to help us grow our sales. Meanwhile, Zeke was having more and more episodes, and for some reason I didn’t connect the dots. His outbursts, mostly digital, were more frequent, and he began to say some crazy things. He thought there were 2 people down the street watching the store through ‘telescopes,’ and recording when he came and left. He said that a woman had warned him about them, she had noticed this and now he was aware of it also. He had no explanation for why people would be watching him or the store, since we clearly didn’t do any business. I told him that if we were being spied on, it wouldn’t be 2 guys with telescopes, this was 2013 and it would be through his iPhone.
He thought a car parked outside was watching us through a camera it had installed on the dashboard. The car apparently would be in the spot in front of our store constantly, only moving for weekly street sweeping. When I came to the store next, it was true there was a car in front of our store with a camera pointing outward, but there was no evidence for the narrative he had described. I wish I remembered more of this period….but there were a lot of stories like this for a few months.
