I could tell you the Matilda’s Bloombox story by numbers. The San Francisco-based floral delivery company has grown 350% in the past year. In 2020, they delivered an average of 800 flower arrangements per week. They purchase 100% of their flowers from farmers in California. They are currently doing seven figures in revenue. It would be an impressive story to tell, but in reality, Matilda’s Bloombox is so much more than their numbers.
Matilda's Bloombox Flower Arrangement
Courtesy of Matilda's BloomboxA mere four years ago, founders Matt and Emily would spend long nights boxing flower arrangements out of their garage. They had just had their first child, Matilda, and were spending their life savings on their dream to build Matilda’s Bloombox. Today, while their team has grown and they no longer spend their nights in the garage, Matt and Emily have become messengers of joy during an otherwise desolate year. The husband-and-wife-duo have turned the experience of flowers from aspirational to accessible for any and every one of us. For a mere $39, we can gift others, or ourselves, with a box of fresh and locally-sourced flowers and take pride in arranging them in our homes.
Theirs is a story of how the flower business not only changed their lives, but became a life-line for local flower farmers and brought moments of joy to those most isolated during a year of quarantine. They share their story with us here.
Natalie Stoclet: What drew you to the flower industry?
Matt: It goes a long way back. My family immigrated from Genoa, Italy to San Francisco and I’m now the fourth generation in the flower business. Growing up around flowers brought so much joy to my family and I wanted bring that experience into other people’s homes.
Emily: When Matt and I first met I was working in the corporate world. I wasn’t passionate about my work, it was just a way to make a living. When our first child Matilda was born, it was an awakening into carving out the life I wanted to lead and what I wanted to pass onto my children. I was scared to start a business but Matt is such an optimist. Whereas I occasionally trickled back into that scary space of thinking it was only a good idea after a few glasses of wine, he’d make sure you stuck to it.
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NS: How did you start Matilda’s Bloombox?
Emily: I wanted to make sure we proved the principle of Matilda’s Bloombox on our own money. I have an issue with people going out and spending other people’s money to prove if their idea is going to work or not. In the beginning, we weren’t paying ourselves anything and we were spending all of our savings. Not to mention we had a child at this point too.
NS: How much did you put into the business to start?
Matt: We’ve put close to half a million dollars of our own money through the last three and a half years. That was our house deposit, that was everything we saved up through our entire lives. I think on a more fundamental level, especially here in San Francisco with the whole VC world, there is such an emphasis on growth. I come from a place of mom-and-pop shops where if you made a dollar on every sale that was a victory. You had to be positive. We did all these big things that didn’t work in the beginning and what we found out was that you need to get down in the trenches and get yourself in front of people. We got out in the community and over time built relationships with people who really wanted us to succeed.
Matt and Emily with their vintage Ford (1961) Econoline turned mobile flowerbar.
Courtesy of Matilda's BloomboxNS: What did you learn from those early stages?
Emily: When you start a business people are so quick to tell you what you should be doing. For example, people will tell you that you need to spend a load of money on social media advertising. So we did, we spent a lot on marketing tactics that didn’t give us any return. We had a limited amount of money and realized how quickly you can spend everything. We actually ran out of cash quickly. That was a big learning experience and forced us to physically get out and build our community. The Bay Area is where we started, and it’s actually not a very big place. You’d be surprised how quickly people start sharing your story within their own communities. Now we don’t do any other form of advertising and have grown through word of mouth.
NS: How has the pandemic impacted local flower farmers in California?
Emily: It’s been a very difficult year for local flower farmers because they rely massively on the wedding and events industry. The reality is that most of them start growing and replanting for the upcoming year in October and November of the previous year. They had no idea what was to hit this year. Once farmers have replanted and spent money on their water bill for instance, which in California is pretty high, they’re committed. One of our grower’s water bill is $40,000 a month which is a huge amount of money. For example, when Matt and I went to see our dahlia grower Louie his field was still full of flowers. It was so beautiful but also so tragic, he didn’t have anywhere for them to go.
Matt: People are scared to plant right now and these are guys who make their living, prepare their year, and support their family based on the volume they’re expecting to sell. It’s extremely scary for these guys to wonder how much cost they should fork up in a bad year in the expectation that next year will be normal or possibly not.
Emily and Louie on his flower farm in California
Courtesy of Matilda's BloomboxNS: How does the Matilda’s Bloombox business model support local flower farmers?
Emily: Every week we change the arrangement based on what’s local and in season. When we went to see Louie we decided to use his dahlias in every single box. Unlike other florists, we usually only have six or seven elements in our boxes and we buy those in really high volume. Volume that makes a significant material difference for these farmers. We bought every single variety of dahlia from Louie until October when he didn’t have any left. That was a magical moment because we saw people wanting to support their local farmers and invest in their communities. Farmers like Louie normally rely on events and markets which completely shut down, and have no retail channel to sell their flowers. It was amazing that we could give him that outlet.
Matt: We are able to collaborate with farmers on what they need to offload. When we had the California fires in October it was 127 degrees in San Diego for four consecutive days. If you’ve got 200 acres of land, even if you keep your water running all day and night you just can’t deal with that heat. It’s unbelievable, flowers were just burning. We connected with those growers and were able to shift a lot of what they knew was not going to last. It’s things like that that make a big difference, especially for our long-term relationships.
NS: What do you believe flowers add to someone’s home and life in general?
Emily: I think Matt and I would both agree on joy. A big part of the Matilda’s Bloombox experience is that you build the arrangement yourself. We see people sharing their creations with us on social media, which obviously helps us grow our business but is so much more about the sense of pride and accomplishment people have over what they’ve built. People want to show it off for everyone to see because they take pride in it. There are very few moments in an average day when you feel that joy and pride over something small that you’ve done.
Matt: Our flowers are fresh so you get freshness of mind. It brings life to the room and that brings life to yourself. That’s a universal, human thing. We have a customer who hasn’t left her house since March. She gets a box every single week and will reach out and share it. You can imagine being in a small apartment in a metropolitan area where you can’t leave, receiving those flowers is like bringing the outside in. It’s almost like taking a walk, it’s the closest thing to it. The action of doing and creating during this time is so important.
NS: What is the experience of receiving a Matilda’s Bloombox arrangement?
Emily: Our processing starts before midnight so that the deliveries get out at 5am. We want people to have the experience of waking up to their flowers. When they open it, there is a card that explains what flowers are in the box and where they’re grown, care tips, and more. Then we give them instructions on how to build the arrangement. One of the things we’re really committed to is zero waste. We actually reuse our cardboard delivery boxes and ask people to leave out their empty box when we deliver a new one. We are also working on developing drop-off hubs across San Francisco where we will collect the boxes.
A completed floral arrangement from Matilda's Bloombox
Courtesy of Matilda's BloomboxNS: What has trended in the flower industry during the pandemic amongst your competition?
Emily: I am very fussy about our flowers. There are other competitors delivering flowers in a box but where they are falling down in my view is that they are not sourcing their flowers from local growers. One of our biggest differentiators and what I’m most proud of, is the aesthetic of our arrangements. It should look like a garden gathering of authentic flowers, and we bring that story to life with the experience of our deliveries. When people sign up for the service it isn’t a subscription, they have the ability to choose the weeks they want a delivery and can do that based on whether or not they like the arrangement.
NS: Where do most of your competitors source their flowers from?
Emily: There is a reality where it is hard to be huge in the flower industry and buy from local growers. If you need 50,000 stems of one element, you can basically only get that from a few growers in California and then the rest in South America. That is why our competitor’s arrangements look the same because they can only buy certain flowers at such high volume.
NS: What are you looking forward to with Matilda’s Bloombox in the future?
Emily: It’s been so incredible to see the business grow and the impact we’ve been able to make at a local level. If this year’s taught us anything it’s that you honestly cannot predict what is going to happen. We very much try and see every day as an opportunity. We really care about the quality of the flowers that we deliver and we’re passionate about the community we’re building.
Matt: For me, expansion is what gets me most excited. Expansion into new territories means new customers, means bringing more joy into people’s lives. It really is the thing that gets us going. I can’t wait to bring our flowers to people in new places.
Flowers leaving a local farm for Matilda's Bloombox
Courtesy of Matilda's BloomboxDecember 05, 2020 at 02:49AM
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nataliestoclet/2020/12/04/how-matildas-bloombox-unboxed-the-life-changing-gift-of-flowers/
How Matilda’s Bloombox Unboxed The Life-Changing Gift Of Flowers - Forbes
https://news.google.com/search?q=Flower&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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