Mission de Flores

My friend Zeke and I would talk about opening a florist in the Mission. There were no florists for such a large, affluent area, and I had to go all the way to the Castro to get flowers for myself! We would hang out once in a while, and talk about it more & more. At first, we thought we would rent some space from someone else, and just have a small stand in someone else’s shop. We walked around the Mission, found a couple places where it might be appropriate, but nobody seemed too interested in adding flowers to their offerings.

I realized that it would suck to start a business and be dependent on someone else’s lease or whims if it became successful, so we started looking at places to lease out on our own. Decent retail space was scarce, and anything near Valencia was multiples of our price range. We made a couple offers on some small spaces, and always seemed to run 2nd.

We saw a place on Folsom that looked perfect, just off the beaten path with huge front windows, in a super solid residential area. I guess it had been on the market for a while already, and when the landlord walked me through it, he said that he already had at least 10 people that wanted it, and he was accepting written applications for the next week or so, and was asking everyone to explain in as much detail as possible their business ideas.

I knew there was no way we would be able to compete with so many others, as this was just an idea on our end, with no real financials. Zeke had worked for me as a shipper in a previous business, but I knew he was a florist at heart, and this business was about enabling him to have something of his own. I was just going to give financial and high-level strategy support, but it was all about Zeke.

I hadn’t written the letter, and checked in with the landlord to see if it was still worth it, or was he already speaking with businesses that he thought would make strong tenants. He told me that it was down to just two people, a woman that did colostomies, and us. Really? So I wrote him the letter, and we got the place, at about $3000/month for rent. So now what?