Valentine's Day florists face 'a lot of challenges' this year, UrbanStems CEO says
UrbanStems CEO Seth Goldman joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss how florists are gearing up for Valentine's Day amid inflation, supply chain challenges, and labor shortages.
Video Transcript
JARED BLIKRE: Welcome back. Well, time to get your Valentine's orders in right now, and that's not necessarily because they're out of flowers. But they're facing labor shortages and other supply constraints, just like everyone else. We want to talk about it here with Seth Goldman. And he is from-- I'm sorry-- I'm lost in my rundown here-- UrbanStems CEO.
So Seth, thank you for joining us here today. Reading your notes, flower shops largely stocked-- not all of them. I'm just wondering if this is a regional thing, and then also talking about those labor supply issues as well. And also anything else in terms of shipping, trucking? There's lots of logistical issues to deal with and talk about here as well.
SETH GOLDMAN: Yeah, thanks for having me, first of all. Glad to be on, on Valentine's Day week or the week leading into it. Always a busy season for florists around the country. Want to make sure everyone has their roses and other flowers. We actually have a lot of bouquets that don't feature red roses that are some of our most popular.
You mentioned supply chain. Definitely a lot of challenges in the supply chain not unique to flowers or Urban Stems. I think the best thing you can do is order as early as possible, whether you're ordering from us, which we hope so, or not, as there are a lot of challenges across the board. And our partners are working as hard as they can. But it's been a challenging two years, as everyone knows.
JARED BLIKRE: Well, yeah, I'm looking through some of your notes here and your growth stats. Last year, your Valentine's Day was experiencing about 50% growth over the prior year. I'm just wondering what you're expecting for this year given the different dynamics.
SETH GOLDMAN: Yeah, with the different dynamics, we are expecting slower growth than last year. We also have to think through each day of the week that Valentine's Day can fall on can be different. This year, there's a lot of anxiety in the industry around it falling after the Super Bowl.
It's a little bit less of a concern for us, but that Sunday evening is a prime advertising time for some of our competitors. And they don't know what's going to happen with people glued to their TV watching the football game. Outside of that, we are expecting still strong double digit growth and looking forward to making a lot of people happy.
JARED BLIKRE: And just thinking about the demographics of Valentine's Day, we have Gen Z kind of up and coming, starting to buy those flowers en masse. What are some of the trends you're noticing with some of the younger generations?
SETH GOLDMAN: Yeah, we started as a company that catered to a younger generation, Gen X and millennial customers. And now we've started to build a relationship with the Gen Z audience. It was actually our strongest growth group last year, more than 50% growth in that segment. And we're starting to really introduce them to flowers, sending gifts, figuring out how to put that in their budget as a really special way of connecting between them, friends, and loved ones.
JARED BLIKRE: And what about some of the trends that you're seeing in the product mix? Is it just red roses, candy, stuffed animals? Anything new? NFTs? I don't know.
SETH GOLDMAN: Someone approached us about NFTs yesterday. I don't know if [INAUDIBLE]
JARED BLIKRE: I'm sure they did.
SETH GOLDMAN: But they really did. But red roses are always very popular, but we have signature items. I think you have the firecracker on the screen right there, which features reds and oranges and yellows. We feature a lot of pinks and purples. So we want to give people the opportunity to do the traditional or something a little bit more avant garde.
We pride ourselves very much in our designs. That's what separates Urban Stems from a lot of other places that you can buy flowers. We're sourcing unique stems from beautiful farms in South America and around the world to really delight your loved one.
JARED BLIKRE: Yeah, and I'll tell you what, I'm going to be putting those orders in this afternoon. Thanks for coming in and stopping by. Seth Goldman, the UrbanStems CEO.
