People, Petals & Big News: A Conversation with Bill LaFever on What’s Next

Episode 298: Lori’s voice is back—and so is the chatter across the floral world. In this episode, Vonda and Lori sit down with industry leader and President of Bill Doran Company, Bill LaFever, to unpack the big announcement combining Bill Doran Company and DWF, Denver Wholesale Florist, and what it really means for retail florists. Bill shares his family’s 80-year story—from his grandfather’s one-station-wagon route to 38 locations  —and why the company’s true engine has always been people and relationships.

We dig into practical takeaways for shops: fresher product through farm-direct procurement, the role of private labels like Doran Direct and Mount Flora, and why “quality, connection, and community” still win. Bill also talks hiring (hire slow, fire fast), leading through change with common sense and compassion, and mindset shifts when news hits your market. Bonus: rapid-fire fun—favorite flowers (hello, lisianthus and roses), live music obsessions, and game-day views.

If you’ve been wondering how this news affects your buying, your rep, and your customers’ experience, this candid conversation will steady your footing—and maybe spark your next move.

Sponsored by:
Flower Clique
Flower Clique Prep School
Real Life Retail Florist

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

I looked internally to say, hey, I'm up for this. Kind of. But I want to do it for the right reasons. I don't want to do it just to get bigger. I said, does it make sense for our company? So the key group of employees that I chatted with about this were gung ho to proceed with his acquisition. So I'm like, all right, then let's do it.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Welcome to the business and pleasure of flowers. We're your hosts, Vonda LaFever and Lori Wilson.

SPEAKER_02 0:29

And we believe that business and fun are a perfect combination. Kind of like us, Vonda.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Lori, I'm just testing to make sure you can actually talk today because last week I had to do a pod all by myself because you couldn't speak. I know it, and I'm so proud of you.

SPEAKER_02 0:48

You did hard things, and you did grown-up things. I'm really proud of you. I can speak. I was testing my voice this morning, but you know, I had laryngitis, and I think I've have had it three times in my life. And we have a special guest today. And before we introduce him, here's a little subtle hint. I was on a Bill Doran meeting earlier today with a group of managers. And last week I was muted because I had laryngitis. And now that I have my voice back, they were all making fun of me because of last week. So that just goes to show you how loud I am in that meeting.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

No, you just have a lot to offer. And when you're not there, you miss it, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:34

Last week was so short.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

That happens, Lori. Happy you're back in full force. I'm back. But we're really excited to have Bill if he were join us today. Yeah, there was a big announcement, Bill. Everybody's talking about it. It's kind of like the chatter of the floral industry.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

Yeah, well, it was big news for us as well. You know, something we've been chatting about for a while and really respect a lot the the company Denver Host of Florest DWF. Known them for years the whole time I've been in the industry, known the different people that have helped run that organization. And for the last you know, 10, 12 years, we've gotten to know them real well. Great competitors in the markets we've been in and and similar cultures and vibes, do a lot of this very, very similar things. It was a nice journey with just initial conversations to see how things could be to all the way to consummating it. So we got to date a little bit before we got married and then before the whole thing happened. So it that was fun.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

Well, that's great. Yeah, I I think the announcement says combining two powerhouse companies with deep roots in the industry, which I love because it the floral industry does have deep roots, starting way back. And I want to talk to you about the advantages for the flower buyers, the local level people and the management team and everything. But before we get into that, Lori and I like a backstory. You know, we do. And I'd like you to share with our listeners the story of your grandfather, William Doran, and how he started the business.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

For sure, I'd love to. So, first off, we're celebrating our 80th year. So it was uh 1945 is when this story begins. And we don't tout that 80th year too much because it's more of an internal thing that we're celebrating, because ultimately our customers value fresh flowers delivered at a fair price today, and what happened 80 years ago isn't relevant to them. But internally, we feel very proud and very happy for that. So I'll bring that up. So back in 1945, my grandfather Bill Dorn was drafted to go into the war, but failed the physical, the medical, had a heart issue. And so back then there weren't draft dodgers. This was very debilitating mentally to him. It was a bad thing. And so he kind of poured himself into starting, he needed to find a job and start something that he felt he could build upon. And so I was himself and a station wagon, and he drove about a 40-mile radius of Rockford, Illinois, in northern Illinois, to flower growers in the morning, filled up the back of the station wagon, and then all afternoon drove around to retailers, all still in Rockford, selling flowers. And if he had any flowers left over, they're down by the railroad tracks, not far from where I'm currently sitting right now. There was a beer distributor that had refrigeration, wouldn't we call it considered modern refrigeration, but had a cooler that he was able to store the flowers in overnight for swapping out for giving some of the flowers, start the whole thing up again, did it six days a week, and that's it all stars. One ran and one station wagon back in the very beginning. And now we're probably close to 1,200 employees in 38 locations with employees in six countries. No, five countries for employees. And I mentioned that he was about a 40-mile radius that he was buying flowers from all the local growers. And now we buy flowers from about 23 different countries a year. We import them into so that's 80 years from from the very get-go to where we're at right now.

SPEAKER_01 4:54

Crazy. Well, the last podcast I just talked about, me starting in the business in 1975. And I remember, like yesterday, the call we got from the wholesaler in Waterloo, our Bill Doran company in Waterloo. We've never heard of him before because we always bought from Des Moines, which was closer to Ames. And they were like, You tell us what you like, what are your favorite varieties? We're going to send you a free box of flowers for you to try. And that I think was something that the Bill Dorans did at the time, right? That was a way for them to acquire new customers, get out further. And it was Terry Groover. Terry was there forever. And that free box of flowers, it was always mentioned quality, service, and selection. That's what we were always said they were based on. And gosh, that was way back then. And that philosophy still holds true, right, Bill?

SPEAKER_00 5:44

Yeah, we're the ultimate middlemen, right? We don't grow anything. So we have to add value the best way we can. And that's getting the flowers quickest from point A to the retailer that needs them and having the right quality and varieties and providing value throughout that chain. As I've been traveling to some of the DWF locations and meeting the people, one of the interesting things that I think got popped up because the salespeople are all excited because we have some private label and some higher-end product that's double graded and packed special, and we can talk about that's a Mount Flora brand, and then we have our Dorn Direct. But we got to make sure we're never the bottleneck of information. If a customer needs a price point on a product, that's great. We're going to get the price point, but always with fresh flowers, right? So our goal is we never want to be pushing poor quality, meaning aged product through the system. That doesn't do the end consumer any good to have it sit on their kitchen table or their dining room table and have it die within two or three days. But we can hit stem length and head size and things like that for every type of customer. And there are customers that want to spend a certain dollar amount on a rose and people that spend three times that on a rose. It's not for us to decide. Just like stem-dyed flowers or painted flowers. Some of those salespeople absolutely hate them and abhor and don't want to sell them like that. Hey, if there's an end consumer that wants to buy a flower and it's brake painted hot pink or blue or whatever the color, why are we the ones to determine that they shouldn't have that? You know, if it's floral consumption, let's just be happy they're buying flowers. So spent a lot of time on that because I think that was a little bit surprising to some of the people I've been meeting out as I travel those locations. But we have to be all things to everyone and do the best we can from that perspective.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

We have that with our members. I mean, for us, they're like, no, I would never put that in my shop. And we're like, well, do you even give your customers a chance? Right. And they're like, well, I don't like it, so I don't think they'll like it. Yeah. You know, it's that short-sightedness of that whole thing. Same thing.

SPEAKER_00 7:37

Self-fulfilling prophecy then, too, right?

SPEAKER_01 7:39

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. So I want to stick on the history here just for a minute. What do you remember most about those times with Grandpa Bill and Grandma Arlene growing up in the wholesale business?

SPEAKER_00 7:52

Yeah. So that goes back quite a few years ago for me for sure. What I probably take the most is the appreciation for people, whether it was employees or customers, whether it was at open houses often that I would be involved as a younger person. You know, the Saturday and Sunday, back in those days, it was a two-day open house and 300 people on Saturday and another 300 people on Sunday and the cooking out. And my grandparents knew everyone by name and knew their history, knew their children, knew all of their information. So just was amazed at just the sheer volume. And then, you know, we might I would travel to like the Madison branch, and similar thing would happen again, and they would knew all the employees and all and all the customers. So it was, you know, fortunately or unfortunately, from what I learned, it was less about the flowers and more about the people and the relationships and took care of the best we could and what was needed from that perspective, with the concept that fresh flowers always like that was just the base, right? And then after that, it was it's a lot more about the people. So that probably is the resonating thing that comes from younger, from being younger is that component for sure.

SPEAKER_01 8:57

That's really interesting that you would pick that up. I mean, because a lot of young people wouldn't. As a child, you're just like, oh, here we are working again, and grandma and grandpa works all the time. And that's what I would be learning is like, oh, it's hard work. Whatever he's doing, it's hard work. But instead, you could see the joy and the relationships that were formed, and that's how the business was, is because of relationships. And we've all talked about that so many times about how the relationship with your salesperson, with your wholesaler, is everything. I mean, if you don't have that trust and that relationship, you're not going to buy from that person.

SPEAKER_00 9:27

100%. I think even the individual retail florist, the relationships they have with their community, how they position themselves with the different organizations in their community and book clubs all the way up to, you know, Chamber of Commerce, they have those relationships, and that's what brings that next connection, that next set of value to the retail flower shop for sure. So it's relationships all the way from breeders all the way to the end consumer for sure.

SPEAKER_01 9:49

Mm-hmm. So then all these lessons from grand and grandpa and your family, and then you went to college, and then I was told that you needed to work outside the industry before you could join the family business, right?

SPEAKER_00 10:01

Yeah, and you know, it was more than that. I had zero desire to be in the flower business because my jobs were back in these days, and we don't do it like this anymore, but we had these like cattle troughs that were probably like eight feet long and two feet wide, and you'd fill it with about 10 gallons of bleach and fill it then with water, and you'd scrub the buckets with a toilet bowl brush.

SPEAKER_03 10:23

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:23

And so you'd sit there and you're doing hundreds of buckets, and then your nostrils would just get burned from all the bleach just going up. Yeah, it was absolutely miserable, and then you're stacking the buckets right behind you in a pyramid, and they'd fall over and start over. Flower industry to me was awful. And being the owner's grandson or the owner's son, I had zero desire. The other component that subconsciously was there that I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and in between seventh and eighth grade, I moved to Rockford, Illinois because of the flower industry, and just you know, I didn't like that at all. So I was kind of anti-flower industry. Fortunately, I really like my grandparents, but anti-flower industry for sure. So I took it all out there. And so, you know, graduating college, Bill Dorn, and my middle name is Dorne, so I'm Bill Dorne LaFever. And so I say my parents either cursed me or blessed me. Really depends on the day. So today there's some cursed days and blessed days, having a middle name. So I graduated college in the spring, and that November, my grandfather passed away, but I remember having conversations with him then, and unfortunately, he was pushing for me to come into the flower business at that point. I just I apologize to him. I said, It's not in my blood, it's not gonna happen. I'm just not there. So sorry. It was probably a little over three years later that I joined the company, but yeah, I just remember apologizing to him. He said, sorry, it's not in my blood. And well, you don't understand. It's a good industry. You can do this, you can do that. I'm like, I yes, it's provided wonderfully for me, but I just remember saying to him, it's not in my blood. Sorry.

SPEAKER_03 11:58

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 11:59

Silly me. That's what a 23-year-old boy can say, and knowing what the future holds. I've obviously I've been incredibly blessed and very fortunate with everything that's happened since. And glad that those words didn't stop my mother from uh convincing me to join her a few years later for sure.

SPEAKER_02 12:14

Yeah, absolutely. Remember what changed your mind? I mean, what made you decide, all right, I'll give it a shot.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

Well, so I was working for one of the large accounting firms at the time. There were six of them. I was working for their uh computer risk management and business systems consulting division in the audit division of Arthur Anderson. And I was traveling the world. I was in Israel, Germany, Norway, a lot of time in Connecticut, and had about 22 different customers that I was in a cycle with. And one of the customers that I did that European visits with offered me a job. And I think they were tired of paying the big rate to the accounting firm and I thought, oh, they just hire me, you know, pay me a lot less. And I was living in downtown Chicago, bought a condo and had it kind of softly remodeled, and then the job I'd have to move to Milwaukee to be based out of, and happened to be visiting my mom shortly after I got the offer, and it was dramatically more money than I was making. And I just kind of mentioned it to her that I got this job of her and I'm thinking about taking. I said, She said, Well, why wouldn't you? I said, Well, because you have all these other opportunities, and once you take one client, then all those other they forget about you in about a week, right? Like, you know, right now I have 21 potential jobs, and the day you say one, you're you're done, right? And so I was a little nervous about that. And she said, You'd move to Milwaukee and sell your condo. And I said, Well, yeah, I mean, I really wouldn't have a choice, but they're creating a position for me, kind of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity with that company for sure. And she said, Well, when do you have to let them know? And I said, Well, I said honestly, I probably have close to three months because the cycle, I don't go back to them a little while. So I was I got a little bit of time, and they made the position for me, so it's not like they're trying to fill it with somebody else. And uh, so it gets a little blurry and probably blurry on purpose, right? Your mind uh helps you with things. Um so over the next couple months, we spent time. She said, Well, if you're willing to leave Chicago, maybe you should move to Rockford. I'm like, Oh, I don't know about that. You know, that's where I went to high school, and uh, you know, I don't mind visiting, but I didn't have any planning.

SPEAKER_02 14:15

Because you were single at the time, right?

SPEAKER_00 14:17

So my mother did a handful of really smart things in there, and and one of them was she says, Oh no, you should keep your condo. You can live in Rockford, I'll I'll help you there with that. You know, you don't have to sell it to your da-da-da. So I'm like, Oh, all right, so I still have my Chicago. Well, heck, once I started working, I know put it on the market just a handful of months later because I was never going in there. I was a hundred percent in the Billbourne company, the flowers and traveling and learning and everything. But you know, just by her saying that, gave me the cushion mental life, life preserver, right? Like I wasn't giving up on Chicago. Stockware was gonna be my second home. Well, that didn't last very long at all. And there's a few little clicks like that that I guess only a mother can pull off.

SPEAKER_02 15:04

Good. She knew what she was doing.

SPEAKER_00 15:06

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:07

She was doing so smart women.

SPEAKER_00 15:10

And once again, I uh teasingly pretend like I got lured or uh by any by no means do I feel that way. I'm I'm very fortunate, very blessed about everything that's occurred for me.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

Well, she knew that there was a door open when you were going to leave one company and go to another. And yeah, so smart.

SPEAKER_02 15:26

So you travel all the time and you still have opportunities everywhere, but you also have a home base.

SPEAKER_00 15:34

Yes, for sure. And to this day, I probably travel more than I prefer right now.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

So what you learned then, even from your mom and making that change was drive in your determination. Did you get that from them, or where do you think that came from? Because you are so driven and you are so determined.

SPEAKER_00 15:53

Yeah, yeah, I guess if you talk to my therapist, there'd probably be something about the fear of disappointing people, you know, some codependent aspect in there. But I honestly the joy that comes out of it, the accomplishment, success just kind of keeps building. Love the interaction with the people. And the flowers are awesome, but I I go back to what I said about my grandparents, it's really about the people. Great friends at all levels in the industry, wholesale, growing, breeding, retail, and the flowers. As much as we spend a lot of time talking about and focusing on them, and I've got flowers behind me at all times. I got flowers in my house. They obviously that is the engine, but to me, it is about the people and employees and all of that. That's where I get my joy out of it. We have branch managers that have been with us for you know upper 40s of years that are still with us. You know, they started as 18-year-old drivers, and now the branch managers elsewhere. One individual's father was a branch manager for us, so she grew up in the industry and she's been with me longer than I have. She's been with the company longer than I have because she's a few years older than I am. Now we also have branch managers in their 30s, which is awesome. You know, we had one that hired one at 29 years old, and seeing them develop and grow and learn all those aspects. And the first time they had to let properly let somebody fire an employee for all the right reasons. An employee needed to be fired. And I said, I'll be happy to do it for you. No, no, I want to do that. But just walking them through that whole process of here, I give them my example of what first employee I ever fired was it was not a good situation. So I give them my experience and let them listen and learn. And so that that stuff's fun. And I'm not firing employees, but just the training.

SPEAKER_01 17:33

No, mentor mentoring them.

SPEAKER_00 17:36

I don't like letting to this day I still don't like letting they probably get an extra handful of strikes before they ever get let go from the build-bone company for sure.

SPEAKER_02 17:44

So Vonda's known you forever, and I've known you, I don't know, probably 10 years, and I've been so lucky to know a lot of your employees. And I notice even in meetings, they know each other's families and they know so you don't have a turnover rate, or at least not very much of one, at least at the mid-level and high up. So it kind of bears the question what do you look for in team members when you are hiring?

SPEAKER_00 18:18

So we have a great HR department led by Stasia Bartlett.

SPEAKER_02 18:24

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 18:24

They actually don't let me get involved in interviews because I don't ask the hard questions. So but I really go by that gut feel. I need about five or six minutes with somebody before I have a dive. Yeah, let's give it a try. When I was real young, there was a banker that I got to know. He was older, and I said, What's the best business advice that you've ever heard or gotten? Or and he said, hire slowly, fire quickly. I'm sure someone could probably figure out who was the first to say that. For me, it was this banker.

SPEAKER_03 18:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:53

And man, that is so true, right? So spend a little bit of time, because I think for my first few years in business, it was the opposite. I hired quickly, boom, boom, and then took forever to let somebody go. And and man, when it finally clicks for you that you do the opposite, yeah, it's a game changer, right? It's more just getting to know the person. We can teach the flowers. We have a lot of great people and a lot of mentors within our company. So we can teach flowers and where they're at and how to buy them. We can teach branch management, but you gotta have the person that wants to have a service mentality. And, you know, it's not for everybody. So sometimes we hire somebody and it just isn't quite right, and then we have to figure out a way to separate amicably. We even called something we created called job search. So they're not fired, they're just put on job search, and they have a certain number of hours each week to start looking for their next job. That makes it a little bit easier to let go on that part, and it's not a blame thing, sometimes it just doesn't fit for what we need in those different situations for sure. So, what do we really look for? It's a personality, it's an attitude. The other great thing is now that we've gotten and we can go back on the historical side, and I'll talk a little bit about it, it was a little bit more difficult before, but now we have enough people and created cultures out of all these different branches of corporate culture that if they fit in, they fit in right away. And if they don't, it's almost self-realizing that it's not fit for them and it's okay. That doesn't mean they're good or we're bad or vice versa. Why try to force something if it's just a slightly different situation? And that was hard in the beginning for sure for us. I'll back back stuff with just a a little bit of history to kind of fill in with like how it is about the people and how it's like a snowball pushing up hill. So I started working that whole story that I mentioned with my mother. I started working for the first week, basically January 1st of 1996. And Bill Dorn Company was doing, and these numbers are wholesale. So for a retailer, these we work on completely different margins. So the I'm saying these numbers for relativity, not for grandiose. So we're doing about 18 million dollars in annual sales. And there were about 180 employees, 175 employees at the time. And from 1996 to 2016, so 20 years through acquisitions and just grinding and getting 3% growth, we hit 50 million finally in 2016. So well, that was that was a push, push, push, right?

SPEAKER_03 21:25

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:25

And how many employees? Oh, at that time we were probably close to 500-ish. Approximately, let's say 500-ish or so. Stacia would know for sure because she'd been with me for almost 20 years, so she knows all this stuff. But then in the next five years, we went from 50 million to 175 million.

SPEAKER_01 21:48

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

I'm sorry, not next. So that's not next five by 2022. We went from 50 million. But once you create the system, you create the structure, it was a lot. Easier to add more branches. We did the acquisitions of the old Greenleaf stores and we did Amato and we did Seagull Ricardi and we had Seagroat Floral already. Once you have good people, they are the ones that help you attract additional good people. That positive energy attracts positive energy. I don't want to say the people that worked with us for low wine left were negative. It just wasn't a fit. And it's the group, it's the vibe. They're the ones that are doing it all. I don't buy a flower or sell a flower anymore. I did in the beginning, you know, for a lot of years. And now we're doing more than ever because we've got to look at people. A lot of great people. And not allowed like this most recent acquisition, the reason we're on the phone. I wouldn't have done this without the support staff that I have. It's a DWF's a great company, but still, a lot of integration, a lot of things are changing. They did things procurement-wise. This would probably be interesting for the DWF retail customers. They were buying in a completely different manner and procuring flowers than what they're going to be doing, which is one of the values we bring to the acquisition. It took a lot of work. I I looked internally to say, hey, I'm up for this, kind of. But I want to do it for the right reasons. I don't want to do it just to get bigger. That doesn't change my life to add this amount of sales. I said it doesn't make sense for our company. So the key group of employees that I chatted with about this were gung-ho to proceed with his acquisition. So I'm like, all right, then let's do it. And then one of my newer, younger managers, she sent me an email shortly after the announcement saying something along the lines, proud to be working for the company. And remember me, as we get bigger, I can't wait to be able to move up in the company and do other things, which I thought, oh, how fun.

SPEAKER_03 23:40

I love that.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

Like early 30s. And now she looks at not only our industry, but uh specifically the company that this is a career. She was a salesperson, became branch manager, and now she's already thinking bigger of like as she should. Yeah, which is awesome. So it's hard in our industry, wholesale floral, to have that path in general. The fact that we were able to create that as a group is been phenomenal from my perspective. So now I'm like, oh, we can go attract more people like at different levels. Some people love to be a salesperson, but they don't want to deal with any management, they don't want to deal with buying flowers and having the bunch come in wrong labeled or box crushed or any of that. They want to deal with sales, and now we have so many different levels for future employees. So that's exciting.

SPEAKER_02 24:24

Yeah. You know, hearing you say that right before you got on, I was sharing with Vonda, like I had taken some screenshots earlier of the quotes, inspirational quotes that I was gonna share with some of our members. One of them said something about like every day could be a good day, depending on your mindset. Like it's all about mindset. And that girl saying that to you the minute she heard the announcement, I guarantee you, you also had employees that saw it and like fear was inside it, going, Oh no, what does this mean for me? Like it's mindset, right? I remember when we worked for another company, our boss played a joke on us, said he was taken over by a company, and what and the reaction from all of us was very different. I thought we were all gonna get transferred to LA, and I was like, Woohoo! I'm moving to California. I didn't even think, oh wait, my husband's not gonna move to California. But one of my coworkers was like in deep panic, like and it was an April Fool's joke. I didn't know it was, I was like, I'm going to California. You know, it's all mindset.

SPEAKER_01 25:36

Yep, it's all the mindset, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:38

It's total mindset, and like you want your people that are gonna go, let's do this, let's ride this train, whatever it's gonna do.

SPEAKER_01 25:45

Yep. And I say most of them were. We were, we were like, okay. Don't you mail most of the people that yeah, I think so.

SPEAKER_00 25:52

And I don't mind that if they have questions or trepidation initially, but communicate. Yeah, we're pretty open. We're very open. So give me a chance to chat. We've had some great conversations. We did Zooms initially, but now I've been traveling in person because obviously the questions can flow a little easier one-on-one. So I do little group meetings, but then available for one-on-one chats the rest of that day and things like that. So yeah, it is total mindset, but I also give them the grace of it's a big change, you know, and we were the competitor or the unknown in some markets. And even from the customer perspective, we just ask for a little bit of grace, give us a chance. If the competing wholesaler will still want your business in 30 more days or still want to hire you in 30 more days, can you give me 30 days so you can see what we're really about? Use your own judgment, not preconceived ideas or what somebody else said to somebody that said to somebody that got to you, you know, give us 30 days. You've fully employable by the competition. And if you're a retailer, your standing order can get moved to the competition just as easily in 30 days, but doesn't hurt uh to give it a chance.

SPEAKER_02 27:02

Yeah. Well, here would be a question. If I'm a flower shop and I receive this news and I use Denver Wholesale, my immediate question is, oh no, what's gonna happen to my rep?

SPEAKER_00 27:17

Oh, that's easy. And so I think there's gonna be a few more questions I can help you. But on the people side, as I mentioned earlier, it's all about the people. You need websites, you need great product, you need all of that. But I know for sure that it's a relationship with our salespeople, with the individual retail customers. That's where the magic happens. That's where everything is. Everything else is just a tool. Whether it's a flyer, we have that flower texting called Flexed, whether it's websites that they purchase off of, those are all great tools. But I know if I just took all the tools and went to uh city that Baltimore, I'm not in Baltimore. So I just went to Baltimore and set up shop with just the tools and no salespeople, yeah, I wouldn't be able to stay open for very long at all. Those tools are awesome, but without the talented individual that has relationships with people, the tools are irrelevant. Pricing is irrelevant. I closed a branch and I don't want to say which city because I don't know who's all listening, but prior to closing the branch, I needed to do it for me. So each branch has the ability to adjust the margins on their flyers. And typically they're adjusting them one or two or three points. They have that ability. So knowing that we were going to be making the announcement, inevitably, and in this one city that we weren't very strong in, we had quite a bit of uh employee turnover. Here's a prime example. We had the longtime salesperson for us retired. We hired somebody new to train. This is a number of years ago, only trained for about 45 days. Then that person decided to go back to retail. Wholesale wasn't for them. So now I hired the next salesperson that came in, didn't even know that the original replacement. So, anyways, everything was imploding because I didn't have the right people. So that's how we got to this point. But so I started sending out all of our marketing materials. This is a number of years ago. Majority of our marketing materials were just emailed and priceless, printed with invoices as well as emailed and faxed. That's how long ago this was. We're still fit and things. I changed everything to a five margin. Like we couldn't be in business, no one can be in business for a five margin, right? Like you can't even pay the gasoline and the vehicles, and send it out. And you think, oh, well, clearly our volume went up that week. It didn't, I mean it went relatively speaking, it went from like 10 boxes on this flyer to 12 boxes on this flyer. But if it's all about price, it should have gone from ten to one hundred. It's a it was a big market, and it didn't. So right there, just so everything's a tool, but it's really the relationship.

SPEAKER_02 29:50

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Wow. That's crazy. From the very beginning of you telling your story about your grandparents to now, I wrote down three words that you keep going back to that are continuous through this 80-year journey. And I wrote these probably about six minutes in, and I keep checking next to them every time you talk about them. And they're continuous. And so to me, this is what your whole company stands for. Um talk about quality, meaning of your products, which that is a given. You keep going back to connection, meaning the relationship, everything, and community. Would you say those are your top three most important values when it comes to your company?

SPEAKER_00 30:44

I definitely would. I think those encompass it well. And I'll even throw in two other words that I found myself saying often they popped off the cuff during COVID when everyone was working through those issues. And I said, if as long as we make decisions with common sense and compassion, we'll be just fine. We're never gonna get in too much trouble. You as an employee, if you use common sense and compassion, you're never gonna get in trouble. Even if it ends up being the wrong decision, if the basis was common sense and compassion, it's not that advanced of an industry. We're not doing anything overly technical. So treat people properly with common sense and compassion. I probably said that in 2020 the first time. I've said a lot since then. And then one of our old time managers, I said something about I I came up with these words, this was like a year or so ago. I came up with these words in 2020. I said common sense and compassion, and not a this was an internal meeting, and I got corrected and by John Bonzo was really close with Bill Dorn, my grandfather, like been for for a long time. He says, I probably figured out the exact word, but he said something along the lines, you didn't just say those words for the first time there, you've been living them for the last 20 years. He said, You just labeled them. He said, That's how we run the company.

SPEAKER_02 31:58

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 31:59

And that's that's that's what he said. That's how we've been running the company forever. You just put the label on them of recent. The three words you said there were the action words of common sense and compassion. Yeah, really, you know, it doesn't take much more than that to create a basis.

SPEAKER_01 32:13

No, wow, yeah, that's so true. That's true. You how many C words did you have there, Lori?

SPEAKER_02 32:19

You know, I love my my alliterations here. I'm so excited. I have one Q, but they all sound the same. Quality, connection, community, common sense, and compassion. I would say turn compassion into empathy, but that's an E-word, so I gotta stay with that.

SPEAKER_01 32:34

Yeah, it's gotta stay with that. Gotta stay. That's good. That's anything else you'd like to share with us, Bill?

SPEAKER_00 32:40

We were talking about the fear that maybe internally our employees had, whether they were Bill Dorn employees or DWF employees. I think we've internally kind of quelled some of that, but uh a retail perspective, two things that have occurred. One is as we're talking about some of our branding and private labeling and procurement processes, and seeing the looks on the DWF handful of customers I've met and the employees like realized, like, oh wow, we are doing something different. You know, I kind of came back to our existing branches going, hey guys, you got something to be proud of, what you've accomplished and what you guys do on a daily basis, the extra hoops you jumped through, not taking the easy way out, is a value. You're bringing true value to all of our customers. It's the farm direct buying versus TWF had they they just went down a different path, not the ones wrong or right. They were buying 100% of their flowers from South America out of importers in Miami. And they developed great relationships and were able to just in time do inventory management out of there, a little bit closer to the source, versus needing those extra three days to place an order at the farm or four days in some cases, depending on how far away the farms are. And our philosophy that maybe it was naivete or just I was throwing darts at a wall back in the mid-90s, starting to buy farm direct enabled us to go down a different path. What my true hope is for these locations is that the product that they're going to get into their coolers is a fresher, you know, three, four days fresher into each market. Our private label of Dorne Direct, it's not that we're trying to tout our name, but the wrappers and the box lids are proof that it didn't get wrapped in advance and sit in a cooler in Miami or anywhere else with hopes that we're going to buy because they can't sell to anyone but a Bill Dorn branch. So that's how we ensure that the flowers are the freshest available. We don't have date coating or cut dates or anything like that. And the hundreds of coolers in Miami that have 30,000 square feet facilities 20 feet tall, I wouldn't want the electric bill, let alone the rent bill for those coolers. And if all the product came in and went out right away, you wouldn't have those coolers. So how we ensure that we're getting the freshest flowers to our customers and ultimately to end consumer is with that private label, that Dorn Direct. That's all we're saying is that that product didn't sit anywhere unnecessarily. It came through the chain of distribution as fast as possible. And then we have the Dor and Direct Double Gate, the 3D, and then in the last three years, the Mount Flora brand of roses. It's very exciting for us to get really high-end flowers for those people that appreciate that and want to differentiate themselves in their markets with those types of items. What that allows us to do is, and I think one of the most exciting things with Mount Flora that's been occurring the last, I don't know, I'd have to get our head of procurement, Gary Statement, on there, but last four or five months, we have two breeders of roses that all new varieties will have exclusivity in our Mount Flora brand for nine to 14 months because we'll promote them. We promised a lot on our end as well into our markets that we're going to promote these new varieties. We're going to educate our staff, educate our customers on the new varieties and see which ones really kind of stick and move forward. You know, so we're constantly looking at varieties and working with them for that. So that's the exciting part for me. Like that part of the flowers I get excited about, right? A red carnation, a white carnation, uh, you know, a 60 centimeter freedom rose. All right, we all need those, and that's the foundation of our business. And don't get me wrong, we wouldn't work without those, right? But the fun stuff is some of those newer items.

SPEAKER_01 36:12

Explain to our listeners what is the Mount Flora brand that you're talking about. What's the difference? Because now we have the new branches and the new locations and people who aren't Doran customers. What does that mean?

SPEAKER_00 36:23

It's actually a separate wrapper, and probably could go into a whole spiel about Mount Flora and how into Greek mythology, how we came up with the idea of Mount Flora and Athena and Adonis and everything. It's a good longer story that I'd be happy to share at some point. The true concept besides the story is that we all use the term double graded, but I promise these are truly the next level size of rose for each variety. We're paying a premium to the farms. So there are four rose farms in Ecuador that are allowed to wrap in Mount Flora. So it's a special wrapper, special box. And the farms are rewarded based on the number of stems that are able to be produced in Mount Flora. And typically each greenhouse is a hectare, and individual greenhouses are tracked on how many Mount Flora roses they can produce. It's as simple sometimes as where they cut the rose off the plant, how far away from the base, the mother stem. If they cut it too far away, the next rose coming out will be different. If they cut it too close, so on variety, there's an optimal amount of cut so that the next rose that's going to come out of that, it doesn't come off that same stem, but it's going to come off of there. If they cut it too close, the the plant will won't produce a great next rose. And if they cut it too far, it might come off of that stem. So you're going down the individual person cutting stems off of plants in in the early hours of the morning, taking the time to cut it the right amount out.

SPEAKER_01 37:56

And then the rose head is larger or for the next rows coming out.

SPEAKER_00 38:00

Yep. The next rows. Stem can be longer, rows will be rose head. As much as any talks about head size on a 50 is similar to the 70, there is a difference. I mean, just botanically, there it's gonna be slightly bigger. The thickness of the stem, the head size will be there. So likewise, typically the cutters, they have a little thing on their belt that has some biocide on there. They should be dipping it into the liquid in between cuts to not transfer bad bacteria within the greenhouses and things. Do they do that every time? Well, now there's an incentive to make sure they're doing all the little things because we're tracking the number of higher-end roses coming out of individual hectares. So it's fun from that perspective, right? We're tracking that stuff with these four partner farms and it's exciting.

SPEAKER_01 38:45

And you're tracking and you're rewarding, which is kind of cool too. You know, that's the incentive, but they're like, wow, when you do the right thing, you do get rewarded, which is all about people. It goes back to your caring and compassion, you know.

SPEAKER_00 38:58

For sure. I hope the retailers end up seeing maybe a fresher product, something that lasts a little bit longer, the end consumers say, well, because we all know the number one consumer complaint is flowers don't last as long as they had hoped for the amount that they spent, right? And if we can get them one more day, or anything we can do to get that value added is is what we as a wholesale are responsible to do. We gotta do everything we can, keep them cold and get them there fast. And then have available inventory in the local markets because who knows when we need 100 yellow roses on a Sunday morning for a casket spray, right? Like last minute, the end consumer didn't come in until that morning. So we want to do all of those things.

SPEAKER_01 39:37

It's interesting because what you're saying is absolutely true. And it comes down to the perception or the perceived value of the end consumer. Oh, you know, and as far as the retail florists, they're responsible for that, but they have to look at the wholesaler and make sure that they're buying correctly. And like you said, Ador and Direct or a Mount Flora, that they know the quality is there, so that they're happy to sell that to their customer. So the customer will come back and feel like there's good value in flowers.

SPEAKER_00 40:04

100%. Yep, for sure. 90% of the flowers we sell go to retail florists or event planners or small businesses, not the box doors. And that's why I like the differentiation of like a mount flora and new varieties, so that you're not just competing against a box store that's selling a 50 centimeter, blah, blah, blah, or mixed bouquet that at a price that's you know seemingly odd. Don't compete against that. Here's other avenues to sell something different.

unknown 40:31

Right.

SPEAKER_01 40:34

That's what we do at Flower Click, right? We try to do something different. That's the whole idea.

SPEAKER_03 40:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:38

And so that's why we're good partners with Bill Doran Company for sure.

SPEAKER_03 40:42

Love it.

SPEAKER_02 40:43

This wasn't on your list, but here's how I'm gonna end. And I bet people ask you this all year all the time. If you had to pick a favorite flower, what's your what would you pick?

SPEAKER_00 40:54

So I do get asked this. Can I give two answers?

SPEAKER_03 40:58

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 40:59

All right. So I love Lisianthus. I absolutely love Lysianthus. There's something about it that draws me to it. The whites, the purples, I mean some of the pinks, and whether we get it out of Canada or out of Mexico, stuff out of Holland maybe isn't as impressive and the price point increase. But what we're pulling out of Mexico and Canada is just absolutely incredible. Love it. And now now there's brown Lysianthus and all these other other colors. So I think it just is neat. But I do have a passion for roses and the newer varieties, that's where I love to spend my time with the breeders and the farms. And I love having them ship me boxes of roses where it's just codes. There's it's a 12 or 15 digit code on it, and there's three plants, so they can only send me three stems at a time. Because if it looks good in Ecuador, that's one thing, but put it on a plane, on a truck, and get it to Rockford, Illinois, and let me put it in a vase, let me stare at it for a few days, take pictures of it, then decide. So it I guess from the whole industry side, I I'm still a big fan of roses, but in a vase just behind me, I'm uh actually there's some Lizzie Anthus right here.

unknown 42:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:06

I I like Lizzie Anthas. Okay. And it's not used nearly enough.

SPEAKER_02 42:10

No, you're right. Okay, I've got a couple more, and it has nothing to do with flowers. Number one if you were at home sick with a cold and you couldn't go anywhere, and all you could just lay on the couch and watch a movie, what would be your comfort movie?

SPEAKER_00 42:26

Funny thing, recently we had a group of friends, and people were talking about movies as they've watched multiple times. Yeah, I don't think I've ever watched the same movie twice.

SPEAKER_02 42:34

Wow, I'm like, What's wrong with you?

SPEAKER_00 42:38

Yes, yeah, your reaction is exactly what this group of friends they're like I've never sat and watched a whole movie twice. Never. Like I already know the ending. Time to move on. To me, it doesn't seem strange. I think how you react is strange, but don't get me wrong, I was a group of about 12 people, and I was the only one. Like they're like, No, I watched this, so maybe if it comes on because I clicked through a station, I might watch the end. But I've never watched the same movie. And same with like my children will watch series, they've seen that series three times. I'm like, oh, I think I finished it the first time.

SPEAKER_02 43:10

Like, oh why do you have a favorite movie?

SPEAKER_00 43:18

Yeah, I like a lot of the old school comedies, the Caddyshack Strike. I was gonna say, Yeah, I those are the ones that I like.

SPEAKER_02 43:25

You know what? I guarantee you, if you sat down and tried to watch Caddyshack, because I tried, it's so stupid.

SPEAKER_00 43:31

I don't want to ruin that, right? My memory of Caddyshack is outstanding.

SPEAKER_02 43:37

And that would probably be just it will ruin you if you're like this is the dumbest thing I've ever seen in my life. Yeah, something like that. Yeah, yeah. So don't trust me. I tried, I couldn't get through it. It was so bad. Okay, what is your favorite era of music? I'm not even gonna ask your favorite song because I don't like it.

SPEAKER_00 43:55

So well, I do have a favorite song that's easy. Uh my favorite band. Is Pearl Jam. So the grunge is when I was in college this summer, I saw my 51st Pearl Jam concert.

SPEAKER_03 44:07

Oh my gosh. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 44:09

Yeah. So me and a couple buddies are pretty tight there. I love live music, and I think the live music must just be like cloud. I'm in awe of their abilities. Yes. Musicians standing up on stage with pieces of wood and wire and blowing you in, and you can physically feel that music.

SPEAKER_02 44:28

Well, Pearl Jam, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 44:30

And you can't hear your phone. You're just all there. And like to me, like that's my meditation, or that's that's where I can completely. And who, yeah, my thoughts are all over the place, but I'm there. And I've instilled that in my children, which I absolutely love. I just saw my youngest, she's at school, and I just saw her, and she said, Dad, I went to a concert last night. I said, Oh, great, great. And it was a big time concert, and she was excited for it. I asked her all about it. Then she opens up her phone and she goes to Apple Notes. She goes, Dad, that was the 26th band I've seen this calendar year.

SPEAKER_03 44:59

Oh my gosh, she's just like you.

SPEAKER_00 45:02

Her and I went to two music festivals and a two-day music festival, you can see a lot. And then she filled in. Yeah. So so I love Pearl Jam. There's a handful of songs there, but Corduroy, that's my favorite song of all time. It's my ringtone on my phone. My kids have heard it a million times themselves because I'll just put it on.

SPEAKER_01 45:19

Same thing watching with music over and over, but not a movie.

SPEAKER_02 45:22

There you go. There you go. So well, now people know a little bit more about you. Okay, last thing, favorite sport. Favorite sport to watch.

SPEAKER_00 45:28

Oh.

SPEAKER_02 45:29

I bet to play is golf.

SPEAKER_00 45:31

Yeah, that's where I was gonna go with this watch, but it's not really my favorite to watch.

SPEAKER_02 45:35

Well, it's a great sport to have on when you want to nap.

SPEAKER_00 45:37

Very nice. So it's a little stinging right now because of the loss that happened. But the Notre Dame football, I like college football.

SPEAKER_02 45:45

Yeah, that was brutal.

SPEAKER_00 45:48

Yeah, college football I like. Although I think I'm gonna become less and less of a fan with all this NIL money and knowing that the quarterback from Miami for his sixth year in college, he's making six million dollars. I mean he wouldn't be drafted in the top six rounds, but he can make six million dollars a year playing in college. Something's off. I hope I can remain a college football fan, but I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 46:13

It's crazy. You know, last year was the first year I knew more about the NFL than college football. Bonda can attest to that. I'm a crazy, insane Oklahoma Sooners fan, born and bred. But last year I'm like, I'm just I'm just discouraging. Gotten out of control.

SPEAKER_00 46:33

I agree on it. Hopefully it self-corrects at some point or some governing body to help step in, but if you're a listening college people, fix it.

SPEAKER_02 46:43

Maybe they're the one person listening to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 46:45

I'll send some roses.

unknown 46:47

There you go.

SPEAKER_02 46:49

Anyway, well, thank you for joining us today. It's been great.

SPEAKER_00 46:54

Always a pleasure.

SPEAKER_02 46:55

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 flash briefing on Alexa.

SPEAKER_01 47:14

We look forward to seeing you next week. So please come back and join us and discover how a bit of knowledge and one small change in your mindset can take you to new levels in your life and business.