Flowers Come From Where?! with Williee Armellini

Episode 240:  In this episode, hosts Lori and Ellie chat with Williee Armellini, the artist, musician, writer and owner of the Flowers and Cents website and newsletter. Williee shares some fascinating anecdotes about his personal journey and talks in-depth about his book "Flowers Come from Where?". The book offers insight into the growth and history of the importer and domestic flower industry. As Lori says, Williee is a character, and this episode is a delightful conversation about his many passions and experiences in the world of flowers.

Flowers and Cents

Order Williee's Book: Flowers Come From Where? 

Sponsored by:
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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:02

I think I'm a historian because a lot of these people are aging out. Like myself. You know, people are aging out. They're retiring, they're dying, they're moving on, whatever. And I wanted to capture these some of these people.

SPEAKER_02 0:16

Welcome to the business and pleasure of flowers. We're your hosts, Vonda LaFever and Lori Wilson. And we believe that business and fun are a perfect combination. Kind of like us, Vonda. Okay, so good morning, Ellie LeFever and Willie Armelini. How are you guys doing?

SPEAKER_03 0:38

On the East Coast, we're doing fine.

SPEAKER_02 0:40

Okay, how's the uh West Coast, Ellie, who we hear but don't see today?

SPEAKER_01 0:45

West Coast is good. You know, it is a Monday, but we're here. We made it, we've got a full week ahead, so no complaints.

SPEAKER_02 0:53

Okay, good. I think it is very typical for a Monday that Ellie's screen is blank and it just says app not focused.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

A little bit like my brain, maybe. Yeah, exactly. Early for me on the early, that is true. By the end of the interview, just like I was on Willie's interview, you know, I'll be I'll be awake.

SPEAKER_02 1:14

So we'll be yeah, you are taking one for the team. We've got Willie getting ready for lunch, and you haven't even had breakfast. So um I appreciate you doing this. So for people that don't know Mr. Willie Armelini, one of our favorite characters in this industry, he runs flowersandsense.com, which is not only a website, but it's a newsletter, it's a magazine, right? Like an online, it's a YouTube station. What else is it, Willie? It's it's like everything.

SPEAKER_03 1:53

Well, it started out uh long ago, and in fact, uh over 20 years ago, I started it in 2001, believe it or not.

SPEAKER_02 2:01

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 2:02

Before Facebook and all those other things came on and sort of messed up uh social media. I'm sort of the original floral blog, and um it without going on too too long of a story, I'll I'll tell you the origin of flowers and scents. Okay, so I've been in the flower business all my life via the trucking business. My family has a trucking business, which I was a member of for a long time, and they haul the flowers around the country. So I have many iterations of my life because I left the family business and went on to be my floral personality self, that I guess I am. And and in that transition uh of working for different companies, I worked for this one company up here in Orlando, as it turned out. And the idea was we were trying to be what a comet sales perhaps is to the flower business these days. I was trying to be a portal to connect girlers and buyers to stick, and we were way too early. We were basically spent most of our time explaining what the internet was. But in the process of that, USA Floral Products came along back uh late 90s, and they tried to buy up all the big companies in Miami and bought a lot of wholesalers, and we're trying to then basically spin that off into one big IPO.

SPEAKER_00 3:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 3:19

Uh, in the process of buying all those things, one day your competitor is a competitor. Let's say Miami importer is your competitor, tomorrow he's your partner because they kept buying similar companies, right? And they bought a bunch of companies in Miami, they bought a bunch of wholesalers around the country. And in the process of all that, it was very confusing, right? Uh, to the people that were working in these companies that were, again, one day competitors and the next day supposedly be partners. But in the process of all that, they were trying to go public as R-O-S-I, Rosie. And Rosie they put up a chat room in Yahoo for the investors, and the investors were hyping the stock, saying this is gonna go to a billion dollars, that's gonna be the greatest thing you buy to buy this stock.

SPEAKER_02 4:04

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 4:05

Um, however, it was an anonymous chat room, and the employees of those companies started posting that they don't know what the hell they're doing, this is gonna crash. I mean, they don't know what's going on.

SPEAKER_02 4:19

It's crazy.

SPEAKER_03 4:21

Buy this stock.

SPEAKER_02 4:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:23

And that became the message board for people posting pros and cons about this, and and as a result, what happened was they they went bust. Okay. So in the process of them going out of business after their IPO, that chat room became very difficult to get to. Okay, and nobody really knew who anybody was. It was all anonymous except perhaps me. I was Harley, and people sort of figured out who I was after a period of time. And when they made it difficult, I said, Oh my, all these people who I have no idea who they are are gonna disappear because this thing's gonna fall away. So I immediately said, Okay, I know a little bit about the internet. Let me put up a website, a message board, and I'll invite everybody there. Right. And I called it Flowers and Cents. And uh, I don't even think I named it Flowers and Sense, it was just a message board at that point, and everybody came and it proliferated, it went on. People kept posting and posting and posting, and it was really fun for a while until feelings started to get hurt and it got a little personal, and uh it, you know, it it got a little bit out of control. So in the process of all that, I realized that there was news out there in the flower business that was not being covered because the print publications that were in business at the time, Flower News, Florida Nursery and Times were literally print publications, newspapers, if you will, that were coming out every other week, I think. And they were going out of business. And I happened to have one of the few, if not the only, online uh advertising or news media for the flower business. So I said, hmm, there's actually a business here. So I got out of the gossip business, hopefully, and made it uh a bit more of a news magazine, if you will. And and that was cool for a while.

SPEAKER_02 6:14

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:15

That was cool for a while. Uh running a website is a real pain in the ass these days.

SPEAKER_00 6:19

Uh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:21

They're always being uh particularly if you have any traffic, and I had a lot of traffic, so everybody was trying to hack into me and do this and do that, and uh really became difficult to manage. Uh, and then I also said, okay, wait a minute, I can send a newsletter. People send newsletters, I can push the news instead of pull the news.

SPEAKER_00 6:40

Right.

SPEAKER_03 6:40

Started adding a newsletter to the process and to provide a little bit of quicker news. You know, I can put stuff up pretty quickly and get it out there in the news. And my my mission from the very beginning was sort of, well, I don't think I had a mission. I was just that I tried not to invade people's email boxes. I started just posting. If there was something to say, I said it. If it went two or three weeks and I had there was no news, I didn't post anything. Yeah, so I tried to, you know, not spam everybody's email box with, you know, right bullshit, if you will. Uh I I said, okay, let's if there's something to say, I'll say it. I've sort of over the time, over the many years, I've sort of tried to publish once a week or once every other week. And with conventions going on now that we're in the convention season, there's uh plenty to write about. So that's that's great.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

What a great origin story. I love that. I did not know all of that.

SPEAKER_03 7:32

Yeah, that's how it came about. And look, I do this because I like to do it. If if I had to make a living at this, I'd it would be very difficult, frankly.

SPEAKER_01 7:42

Take the fun out of it.

SPEAKER_03 7:43

Well, but take the fun, yeah. I have to be real pain in the ass and beg for ads and yeah, really push the envelope in terms of getting advertisers and revenue.

SPEAKER_00 7:52

Right.

SPEAKER_03 7:53

I do this because I'm you know retired enough. It pays me enough to pay my plane tickets and hotel rooms and get to the get to the conventions. It gets me there, right? You know, maybe I make a little money in the end, I don't know. But basically, you know, the other part about this story was that's funny, is that okay, I had flowers and census message board, and one day somebody sends me an email and says, Hey, I want to buy an advertisement on your website. And I said, He said, Well, look, I'm gonna send you 50 bucks and my uh business card, put it up on your website. I said, Okay. So I did, and within 24 hours, I had a couple people saying, Hey, I see an advertisement on your website there. Uh, what's that cost? And I'm like, uhy bucks a month, how's that? Perfect.

SPEAKER_00 8:43

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 8:43

So, you know, that's really how it started, and it it grew from there, and and the website has crashed, and it's been there's been all sorts of bad things that have happened over the years, but I've kept it going, and interestingly enough, people tell me they like what I write. Okay, yeah, I don't have an agenda. They, you know, don't, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:06

Do you can do you consider yourself a journalist?

SPEAKER_03 9:10

I never did. I I've sort of had to become accept the fact that I was one. A good one or not, I can't tell you, but I had to accept the fact that I was a journalist, much like I had to accept the fact that I'm an artist, okay? I'm a musician, I play music, I write, I do art, I do all sorts of things.

SPEAKER_02 9:28

You're a photographer. You always a photographer.

SPEAKER_03 9:31

Yeah. And and the the beauty of this for me, uh, Flowers and Sense at this point is it's allowed me to put three of my favorite things together. I've always liked to take pictures. I can't say I've always liked to write, but I always started writing. I wrote songs. And you're good at it, wrote love letters and all sorts of things. And you know, I like being around people. So I and music, of course. So, you know, all the music in my videos is all home, you know, all my music.

SPEAKER_00 10:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:02

Um that that I've written and played over the years and and and work with bands on. So I've I combined all those three things into uh, you know, something I love and and it's worked for me. And I think people, you know, value it or recognize it. And you mentioned retailers, that that's your audience, and I'm delighted because I just came back from the AI FD convention here in Orlando.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:26

It was blown away uh by the artistic expression and over the first one, right?

SPEAKER_01 10:33

That was your first time at AIFD.

SPEAKER_03 10:35

Yeah, it was my first one. Well, I've been I my life has been sort of spent in growers, wholesalers, importers, you know, that's been my my my calling card over this many years. That's who my audience was and still remains. I've reached out to more retailers or retailers found out about me and started watching the site and stuff, and often tell me, hey, listen, I love it, but you're right, because we believe it, for one thing. If you tell us, particularly wholesalers and buyers, there's like, yeah, if you tell us there's a problem in South America with you know distribution, we believe it. If our salesman tells us that, we're not so sure we believe it.

SPEAKER_02 11:12

Right. Okay, you were talking about AIFD and Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:16

Yeah, the A AIFD was wonderful. I was sort of wanting to reach out to retailers more because y'all are you know at the end of the line there, and uh and also probably the part of the business I know the least about. So I was quite interested and again blown away by the artistic talent that was in the scale of everything is just incredible. Yeah, way over the top. But and yeah, like and uh so you know uh I'm I'm delighted to have that part and be more involved. So I'm delighted you guys invited me, you ladies invited me here to uh to do this because I certainly want to reach out to more retailers. So I hope they will uh sign up on flowersandsense.com.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

Yes, yeah. We will put the uh the link to the website and your info in the show notes so everybody can go visit the site and sign up for the newsletter.

SPEAKER_03 12:12

Yeah, and then we'll add them to the newsletter and they can see what's going on here.

SPEAKER_02 12:15

We also want to talk about your book. You talk about the book. Talk about the book. You own a book, own a book, and you are supposed to reorder it because you're already sold out and you're like, I didn't think I'd sell out, and you sold out.

SPEAKER_01 12:31

I'm calling it now. This is the Christmas gift of 2024. You better get your orders in because I got my order in.

SPEAKER_03 12:38

I've got a hundred new books that just arrived.

SPEAKER_02 12:41

I was reading the first part, just your history. Like, I'm like, he needs to make a movie just about my life. I don't even care about the floral stuff. I'm like, your life, you are such a character, you're so funny. Just your whole history. So your book's called Flowers Come from Where?

SPEAKER_03 13:03

And I hope we everybody can relate to that because you know, uh being in the flower business, and you tell people you're in the flower business, and they and they say, Well, yeah, where where do flowers come from? Yeah, they come from South America. What? Yeah, yeah, they come in airplanes and what that's crazy, right? So, you know, everybody thinks they're grown in everybody's backyard, which they are, but the bulk of the flowers all come from South America. So, you know, the reason I wrote the book is sort of multifaceted. And I would say the the main issue is I I'm finding myself being a historian. Never thought I'd be a historian. I don't know anything about it, but as I was talking to people at these conventions, I realized that first of all, memories are fading. And I was talking to another colleague, and we're talking about somebody who we both know very well. We couldn't remember her name. I'm like, you know, this is terrible. We can't even remember somebody's name that we knew well. And it just says to me, we better write all this down. So I I had, you know, I've been writing these little snippets over the last 10 years, 20 years, I don't know. I've been, you know, writing little bits, never thought about it combining it into a book. But when that happened, that little incident, I was like, you know, I gotta write this down. And then COVID hit. I got COVID. I'm upstairs in my in the ivory tower here, and uh my wife is sliding food under the door. And um and I said, you know, what am I gonna do? Because I'm a really active person and I've got lots of hobbies, and I'm like, okay, write a book, write the book, get it out of your head, just get it out of your head because it was in there, it was in my head, all this these stories, and I, you know, never thought about organizing, but I just started writing, and it flowed fairly easy getting it out of my head and writing it down, and then trying to read it back. That was really the hard part. After you read it one or two or ten or a hundred times, wow, I can't read it anymore. You sort of know what you wrote, so you read it in advance, so you're not really reading it. Anyway, I got it all out of my head, and then I finally said, All right, now to write a book. First of all, I had to figure out what's a book? Yeah, it takes me a book, right? So I Googled it, and of course, it excuse me, takes a cover. It takes a cover, it can be one page or a thousand pages, as long as it has a cover. So I qualify. As you saw, uh it's not a long book, you can read it in several hours, but yeah, and then I thought, okay, who am I writing this book for? You know, am I writing it just to get it out of my head? My initial thought was I'm writing it for the people that have I've grown up in this business with, they'll get all these references I'm king and all the things I'm talking about. And I said, Okay, that's who I'm writing it for. And then I let my neighbor read it, who's not in the business, and he said, Well, you know, it's good, except you make a lot of references that I don't get. And I said, Oh, okay. I said, maybe maybe I should add references or explain things further so people that are not in the industry can say, Okay, I get it. Okay. So I went back and articulated things better, I hope. And then I said, Okay, now what? Okay, now you got to get it published. Ooh. That's complicated. So I enlisted my daughter, who's a photographer. I said, help me. I sent her some money and said, get help me publish this. So she got helped me get it organized into chapters and proof proofreading it and making sure it was reasonably uh edited well. And she hooked me up and bingo, I got a book. And it's funny when you have a book because I realize there's not a lot of books written about the flower industry because people are like, oh well, because even the Association of Miami Importers had a book signing for me.

SPEAKER_02 16:42

Wow, that's so cool.

SPEAKER_03 16:44

Yeah, that was very cool that they had a book signing for me. And that was their mission. I said, You're having a meeting, and you want me to just sign books on this. I said, No, it's about you and your book.

SPEAKER_01 16:52

Yeah, celebrating it. That's awesome. It should be celebrated because it's such an incredible synopsis of the industry and uh the his the rich history that people just don't know.

SPEAKER_03 17:06

So yeah, there's a lot of history, and you know, my family, you know, is a big part of it. You know, one thing that happened at the book signing, a couple people said, listen, if Armelini wasn't Armelini in the positions it was, Miami would not have become what Miami is today. Wow. And the reason is not because we were such wonderful people, it was just because we had uh infrastructure in place already. We were already hauling flowers to wholesalers from local growers in Florida. So imports came along and just added to the truck. Okay, you're going to that wholesaler. That truck's going to that wholesaler. So it it sort of allowed an importer or anybody for that matter, a domestic grower, to send literally like one box to 600 different wholesalers if they wanted, you know, back when there were 600 different wholesalers.

SPEAKER_01 17:59

Yeah, Armelini is is the connector, right? It's the connection point between all that. And I just realized that's also what you are with flowers and scents and your positioning now. It's it's just kind of a different spin on that, but you are a connector and Armelini is as well.

SPEAKER_03 18:15

And yeah, and and trucks are really expensive. So they can do with the trucks, and uh, I'm happy here uh learning how to use my computer here to make some money and yeah, you know, to sort of spread my word, if you will. You know, it's been a lot of fun for me. And again, I said um uh I think I'm a historian because a lot of these people are aging out, like myself. You know, people are aging out, they're retiring, they're dying, they're moving on, whatever. And I wanted to capture these, some of these people, at least their history, and which is why I've been interviewing as many people as I can, particularly people that are in that position where they're sort of moving on or they have a legacy. I want to capture that legacy for the sake of the uh industry.

SPEAKER_02 18:59

Yeah, that's what I was gonna ask you in writing this. I know the majority of it was just in your head, but did you do a lot of research and did you do interviews and did you let the people know you were writing about them and how did they feel? Were they excited? How was that whole process?

SPEAKER_03 19:19

Well, I'll give you one good example. And yes, I did some interviews and did some traveling and talked to people uh that had this knowledge.

SPEAKER_00 19:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:26

Um, and I was keen to find out about when the first imports happened, okay? Or exports, if you will, or imports and exports uh from South America. And much to my surprise, the first uh exports were out of Ecuador, not Colombia. Very very surprising to me back in 1962. And uh and this leads into your question because uh I inadvertently I interviewed uh uh Dwight Hayde and Jim Hill from CFX, which was Colombian Flour Exchange way back when. And uh Dwight had worked for Bill Seek at Seek Wholesale in Baltimore. Okay, Seek wholesale is an old-time uh wholesaler in Baltimore area region. And Mr. Seek had bought some land in Quito around what was the old airport and started growing carnations down there in 62 or 61, okay? And started exporting out of there. And ultimately he was growing carnations, which is the wrong crop to grow in Ecuador. You've got roses grow in Ecuador, carnations don't grow well, but nonetheless, he was able to grow them and he could have a lot of red carnations when nobody had red carnations, and it was really working well for him, even though it was the wrong crop. And then what happened was the uh airport decided they needed that property and bought it from him. Oh and so when I was interviewing the Sikh company, they had reinforced and gave me the fine details behind all this, and I was able to write that down. And they have bought 20 copies of the book.

SPEAKER_00 21:07

Oh wow!

SPEAKER_03 21:09

First they bought 10. Can I buy 10? I said, sure. Yeah, I sent them 10 and they called back and said, Can I order 10 more? And I'm like, Yes, but what in the hell are you doing with all these books? Yeah, and they're like, We have a lot of ex-employees that would really love to read this, and people that have been in the industry, and customers that we've had that have retired. Oh you know, the fact that they're very prominent in the book, they bought a bunch of them. And I had a couple customers buy 20 copies, I'm like, yeah, yeah. So yeah. That's you know, and I found out another interesting thing in Pearson, Florida, where all the greens come from. Back in the early uh 1900s, nobody spoke English. They spoke they spoke Danish.

SPEAKER_02 21:50

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 21:51

Nobody could speak English because they're all, you know, they settled there. And uh that was very interesting. So, you know, we found out a lot of interesting. Things by learning and listening and just seeing where does industry come from? And and and it grew out of hard work, basically. It grew out of hard work and a lot of innovation.

SPEAKER_02 22:10

All right. How can people buy your book?

SPEAKER_03 22:14

They can go to flowersandsense.com and uh on the front page there, there's a link. Uh, you'll see a picture of the book, and uh you can click on there and you can get it right off the front page. Um, I I hope people read it. I hope they like it, and I welcome any feedback. Uh that's the other thing. It's nice to know doing what I do on in online is when people actually say, Hey, I liked it. You know, I like what you said or what you wrote.

SPEAKER_01 22:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:41

Feedback is a good thing.

SPEAKER_01 22:42

I thought it was I'm so excited for everybody to read it. It's the perfect gift, too, for somebody who maybe is adjacent to the floral business.

SPEAKER_03 22:51

Or new in the business.

SPEAKER_01 22:52

New, yeah. Or if you've been in the industry for 30 years and you you don't know what you don't know, and I think you recap everything really well.

SPEAKER_02 23:01

Okay. Thank you. There is a quote on page 21 that I loved. And you say, altitude will determine what you grow, longitude will determine where you grow, latitude will determine where you sell, and attitude will determine your success.

SPEAKER_03 23:22

Isn't that beautiful?

SPEAKER_02 23:24

I love it. And I copy and pasted it on a Google Doc and I write it on a post-it note. I sometimes I find things that I love like that, and I write them out because that helps me remember them. And I put them on a post-it note and I put them on my big screen over here so I'll remember.

SPEAKER_03 23:40

And I would yeah, I would love to take credit for that, but I can't. That is coming from Dean Rule of Connect the Floor. Okay. He's a breeder down in Ecuador, and he has been using that for years, and I've copied it down. I kept misquoting it. There was too many A's involved.

SPEAKER_01 23:58

So too many toes. Yeah, too many to I said, write it down for me.

SPEAKER_03 24:06

So he did. But yeah, that's so true. It's so basic. So true. It's true.

SPEAKER_02 24:10

Yeah, yeah, it's really good. It it really spoke to me. So anyway. All right, now we have time for some random questions. I really am excited to get to these. So Ellie and I might.

SPEAKER_01 24:37

That's amazing. I need to, I need a whole other podcast on that. But what village is and is that the village that well, I'm gonna ask that question.

SPEAKER_03 24:46

And in those times in Italy, a village was quite a large area, so it wasn't necessarily even a town.

SPEAKER_01 24:52

It was that you can refer to, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:54

Yeah. So yeah, this guy named Landis, who sort of got the uh grant from the king or whatever to populate the land, he was trying to find people, and he had to find people. So he went to Italy and and basically said, Hey, everybody come to America in this place, and we'll give you a plot of land and you can do that. And so it's such an Italian town that it's ridiculous. You go around and yeah, and the mailboxes and the graveyards just give it away. It's really cool.

SPEAKER_01 25:26

Awesome. Where are you from in Italy?

SPEAKER_03 25:28

Where do you know your I'm from two different places? I don't speak Italian because my family, I'm like fifth generation here in America. So my parents were born in America, my grandparents were born in America, my great-grandparents came over at different times from between Naples in the south and Trento in the north.

SPEAKER_01 25:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 25:48

So my mom was from the north and my dad was from the south. Very around. My dad was from the north, sorry. The better news now is that my daughter, my oldest daughter, Lauren, married a man from Rome, and now my grandkids and her also speak Italian. They're in Italy right now, so uh practicing their Italian. We got the language back, it's beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 26:10

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 26:11

That's Ellie's dream. I'm working on my dual citizenship right now.

SPEAKER_03 26:16

So for where? For Italy?

SPEAKER_01 26:18

For Italy, yep. My great-grandparents were from there.

SPEAKER_03 26:21

Okay, yeah. My daughter, my daughter got it. We were having we were trying to do it. What happened to us is my dad's records got lost in the war.

SPEAKER_01 26:29

They got blown up.

SPEAKER_03 26:32

That was oh you had the same problem, right?

SPEAKER_01 26:34

Yeah, we found the wrong Luigi Bevelacqua.

SPEAKER_00 26:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 26:38

So we had to go back, which took you know a long time to find the right one. And uh, but we did find it. So now it's just a matter of paperwork and processing it, which, as you know, Italy is not the quickest.

SPEAKER_03 26:51

Well, as my daughter said, Dad, I love the place, it's a great place to live. The quality of life, food, everything is so wonderful until you got to get a driver's license.

SPEAKER_00 27:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:03

Or do anything, you know, bureaucratically.

SPEAKER_00 27:06

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 27:06

Um, then you gotta become a real Italian, you know. And my nut and my son-in-law is, you know, he'll park his car on the sidewalk and because I gotta go in there. You wait in the car. If they tell you to move it, just tell them, hey, no, no problema. Oh my gosh. I'm gonna go away.

SPEAKER_01 27:21

Great. I love it.

SPEAKER_03 27:23

All right, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 27:24

Okay, go ahead, Lori, with your questions. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 27:28

Question number one: how has your perspective on the world, or we can say the industry, whichever you choose, changed over the years?

SPEAKER_03 27:38

I think the world is a bit Yeah, that's a lot.

SPEAKER_02 27:40

That's another podcast.

SPEAKER_03 27:42

But yeah, that's a bit broad.

SPEAKER_02 27:43

Uh yeah, so on the industry changed over the years.

SPEAKER_03 27:49

Well, what's really changed, and I think it's happening now, is this consolidation. The major thing that happens is supermarkets became florist.

SPEAKER_02 27:57

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:58

That's what happened. They became floorist. And that really challenged retail florists because supermarkets have some advantages. They're open, people come there, they have you know, it's pick and pay and quick and easy, and and and it just makes total sense. I recognize after being around a lot of retailers, that doesn't mean they make good flowers, you know. Uh they may have a good selection. Trader Joe's has a great selection of flowers. Um but when you want a arrangement, you got to go to a florist. It's certainly an art. It's certainly an art. I have growers that send me flowers and I stick them in a vase and uh try to make them look good, but it's it's an art, it's a it's a skill. There's no doubt about it. So I but what has changed, I think supermarkets have really changed the business. And as I say in the book, there's that triple header, if you will. There's so credit cards, uh, FedEx and uh overnight delivery.

SPEAKER_01 29:02

I wrote it down, IOCC.

SPEAKER_03 29:04

IOCC, right, credit cards.

SPEAKER_01 29:06

Overnight delivery, credit cards.

SPEAKER_03 29:07

Yeah, those things have changed it dramatically because while it it's not necessarily a great way to send flowers, it works. And it works good enough that it's a viable part of the business. And that just further challenged for retailers. So but as I said in my report, if you watched my video from AIFD, yes, I did. You know, as I said, I you know, all these retailers going out of business, I think, is bullshit because there are there's a lot of ways that people are connecting with flowers, so yes, yeah, brick and mortar may be difficult, but nonetheless, there's a lot of flower engagement going on.

SPEAKER_01 29:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:46

That's my that's my answer.

SPEAKER_02 29:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 29:51

What is one thing you would change about our industry if you could?

SPEAKER_03 29:55

Well, that was the world question, and I had prepared the answer from the world question. And the world question, I I would say is if people stop seeing difference, stop seeing color, stop seeing difference, right? That would be my answer. I have a black son-in-law, and uh people often say I don't see black. Well, I see black, he's very black, yeah. He's very black, but it that's all I see. Uh beyond that, he's just the person. He happens to be a different color. Yeah, you know, I recently went to Korea. People are different there, right? But they're but they're they're people, they're fun, they're interesting, they're respectful. Uh anyway, that's what's going on there.

SPEAKER_02 30:38

Yeah, no, that's very good. Um what's your greatest fear and how do you manage it?

SPEAKER_03 30:46

Forgetting my hat at a convention.

SPEAKER_02 30:48

Ah I was gonna ask you how when did you start with the hat? Has it always been like since you were a child?

SPEAKER_03 30:56

Well, no, uh, I'll tell you exactly where it started. I'm in Quito, and uh my friend uh Romero Peña Herrera of uh Memorial Day Flowers is always giving out Panama hats. Okay, all right, so he gave me a Panama hat, uh, and I uh had it. And at the time I had a band, so I'm back home and I said, this hat looks pretty cool, so I'm gonna wear this hat. And the hat provides two things it keeps the stage lights out of your eyes, yeah. Right, and then it hides my bald spot and my hair, which at the time anyway was long and uh wonderfully pearly, and it just kept my hair in order. What happened was though, a Panama hat looks really cool when it's dry, but when you start sweating, the wings fall down. So now I went from looking like a cool guy to looking like a farmer that's been out in the field sweating too long. The hat literally almost melted. And I said, this doesn't work. Yeah. So my subsequent return to Ecuador, I went to the local market for the artesian's market, and I you can buy these hats for 25 bucks, and like wow, I bought a couple of them and they're much sturdier. And then when I was in Kenya, if you notice I had beads on my hat, I got beads made for the hat.

SPEAKER_02 32:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:16

And and the hat has become sort of my signature because if I don't wear it, people are like, Where's your hat? Yeah, and that's why my biggest fear is going to the show, and I have nightmares about this. I wake up and I'm like, You forgot your hat. How could you forget your hat? You gotta go buy a hat. Let's go. Yeah, you gotta go buy a hat because everybody's gonna see.

SPEAKER_01 32:34

I don't think I've ever seen you without the hat.

SPEAKER_03 32:36

Uh maybe not.

SPEAKER_01 32:38

No, it's your signature, it's great. I love the hat. I love that. Okay, now Lori has written a very loaded question that I will read. How do you define happiness and have you found it?

SPEAKER_03 33:01

Yeah, that was an interesting one I was reading. Well, you define happiness by being comfortable with yourself.

SPEAKER_02 33:11

Right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:12

Um and there's an internal struggle. I'm uh writing lyrics to a song uh that I'm working on and it's about vo listening to the voices in your head, is the first line. But anyway, you know, happiness is just about yeah, again, finding peace within yourself. There's a lot of trouble in the world. Uh back to your first question that we uh altered a little bit. All the bad shit that's happening in the world was always happening, we just didn't know about it.

SPEAKER_02 33:38

Yeah, right?

SPEAKER_03 33:39

Now we have you know now we know about it 24-7 by a hundred different vehicles. Um and it can stress you out. I've stopped watching the news in the last week because yeah, I just can't take the political stuff anymore. My wife and I both said, okay, well, we're happier people when we don't watch the news. So so yeah, I think we found happiness.

SPEAKER_02 34:02

Right. No, I'm I'm very much the same way, and they're also called dogs.

SPEAKER_01 34:08

Dogs, dog happiness, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:12

I agree. All right, last question. What's the toughest decision that you've ever had to make?

SPEAKER_03 34:19

Leaving the family company.

SPEAKER_02 34:21

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:23

That was a big one.

SPEAKER_02 34:24

Yeah, I agree. Uh probably very tough.

SPEAKER_03 34:28

That was a big one. And people ask me, uh would you would you do it again? And the answer is yes. Yeah, I would do it again. Uh having the hindsight, I would probably make some better decisions, but uh yeah, I would do it again because uh that's what my life called for.

SPEAKER_02 34:45

Yeah, and you have happiness, you know, like I have happiness, and and what I'll uh maybe in closing tell you what people if you decide to retire, you need hobbies.

SPEAKER_03 34:58

Yes, that's a really hobbies because if not, and I have watched many a person retire, and either six months later they're dead, or they're bored out of their minds. Or they go back to work because they go back to work because they don't know what else to do. Yeah, I have you know, I have a ton of hobbies, and uh I jump back and forth between uh making bowls on my lathe and woodworking and the band and uh walking my dogs and working with my neighbor and and all sorts of things. I I've got plenty of things to do, and I recommend anybody that you know is gonna retire, please have some use your time well.

SPEAKER_02 35:38

Yeah, great. That's a great message. So Willie, thank you so much for coming on here. This was awesome. This was so good. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_03 35:48

Um it's been my pleasure, ladies, and I I I like the flower click because you all have fun. We do.

SPEAKER_02 35:57

We know how to have fun.

SPEAKER_03 35:58

We do.

SPEAKER_02 36:00

Are you gonna be at SAF Convention?

SPEAKER_03 36:02

I am all right.

SPEAKER_02 36:03

Well, in a couple weeks. Are you making a bunch of books?

SPEAKER_03 36:07

Look forward to it. I I'll have plenty of books to sign.

SPEAKER_01 36:10

So all right, yay.

SPEAKER_03 36:11

Rock and roll.

SPEAKER_01 36:13

We'll see you there. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 36:15

You're welcome.

SPEAKER_02 36:17

Thank you so much for listening to our podcast. We hope you enjoyed spending time with us because we enjoy spending time with you. If you did, make sure you hit that subscribe button or add the business and pleasure of flowers to your Google morning routine or your flat routine on the website. So please come back and join me.