Wedding Business Solutions

Liza Roeser - Scaling Fifty Flowers

• Alan Berg, CSP, Global Speaking Fellow

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Liza Roeser - Scaling Fifty Flowers

How do you decide when to DIY and when to call in a pro for your wedding flowers? Are your customers overwhelmed by too many choices? Do you know how to blend human touch with AI for maximum customer satisfaction? Learn how Liza Roeser from Fifty Flowers transitioned from wholesale to consumer-based e-commerce while keeping service personal and intentional.

Listen to this new episode for insights on balancing DIY and professional services, reducing decision fatigue, and leveraging AI while maintaining a human touch in customer interactions.

Liza Roeser is a trailblazer in the flower industry, known for her innovative leadership and entrepreneurial spirit. Her journey began with a Peace Corps mission in Ecuador, where she identified the potential for exporting fresh-cut flowers. In 1998, she founded Farm Exports, which later evolved into FiftyFlowers.com, the first e-commerce wholesale flower platform. Liza is a dedicated advocate for the industry, serving on the Society of American Florists Board, lobbying on Capitol Hill, and promoting entrepreneurship. Her achievements have earned her numerous accolades and features in prominent publications. Follow Liza on Instagram @TheFlowerCEO.

https://fiftyflowers.com/

Episode Summary:

In this episode of Wedding Business Solutions, I chat with Liza Roeser, the founder of 50 Flowers. Liza shares her incredible journey from serving in the Peace Corps to creating an innovative e-commerce flower business. We discuss the early challenges she faced, transitioning from bulk floral shipping to direct-to-consumer sales, and how she has tailored her products to cater specifically to weddings and events. Liza opens up about the company's growth, the strategic use of AI to understand customer behavior, and the heartfelt importance of human interaction in customer service. We also delve into learning from past failures, how the 2008 financial crisis influenced her business, and the value of professional expertise in DIY floral projects.

If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or visit my website Podcast.AlanBerg.com 

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I'm Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you'd like to suggest other topics for "The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast" please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.

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©2024 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com

How do you go from the Peace Corps to 50 flowers? And what the heck am I talking about? Listen to my next guest and find out. Hi, it's Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions podcast. I am so glad to finally have my friend Liza Roeser on to talk about your journey to where you are with 50 flowers today. So welcome, welcome. Thank you for joining me.

You know, Alan, thank you for having me. And it has been decades, at least a decade since I've known you, and it's such a pleasure to be here today with you.

Yeah, it is more than a decade, because I left the knot in 2011, so 13 years ago, and I knew you back then, so.

Yep.

But I've been trying to get you on the podcast for a while, so we're finally making this happen here. So give us a little bit of the journey. Right. First of all, just tell us what 50 flowers is, and then you tell us how you got there.

Perfect. 50 flowers is the DIY flower experience, and we're an e commerce store that sells wholesale flowers direct from the farm to your arms so you can create your own flowers for events. Our specialty is do it yourself weddings. However, flowers can be consumed at any, you know, in any gathering. And we've really had a lot of fun this year, expanding to other gatherings. Primarily, though, we are in the wedding flower business.

Right. So this has been going on since when? When did you get the idea for this, and when did it get started?

Oh, with 50 flowers. Well, first off, 50 flowers started as 50 roses.

Right?

And it's named 50 flowers because roses come in bunches of 25. And when you put a bunch of roses, like, you know, here's the head of the roses and 25 in a box, and then you strap that in and, you know, you give it to an overnight shipper, then it'll like it. It's not balanced. So two bunches, 50 roses make a perfectly balanced box. So your flowers are beautifully packed, and they arrive to you so that you can create your dreams. And that's where. That's where the name came from.

Right. But where did the idea come from?

Yeah, the idea came from, which is. I know I have moments. Right. The idea came from, I was in peace corps in Ecuador and fell in love with the country, fell in love with the people, the culture, and got a job in the flower industry. It was actually an accounting and shipping, if you can believe that, running an accounting department in a different culture. Numbers are numbers, right? Different culture, different language. And about four months in, I was like, you know what? I want to go over to the flower side. It's fun to learn all the operations and, you know, how to pay the bills and tell people how to pay the bills.

But I wanted, I really wanted to get into the flower side. And, you know, I worked with several different farms, both in Ecuador, then Ecuador and Columbia, and then a conglomerate that had Ecuador, Columbia, Hollande all over the world and woke up one day and said, all of these beautiful blooms that I see and I get to see, I want to bring it to the world and I want to bring it to consumers. So I started off with my first business to business, which is we sell wholesale flowers to, we import flowers all over the world. I have clients currently in Guamden, Italy, Russia, Kuwait, all over the world, primarily, though, here in the United States, and some incredible event designers. And as I was working in this business, that's when the Internet started. And I had this dream to put in 50 flowers to sell direct to the consumer and get all the unique varieties that, you know, they're in the fields and brides needed, you know, they needed the inspiration and the availability to buy these flowers. So, and believe it or not, this was, oh, gracious, this is going to make me sound old, but here we go. This was 23 years ago.

I started on Netscape, and, oh, you can go back to wayback machine and look at the first 50 flowers and it's, it'll hurt your eyes. But at that time, that was so cutting edge. And within the flower industry, I, you know, 50 flowers trailblazed the way people shop for flowers today.

Yeah. Well, that was when I first met you. When I heard the idea, I was like, wait a second. It's not a dozen roses, it's 50 roses. And I was like, okay, different. This is different. Why? Who wants this? Right? That's what we're thinking there. So when you, when you came up with the idea of 50 flowers and youre going to send 50 flowers, the bundles gave you the numbers, right, because you dont have to repack them and then theyre already coming that way.

But first, you said it was business to business. So who were you selling to first?

That was farm exports. And farm exports is my business to business company, which I still sell flowers around the world. And the, the whole birthing process of 50 flowers and really finding our target niche, which is bridal industry, I started off thinking, oh, luxury goods, you buy a car, you buy a house, this could be a gift. And getting 50 roses in a box and delivered to somebody who just made their first housing purchase, will, you know, leave a mark and bring in beautiful emotions into their new home. And quickly, I met Richard Markell at AFWPI. I think that's the acronym and association for. Yeah, yeah. And got swooped up into.

This is the perfect platform for your wedding and doing your own wedding flowers.

Right. So 23 years ago. When did you start selling direct to consumer?

23 years ago.

Right, right.

On the Internet.

Yeah, on the Internet. On the Internet with Netscape. Yeah. Well, again, I call it bi. Before the Internet and after the Internet.

That's right. I heard you say that. I like that. Bi.

Yes, bi. And when I talk about. And when I started in the industry, I am a digital native. I'm sorry, I'm a digital immigrant. We're dealing with digital natives now, but I am a digital immigrant, which doesn't mean I don't like technology. It just means it wasn't there. Right. Just like, you know, the website back then looked cutting edge.

You go look at it now and you, like you said, you'll cringe. But that was what we had to work with. And you were making the most of what you had to work with. Just like I had a phone in my car. Didn't come out. There was a phone in my car.

Exactly.

And I didn't have a signal where I lived. I only had a signal where I worked. Right.

So I. Oh, do you remember the phones we would carry around with us?

Oh, the bag for the bag. Yeah. Mine was, it was a, it was that way it could either be in the car or I could take it, but I never took it out because, you know, I was just driving around all day, knocking on doors, wedding advertising. That was what I was doing. So go with the evolution. So what was the first thing that you were selling directly to consumers? It just bundles of 50 flowers.

Flowers exactly the way that a florist receives them. We were shipping them to the consumer, and it was a really novelty idea from getting down to the grower side, because growers, it's bulk. They want to put 300 roses in a box. They don't want. And they didn't have the mindset of, no, let's put 50. Let's just put two bundles of 25. And it's mesmerizing the amount of people that said, no, no, no, no. The doors I had to knock on to actually get a grower to believe in the concept.

Right. And this is the entrepreneurial challenge, right, is people don't have your vision. You have the vision. You're messing up their daily life. Right. I want to put 300 in. This is what I want to do. But you persist.

And there's the difference, right. Between people that succeed and people that don't. Is that persistence, that believing in the idea that this is going to work. I don't think anybody goes into something saying, this is never going to work, but I'm going to try it anyway.

Oh, yeah.

We're blind.

If you want to read a great book about Jim Collins. Good to great. It's the hedgehog concept.

Yeah. Good to great. Built to last. Love the two books over there. A good friend of mine said, success is an unintended consequence sometimes because you're getting a success, not the one that you planned. Like when you plan to do this, you were business to business, and all of a sudden you're business consumer. There's a success you didn't plan on. Failure is just an unintended consequence.

Right. It just didn't. Didn't work out. But we always look back. If I only knew then what I know now. No, if I knew then what I know now, I might not have done it.

Exactly. To add to that, failure is also a great learning opportunity.

Right. Right. We have to embrace the failures because we were talking offline before I started the recording. Failure means you tried. That's what it means. Failure means you tried. It didn't work out the way you wanted to, but you tried. That's why success is often an unintended consequence where you didn't get the result you were looking for, but you got something else.

And that works better, you know?

Absolutely.

Kind of like I was showing you some of my. Some of my whiskey blends. I had this one. I just couldn't get it rightly. Liza. It was just everything that I did to it. It was like almost there, you know? Like, you're almost there. I'm tasting it.

And that day, a friend of mine sent me a bottle that was too sweet for him. It was Traverse city, cherry. Traverse city is the cherry capital of the world. It was a cherry infused bourbon. And my friend Jason sends me this bottle and he said, you know what? It's too sweet for me. Maybe you can do something with it. And I had this gallon jar with all these different whiskeys, like a frat party. All these different whiskeys that were together with different woods was just not quite right.

And I said to my wife, you know, what? What do I have to lose? And I just dumped it in there, stirred it around a little bit, let it sit, and then I took a sip and I said, wow, not only did it take it from not quite there, it took it to beyond that. And everybody who had tasted that one, of course, that blend is gone. I think that bottle I showed you is the last one. Everybody who tasted as like, wow, this is amazing. Like, yeah, but two weeks ago I couldn't get it right and then this thing showed up and I said, well, let's just put that in there. And that's, you know, this is our little blend. But that's life, right? That's your business life. Yeah.

I'm going to try something. So talk about the different things that you're doing now besides just bundles of 50 flowers. You were telling me that you have this ready to go things for, like.

As consumers, habits have adapted and it's normal to order flowers over the Internet. Adapted our product line one is we have ready to go products. And I love that you named it ready to go because that's what we named it. And they are basically centerpieces that you just pull out, plop, cut, drop. And we have these curated, professional designed kits that have the bridal bouquet. It will have your table centerpieces that are just, they're very beautiful and designed. And we have this huge design center down in La Savannah de Bogota where we have tables set up that as the orders come in, they are made per order and simply sending several of them, we have created 100%. They've got the lease attached to them and, you know, it's all in the current palettes.

Another thing that we're doing is, you know, people are, they're shopping by collections and making it easier to look at. This is the look I want to make. Okay, you take and you say, I want roses. I want to put some ranunculus in there. I also want to put some anemones in there. So we've taken the past couple of years of testimonials and we've created collections around them. And these collections have do it yourself flower kits and they come in all different sizes. We have the centerpieces that go along with them.

We have a special wedding kit. And let me take a step back. When you enter the 50 flowers wedding shopping experience, you're going to choose, do you want level one, two or three? One is done for you. And these are these 100% curated collections that are designed. Then the two is, you know what I kind of want to be. I kind of want to do my own wedding flowers, but I need, you know, just guide me a little bit more. And this is where our collections come in. And then we have the, you know what, I'm a DIY renegade and I'm going to just create it from scratch.

So these are the three different levels. And going back to the second level, we have this brand. It's not brand new, but it is a fun concept. And they are our flower bouquet bars. So if you're having a wedding flower shower and you want to have something fun to do well within the collection of your wedding, let's just say that you're going to go and, you know, our, our most popular sugar, sugar plum. And you're going to have sugar plum flower collection at your wedding. And you're a little apprehensive on how does this all work. You can order the bouquet bar.

You'll have them at your shower, play around with the flowers, play around with people, and then that just eases you into and helps you gain the experience of doing your own wedding flowers, which.

I've always thought about that when somebody decides to do DIY, everything that looks easy took a lot of work, right?

Very much so.

By creating the collections is from using that history, using that experience. But somebody doing this for the first time doesn't have that experience. So I always wonder about a couple and their wedding party or their family and friends just sitting there trying to figure this out right before. But that's a great way to do it, is do it at the shower, because now you get your feet wet and now it's not the first time that you're doing it. Not the first time you're cutting and arranging and doing all those things and water vases and oasis and all those things and those fun, all those fun things over there.

All those. I mean, it's cantankerous and it can go wrong really quickly. And we, at 55 hours, we've really embraced that for our 1st 20 years. I always said farm to doorstep, and now we're really moving in and embracing the farm to arms and using all of our experience of failure, reflecting back on failure of how can we help you create your be successful in creating this experience of doing your own wedding flowers? It is not easy, you know, and from day one, I remember when we boomed, it was 2008 when everybody was, you know, we had the crash and everybody wanted to get married. They wanted to have flowers and affordability leaned in. It was all about budget, which has shifted. It's not necessarily budget right now, right. And at that moment, you know, it was me, myself, and I, I still had part of my team in Ecuador, but when it came to customer service, which is my baby.

Because your customers are everything. And I would be talking people off the ledge of like, no, you really should not do your own wedding flowers. And I remember fellow entrepreneurs going, you are crazy. Like, just seal the deal. And I'm like, I'm not crazy. I want people to have the most amazing flower experience and know your limits.

Right? Yeah. Again, things that look easy took work. So you are another example if it takes 20 years to become an overnight success. Right. But I love what, I don't know if people caught this. What you said about the collections is that you went back and you looked to see what people had been ordering and putting together and that's how you made the collections. And I was just working on a presentation I could be giving in the UK, actually in Ireland about pricing. And I talk about a la carte versus packages and people that say they can't have packages, they say, okay, well, what do people typically order together anyway and then just make it fewer choices? Because we create decision paralysis when we give them too many choices.

Amen.

Let's face it, if you start with every possible flower choice, right, it's too many choices. Too many choices. It's the same thing with anything in life. If you haven't read the book the Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz. Great book.

Great book.

And they talk about how they put six jelly and jam samples out in a supermarket for people to taste. They measured how many got sold. They put 20 out, measured how many got sold, got sold when there were only six flavors than when there were 20. I noticed something with COVID is restaurants cut their menus down, which I appreciate because you open up a menu, I live in New Jersey, the land of the diner, right. You open up the menu and there's just way too many choices.

Yes.

And I'd rather go to a five guys or a KFC or something like that, where it's like you know what you're good at. Just do that. Do that. That's it. Right. I used to go to mcdonalds. I can only get a Diet Coke now because im gluten sensitive. So theres nothing I can eat there.

They dont have a salad anymore. They dont have a grilled chicken anymore. I can go to chick fil a because they have grilled nuggets. I can go, they have a gluten free bun. They have stuff for me. But again, I dont go to chick fil a for a burger because there arent any. Right. They know what theyre good at.

Yes.

So if we cut this down and say we know what were good at, but youre expanding that line. You also told me, said something about, because we're talking about my son, something for elopements. Right. So what are you doing for elopements?

We have an elopement package, which is that curated product that is just your bridal bouquet, a boutonniere and an efficient boutonniere.

Okay.

All affordably packaged. You know, you and I, it is very important for me because I am passionate about our flower industry and I am passionate about keeping our brick and mortar stores open and our floors because there is a time and a place for a florist. However, if you're having an elopement, say, where your mom and dad live and you don't know a floor, this is a perfect idea. You know, it is the perfect solution for the making sure that your flowers are part of your memory because flowers bring joy.

Right. Well, and again, if you think about keeping the stores open, I think about Home Depot and Lowe's. Right. And ace and all of those. I'm a diy guy. I have the skills, I have the tools, I have all the things. There are a lot of people that watch the tv shows and like, hey, I can do that. Right? Again, not realizing what you need and all those type of things.

I look at it now, I have had contractors in my home, but those are things that I'm not going to do. And then I have, where my wife comes up with an idea, the secret code in our house. My wife says, you know what I was thinking? And I said, are you thinking Home Depot or Lowe's? Because you're thinking, I'm going to one of those too. And, and, but that's, but again, I've also had contractors in my house because like, you know what, I'm not replacing my front door in the sidelight. I would need help with that. I think I could do it, but it's a little too important. Kind of faces the street, you know?

Exactly.

Don't want it to leave.

You want to make sure it's level because you want it to shut properly.

And I really think I could do that. Right. And then there was another one that involved getting on a ladder about 18ft up. And my wife is like, no, no. I said, I've been on ladders, you know, my entire life. She goes, yes, but you fall off that ladder, we don't make any income, so we're going to pay somebody to do that. And we did. Right? So there's a place here for this, like you said there's a place for the retail florist.

I have a florist. She actually retired. I'm so sad. I have to find somebody else because I could just text her to and say, hey, Georgian, if you're listening. Thank you, Georgianne. But hey, Georgianne. I need this. I need that.

I'm in the doghouse right now. I need you to send something. And I liked having that there as opposed to going online to whatever, one of the places.

Absolutely.

Having the person, the credit cards on file, they know what I like. And if I say, listen, need some stargazer lilies because that's our. Our flower, right? Because flowers are people. Flowers are memories. Great story. I don't know if I've told it on here, but my wife's bouquet at our wedding, Stargazer Lily was not the only thing, but there were Stargazer lilies. So when I get flowers for her, sometimes I just buy her flowers. Like I might be in a store, might be the supermarket.

It's like, you know what? Yeah, she could use that today, right? I might do that.

And then of the time, Alan buyer flowers more often.

But there are other times where I want it to mean something special. So maybe for an anniversary and I'll say, okay, I need a bouquet or I need a centerpiece. It's something. But I needed to have Stargazer lilies in it, right? I needed to have that. Well, my son must have heard this because at one point he was going out for a fancy dinner, I think it was an anniversary with a girlfriend a few years. And my wife said, send a picture because she knew they were getting all dressed up and going out fancy and sends a picture and his girlfriend is holding a bouquet of stargazer lilies, right?

It's so beautiful, right?

But that's, again, the flowers are like food, it's like music, right? There's connection to that. Like I was telling with the whiskeys over here, he heard that, right? I never said to him, you know, you need, you need to do that. He heard that. It's like, okay, that's a special flower. That's a family special flower, right? That's beautiful. Something there, but that's where this is. So what's next? What's next for 50 flowers?

Oh, we are growing as our team is growing and we're growing in product line. In fact, going back to decision and too many flowers on our website when back in the dinosaurs age, it was build as many flowers, put every flower possible on it. Didn't matter. There was not. Decision fatigue in that concept was so foreign. Now our new product merchandiser, who is this brilliant young man? He is like, yeah, I'm cleaning up our catalog. We're going to cut 60% of it off. It doesn't matter about SEO.

Like, it's. We don't. You know, back in 20 years ago, that's how you got ranked. You just had a whole bunch. The more you had, the better. Now it's just be more intentional. And, you know, what's next with 50 flowers is we are focused on intention, being intentional and really engaging with our clients and creating more of a community. And, you know, it's interesting as well.

A phase we're going through is we don't buy your purchase. You know, our, we have a very long life cycle and we have very, you know, our clients, they're on our website a lot and we're, you know, we're all over our analytics right now. In fact, I just signed on with an AI platform that is going to help us interpret our analytics even more. It's exciting. We're the small fish in the pond. They take on $100 million clients and we're like, okay, would you please? And they actually took us on. So I'm very excited about this.

What about, are you using AI on the front end?

We do use AI quite a bit. It is not to create. In fact, there is not one picture that is not. We have not taken ourselves in our production studio or at our farms.

I meant more like on the decision process. Somebody comes in and can they talk to the site? Because I'm just getting into more of using AI now with my content. And that's the same thing here. It's not learning to talk to it better. I went to a speaker conference and I went through a couple of sessions on AI, and this one guy said, who do you think is better at getting good results from AI? People in their twenties, their thirties, their forties, their fifties and so forth. And it's people over 45, and it's because we give them, we give it better instructions. We give it more detailed instructions. So just wondering, you know, on the front end, somebody comes in and, you know, can they just talk to it and say, hey, this is what, this is who we are.

This is what we're doing. These are my colors that I like. What do you suggest? You know, to me, that seems like the next step. Right?

The next step. You know, it's interesting. I am a thought leader in AI. In fact, I give speeches and I help people ease into the use of AI, and it is something I'm passionate about. And we could talk about chat GPT forever, and I could tell you what I'm doing with it because I no longer have to spend hours planning a menu and shopping for it. It's just hit a button or talk to my household. Chat GPT. However, we are going at AI very cautiously, just like we did with social media when it was first introduced, and we're using it currently.

Right now, I'm under an audit with a company who is going through, and we like to call it opening up all the hoods and looking at every single one of our processes and see how and where we will introduce AI. You know, as far as the human connection and with customers, I'm very trepidatious because our customers are everything.


Yeah, I do a presentation. Where's the friction in your sales process? And I started out by just telling examples from my life, and one of them is all these AI chat bots that can't answer my question. Like, I've already looked and it didn't answer me. And now I'm talking to your AI, which is just using the same data that I already found. That's not answering my question. Now you're frustrated even more. Right, frustrating. So just let me, let me just talk to a person, and in two minutes I can get this answered.

But then the other side of it, and I'm going to do a podcast about this. My son, who's getting married, they were looking for some rental items, a dance floor, and some other things. So with my connections, I got some connections. So my future daughter in law reached out to this one company, and now she doesn't know what she needs because she's never done this before. And I gave her this company to go to who was referred to me. She reaches out to them and she's emailing. She said, oh, can I talk to somebody to see about what I need? And they said, well, just go to the website, look at the catalog, and tell us what you want, and we'll give you a quote. And she said, can I talk to someone? And they said, no, now boggles my mind.

If I had hair, I'd pull it out. I mean, it's just, it's just crazy that in a world where my clients always say to me, if I could only get them on the phone, if I could only talk to them on Zoom, if I could only, yeah, and here's, and here is somebody who wanted to get on the phone, and the company's like, no, no, you can't talk to somebody.

It's really interesting when as business owners, the answer is right there and you can, the people on the front line, they know that one way that we're using AI and it pertains to what we're talking about here. We have five common questions. You know how many, you know how many stems come in a bunch? That is over and over and over again. And yes. Does our chat, does it start off with a bot answering these five questions? Yes, but then it will instantly connect you with a personal touch, which is the thing.

And that's where I've had the most frustration. Frustration lately, is if your bot can answer my question. Cool, great. Because I again chat GPT and some others. So I'm good with that. If it can't give me the option of talking to a person and it's.

That it's that important. When you place an order with 50 flowers, we, a human looks at that order like I like to call them heartbeats because, you know, a human heartbeat looks at that order and makes sure that you schedule for the right delivery date for optimal blooming time. And we reach out to you via text. We've been texting with our clients for twelve years, forever. And you have questions, a human answers them.

Yeah, that's great. Well, we could obviously talk forever, but we're going a little long for my normal podcast time, so I'm going to put into the show notes anyway. But what's the best way for people to find out more about 50 flowers?

You can shop us online. It's 50 fift yflowers.com.

There we go. I'm going to put all that in the show notes. Liza, thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you so much, Alan, always a pleasure.


I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or you can  text, use the short form on this page, or call +1.732.422.6362, international 001 732 422 6362. I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.

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Alan Berg, CSP, Global Speaking Fellow

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