MDF V

I should have just closed the store, but I had seen the potential, and thought the reward was worth the risk. I spoke with Anna on the day Zeke had died (but before I was aware), and she agreed to take the job.

Ana had been a florist for just a few years, and had done many different jobs in the past. She had very strong opinions and was a fierce individual. Her esthetic was great, and we moved away from Zeke’s modern/corporate styles to more warmer, alternative ones. It was a great style for our part of San Francsico, edgy but professional. Anna and I grew the business very quickly, and our sales were increasing all the time. It wasn’t long before we were selling $20,000 a month or so.

The secret to our growth was partnerships. The Mission is home to some of the most famous restaurants in the city, and I went to all of them and asked if they would like flowers at a reduced rate, if we could leave our cards next to the arrangements. There is no better advertising than being able to show your product directly to people who might appreciate it. Many of them said yes, and before long we were servicing 30+ restaurants not only in the mission but around the entire city.

Still we were not profitable. We kept on hiring people, and I was paying pretty high wages. Anna was our buyer and top designer, and managed everyone, they all worked for her. We had strategies to go after different markets, such as weddings, corporate, events, etc, and people were assigned to work on each. The goal was to have one place that could handle all floral requests.

The store itself looked great. There were rows of buckets outside, and an old-fashioned flower cart in front with bouquets. The inside was warm and open, with orchids and other plants scattered around for sale. I was in charge of the plants, I only knew about them from being a consumer over 25 years, but I knew about them and we started to sell plants of different types and sizes. We also sold many succulents, and my one creative addition to the store was creating succulent gardens for us to sell. They were pretty cool, and popular, with prices from $15 to $150 and higher. I would go to antique fairs and purchase interesting containers, old creamers, lunch boxes, anything that could hold a few plants. It was fun making them, and I still think about maybe doing it for a living.

Once in a while, markets would call us and ask if they could sell our flowers for them, as a service to their customers. We often heard complaints from markets about how there were no decent bouquets available for them to sell, they were all cheap wrapped in plastic type. We started selling at one of them, and they sold well. It was difficult to make a profit, as you had to split the price with the market, there were bouquets that never sold, someone had to drive the flowers to the market, and there needed to be some type of accounting system.

But our ‘partner program’ was born, and soon we began signing up markets to sell our flowers. It was an easy sell, as we only charged the merchant for what they sold, we took the loss on any that didn’t sell (and thus had to spend a lot of resources managing each market very closely). We chose the markets not only for their potential for sales, but for visibility as well. We had stands made that were super cute, made of wood and had a chalk board that our marketing person created incredible signs for. So all over town, we had our beautiful bouquet stands in high-traffic areas of stores, our outside on major intersections of the city.

Since I was never trained to be a florist, there was not a lot of things for me to do with the company on a day to day basis. Anna and I met frequently, and I spent time at the store every day. Occasionally I did the buying, so I was learning that a little bit, and I handled all the plant inventory & care. There was a time when I had personally made every delivery in the company’s history. There were weekly deliveries to the restaurants we were services, and every day I was delivering to markets.

But at some point the deliveries outgrew me, and we hired our first driver, and got our first van. We painted our logo on it, and it was a very visible advertisement driving all over the city.