Christina Stembel, founder & CEO of national floral delivery company Farmgirl Flowers, joins Cheddar News to talk about preparing for Mother's Day. 

Between Bells

Celebrating Mother's Day With Farmgirl Flowers

Welcome back to between Bell's mother's Day is this sunday, Have you figured out what to get mom this year. If not send her flowers. Farm girl flowers now ships to the lower 48 states. So no matter where you are or where your mom is, she can feel very special on her day Here with me now is Christina stumbles. Ceo farm role flowers, Christina. Welcome back. Now we get to meet you in person. It's such a pleasure. It's a busy week for you guys. Tell me how farm girl is gearing up for Mother's day. We are gearing up and getting really busy right now for Mother's Day. It is, we like to call the super bowl of our year. Um, and that's what it definitely is this week. So, um, we're all just with buzz and it's like a hive right now. Talk to me about delivery challenges you might be facing in the next few days. I asked you off camera, I'm like, are you still delivering? Because I'm going to order something. Yes, yes. We still have some available. We just opened up some more, We were told that we open up some more last night. So we do have some more capacity so you can still get your orders in right now. Um, we're delivering from every where same supply chain issues that everyone's having. Um, you know, higher prices inbound and outbound for transportation, you know, try not to pass all of that onto the consumer. Um, but needing to pass on some, so basically the same as every industry is having, we also have the added, you know, challenge basically I'll just call it of mother nature. So you know, peonies are almost every woman's favorite flower. We have some here in this arrangement. Unfortunately the first week they're available of the year is Mother's Day week and it's been too cold this year. Oh no. So actually a lot of our flowers didn't come in that we were expecting. So we had to, you know, do some last minute, you know, put out the fires and import a lot from other countries from other countries. Alright, so let's talk about the supply chain issues. You mentioned transportation and just the shortage of certain flowers. Any other obstacles that you're facing? I mean there's always the same thing that you're probably reporting on a lot the marketing challenges being in front of consumers is costing a lot more money to acquire customers. Um, you know, traffic is down on, you know, pretty much every industry is having the same issues with the new privacy policies. So you know, we're experiencing that as well and it's just kind of determining what size company we want to be and how much it's worth to acquire a customer. Now, there's so many flower delivery services out there. The market is oversaturated what makes your company stand out. Yeah, I think a lot of things but try to keep it short. Yeah. So were of the large e commerce flower companies were the only female founded one and we're not just saying that to brag. I actually think it's really important because the average consumer 81% of the time it's women buying for women. And so that's important that we actually are our consumer. We know what women want. So we make beautiful bouquets that you would actually not be embarrassed and you'd actually want to receive yourself. So you're not embarrassed to send them to other people. It's so hard picking out, sending flowers when you're doing it online. So this is a company I actually do trust mother's day is the biggest floral holiday as we know. But how, how has business been the rest of the year? Yeah, I mean we're lumpy like most businesses, you know, a lot of, you know, e commerce companies are, you know, waited in the fourth quarter. You know, we have, we're lucky that we have lots of holidays throughout the year, but the summer is definitely a slower time for us. Um, this summer. Yeah, Summer. Unless you're doing weddings, we do some weddings, but unless you're really heavy in the event side, Our busy season is october through May Christina. I have to ask you what is your favorite bouquet trend or what should people be looking out for? Yeah, brighter colors. We follow fashion a lot. Farm Girl, You know, I love fashion. My future looks great every time I see you. Thank you. Thank you. So we follow the runway shows and we designed bouquets that kind of followed those, that that inspiration. So, we're really leaning into the bright colors, neon colors. We're gonna launch some neon bouquets this summer that we're really excited about. So yeah, it's just, you know, bright colors this year. And you're right, neon is so on trend right now. What goes into creating these arrangements? Cause I gotta tell you when I look at arrangements like this, I couldn't do it. I'm so overwhelmed what goes into this. Yeah. So that's another thing that makes us different. I'm still the head of our product department. So I me and two other people create every bouquet. You see on our our website. Very hands on in that way. I just I love that part. It's my favorite part of the job. If I could not do all of the other ceo duties and just do that all day would be my, my dream life. But um, a lot goes into. It's just, you know, really taking inspiration from nature from fashion other areas that I like and putting it into a bouquet. How how is business during the pandemic? And have you seen it pick up during these floral holidays? The pandemics been challenging. It comes up, you know, goes up and down 2020 was a really great year for e commerce in general. Even though, you know, sadly, you know, there were some benefits of the pandemic that that we saw um which I hate to say because it feels very opportunistic, but people were sending a lot of gifts then. Um and so as soon as, you know, we really benefited from people being home and needing to send gifts to people. They love when they couldn't be there. And then as soon as they could be there when the vaccines became readily available, we saw people spend their money on travel and entertainment instead. So then it went down and then, you know, the holidays come and it goes back up. So it's a lot of pivoting as quickly as you can to try to like meet demand but not over over meet demand, especially with parrish ability, you can't you can't you can't make mistakes. So there are so many factors there, you're right because how perishable these are our Mother's Day and valentine's Day, your busiest holidays typically typically, although thanksgiving, weirdly thanksgiving is sometimes even larger than valentine's Day for us, but only because we have six more months of growth. So six more months of people consumers to hear about us. So if you actually put valentine's Day, you know and thanksgiving right next to each other, valentine's Day would always be bigger, but because we have six more months to grow our customer base sometimes that that surpasses it, but Mother's Day is the number one holiday for you guys every year hands down what's the popular trend that people are ordering from your site, you know, it's across the board. We used to only have one daily arrangement. And that was something that, you know, it's one of those things you launch your business with and you pivot very quickly. You know what I learned was there's, you know, you have to appeal to every consumer and so we have things from like sunflowers and Gerber daisies are not my favorite. So we never had them on our website, but those are actually big sellers love sunflowers. Yes, they're huge sellers huge. And so that's like one of my lessons I tell, you know, women starting out, especially in business and like, don't just put, you know, don't think you're the only consumer. So do focus groups, find out what people want. So, you know, everything from those all the way to the high design bouquets that are of course my favorite, the peonies, the garden roses, those are my favorite. And you mentioned how hard it is to get peonies this year. Any other flowers? That might be harder to get prodi a we had a beautiful proteome, Okay, that's already sold out and we can't get our hands on more. Unfortunately, that was a harder one. Um, you know, peonies are just the hardest because that's what everybody wants. We can get pretty much any other roses tulips, other ones that people like roses lilies. Um we're also really challenging. It's just seasonally. They're not, they're not in right now. We'll get probably two weeks after very quickly. What flowers are in this beautiful bouquet in front of us? A lot of things. There's ridiculous. Which is also another favorite of our consumers and myself peonies in this one, we have some Gerber daisies but their specialty ones veronica, some uh, some status and servilia in there. We just have a lot of little fun bits in there and some carnations. Actually, carnations are having to come back. I've always loved carnations. I really have. All right, well, thank you so much. Christina. Istanbul ceo of farm girl flowers. I will be placing an order momentarily for my mother.