Where did this rose come from? (What it really means to empower women.)
If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably bought flowers from the grocery store hundreds of times. You’ve probably bought them from an e-commerce florist, too, and a local brick-and-mortar.
Did you ever stop to ask where those flowers came from?
Where flowers come from
When I worked at UrbanStems, customers would often assume that because our company was local to DC, our flowers were also grown locally. The truth couldn’t have been more different. Almost none of the flowers we sold were grown in the US.
The same is true for the flowers you see in the grocery store, with some seasonal exceptions.
For a constellation of scientific, cultural, governmental and economic reasons, the fact is that 80% of the flowers sold in the US are grown in two Latin American countries: Colombia and Ecuador.
(If you’re interested in learning why and how the floral supply chain became international, check back for another blog post dedicated to that topic.)
Behind each rose you hold in your hand there are thousands of workers. The vast majority of those workers are women. And the vast majority of those women are the primary earners in their households.
Flower farms are powered by women
The first flower farm I ever visited was in Mexico, not far from the epicenter of black tar heroin production in that country. The living conditions for many people in that part of the country were third world.
Dozens of women spent all day making bouquets, day in, and day out. It was both boring and physically draining, with Mexican pop music blasting over the loudspeakers in the building to keep morale up. But it was much, much safer than working in the drug trade.
I didn’t know it yet, but Mexico’s flower industry is primitive compared to Colombia’s. The next flower farm I visited was in the Sabana of Bogota. A highly engineered operation, the farm consisted of more than 1,500 acres of flower beds under greenhouses, producing more than 30 varieties of blooms. The workers at this farm were provided meals, on-site healthcare, transportation to and from the farm, and even high quality on-site childcare. It honestly seemed like a great place to work.
Here’s what struck me still: the vast majority (around 90%) of these workers were women. I learned that most of them were heads of household and primary earners, too.
This fact stood in stark contrast to the executive leadership of that farm, comprised entirely of men. And they were making a lot of money from flowers — more money than I had even imagined.
Over drinks one night, I learned that a high-ranking executive at one of these companies was earning over $1 million annually, and he was only a year older than me.
At the top of the economic pyramid in the floral industry, there are very few women
After only a year in business, the team at UrbanStems discovered that, to the surprise of our five male co-founders, the majority of their customers — about 70% were women. And 95% of the recipients of our flowers were women.
At that point, I had to ask: if women are buying and receiving flowers, and women are growing and harvesting flowers, why is it that there are no women at the top of the industry?
More than that, the handful of executives of large flower companies drive decisions about which flower breeds are grown, and where investment is made — and their tastes and values are often not aligned with their customer base.
That’s how you end up with the lowest customer satisfaction rating of any e-commerce category. If you’ve ever bought flowers from 1–800-Flowers or FTD, you’ll instantly understand what I’m talking about. High prices, weird, outdated designs, and flowers that only last a couple days. At the very best, you’ll see lip service on these sites to “empowering women” without any real actions to support it.
Things are changing
I started Poppy to overhaul the experience of getting wedding flowers — to bring standardized, explainable pricing, transparency, and accessibility to an industry known for price-gouging and budget-shaming.
Covid hit us two months into the first year of our business. The pandemic upended the wedding industry, but it also dropped a bomb on the rigid rules of the floral supply chain, which had been kept in place through handshake deals (spoiler alert: never between two women) for generations.
It began to dawn on me that Poppy’s mission may be even bigger than I envisioned when I incorporated in 2019.
We are positioned to be the first nationally scaled e-commerce and wedding flower company founded by a woman, powered by women across the country, and run by women in our corporate team.
We are at the vanguard of what will be the new world order of the flower industry.
That means we put women first, because women are the engine of the flower industry.
Lots of companies make vague promises about “empowering women” without backing them up.
Here’s what women’s empowerment looks like at Poppy:
Our team
90% of our corporate team are women. 33% of our team are women of color. Before you buy flowers again, stop to ask who is running the show. Chances are, they don’t look like you (unless you’re on our site).
Our farm partners
We only work with farms who prioritize the careers and well-being of their majority female workforce. Currently, we are supporting a worker-owned and operated fund that provides no-interest, low-payment loans to finance the purchase of washing machines for anyone at the farm who needs one. 80 have been requested, and only 11 have been financed so far. Without washing machines, the primary wage earners for the family — women — are forced to spend Sunday, their only day off, washing their family’s clothes by hand. Often, this work is done outside, in a stream. Something as simple as a washing machine is truly changing lives, and we are donating $5 of every Poppy at Home sale to this fund until every home who needs a washing machine has one.
Our designers
I was outraged when I learned that it’s common for aspiring floral designers to work without pay for more experienced business owners, and even to PAY them for the privilege of working for them! In what other industry would that be the norm? 7 years ago, when I was just getting my start in the flower industry, I was a victim of this. I spent all day supporting a high-end DC floral designer with the installation of a large corporate event, only to be sent away at the end of set-up without payment when the business owner “ran out of checks”. This is unacceptable behavior.
Poppy is flipping the script. Because we buy directly from farms, we save.
And we don’t use those savings to line our pockets or pay hundreds of thousands of dollars a month on Facebook and Google ads, like our competitors.
Instead, we pay talented floral designers who handle our last-mile fulfillment up to 65% more than they’d make on an hourly basis working for another floral business. At present, 100% of the 200+ floral designers we work with are women.
Do you want your money going to Internet mega companies, or to local, female artisans and entrepreneurs?
Every time you see an ad from one of our competitors, remember — — when you purchase from them, you’re paying Google and Facebook.
When you purchase from us, you’re paying a skilled, local, female floral designer more than she would otherwise make.
Or you’re directly financing a washing machine to a hard-working farmer who dreams of spending Sunday with her family, instead of doing laundry by hand.
I spent years developing relationships with owners of the best flower farms in the world. We only sell from farms I’ve visited personally, and whose owners I know and trust. I know this supply chain as well as anyone, and I can tell you — you’re paying more for the same, or worse quality, flowers if you buy from our e-commerce competitors.
If your flowers are all coming from the same place — what happens after you press “purchase” makes the difference.
Your purchasing decision goes so far behind just a couple clicks. Where your dollars go actually impacts real people — real women.
Make them count.
