As an American with $ 411 in her pocket decided to sell flowers and earned $ 23 million
'18.02.2019'
Source: Inc.com
Christina Stembel devoted seven years of her life to the business of creating and selling flower bouquets. At the start it was a goal that almost led her to bankruptcy. But last year Christina and her company earned 23 million dollars.
In 2010, Christina decided: I want to start a business. Moreover, it should be massive, sustainable, fast-growing, but created from scratch, writes Inc.com... She started making flower bouquets for sale and started Farmgirl Flowers. The goal was a daring one - to gain a dominant position in the market already occupied by FTD and ProFlowers.
It seemed natural to launch without outside investment, but less than two years later, her bank accounts were empty. Fortunately, as soon as the situation turned into a catastrophe, Christina unexpectedly received a sign - change was coming. Then the heroine herself tells.
I came from Indiana, from the community that was engaged in growing corn and soybeans for sale, the existence of the community depended on it. After moving to San Francisco, I appreciated how startups are developed here. People choose any industry that has not changed in 20 for years, and rethink it, making it better. I wanted everything at once: every week I produced five business ideas. I wanted this to be an idea that would have a positive impact on the world, while solving the existing problem in a new way.
At that time, I had 49 thousand dollars in my accounts. I knew that until the early 90's in California, flowers were a large segment of agriculture. Flower bouquets is a huge industry with a broken model that hasn't been dealt with in over 20 years. When I sent flowers to my mom, I was annoyed by the experience, as was the boring end product. I realized that I could do it better.
To see if it worked, I gave myself two years - or until the money ran out. Everyone thought I was crazy, but they also felt relief: I stopped talking about my business ideas.
I woke up at 3 in the morning and went to the flower market, brought flowers home and worked at the dinner table. I studied processing flowers on YouTube, creating such compositions that I would like to receive myself. Then all day I went to the city coffee shops with bouquets. If the coffee shop allowed me to arrange or arrange bouquets, I put a number of business cards. Every week I went back and looked at how many cards I took. Five Starbucks stores in the most populated areas of San Francisco ran almost all of my early businesses.
For the first two years I didn’t have a marketing budget, so every night I attended two or three network events at the same time, brought bouquets and cards and asked for permission to arrange them at the front desk. It was partisan marketing in action.
After a year and a half, only $ 411 remained in my account. This is very small. I even switched from coffee to cheap tea - it cost 6 cents a bag, not a few dollars a cup. My landlord, who was a corporate lawyer, learned that I was doing business at home. This was not hard to understand: I used the apartment's bay windows as an impromptu flower refrigerator, opened them and hung a heavy curtain to keep it cool.
I had to move the business to another location - and I did it. Paid a two-month rent, renting the smallest space possible in the San Francisco flower market. At that moment, the number of orders increased dramatically - so much so that they managed to pay off the bills. I have never used external funding, so every step I took had to immediately bring in money.
It wasn't long before I reviewed the number of bouquets I could make myself in a day (about 40 or 50). I hired the first employee. It was great - but it was also the scariest moment in the spirit of "maybe I'm not that hungry this week." It was scary because the other person was now relying on me and this job for their livelihood.
At about the time when I had to leave the apartment (the end of 2012 of the year), a significant moment had arrived. One evening, when I was going to my car to get some bouquets from there, several women approached me.
They asked, "Oh, are these the flowers that Farmgirl Flowers makes?" I answered in the affirmative and one of the women said: “I love Farmgirl!”.
I got into the car and just cried out all my eyes. For the first time, I saw someone recognize my product and brand. The woman determined this only by her appearance, by the branded packaging - something that I have always tried to achieve in order to distinguish myself from the rest. It was the moment when I felt that I had really achieved something.
Last year, we earned 23 a million dollars. Now more than 100 people work with us and we send hundreds of bouquets every day across the United States.
