BloomNation - Empowering Local Florist and Their Customers

Ramon Vela (00:02.339)
Welcome back. This is going to be a great show. I have with me an amazing founder and brand that we're going to feature. Please welcome Farbod, let me do that again, one, two, three.

Farbod Shoraka, who is co-founder and CEO of Bloom Nation. Welcome to the show.

Farbod Shoraka (00:38.488)
Thank you so much for having me. So excited to be on this.

Ramon Vela (00:41.709)
Well, I appreciate your time. I know you're busy. You've got a lot of stuff going on. There's some new things that we're going to talk about that just happened. But I just want to make sure that people who know you and people who don't know you really get an in-depth understanding of who you are, who your team is, why you do what you do, and why consumers should matter, and why they should want to know what you guys do. So before we do that, I have a signature question. And I do this with

all of my guests. And the reason is that I think it's just really easy for consumers to see brands online or on shelves or wherever and just really think like, there's just a faceless corporation. And I would like to do on my show is I like to bring this down to a very human personal level and help the consumer and understand that there's real people who care deeply about the product, about the service, about what they do.

and understand that people bleed sweat and tears over bringing these type of services to market. And so one great way of getting to know the people that we interview is by understanding what they're grateful for. So if you don't mind, can you share a moment or a memory when someone did something for you that just made you feel grateful because it meant that they believed in you, your vision, or your potential?

Farbod Shoraka (02:04.108)
Yeah, was like, this is the question that I was always like, this is going to choke me up because it's such a, like a beautiful thing, but I would say hands down.

Farbod Shoraka (02:22.668)
It was my father.

He puts so much trust in starting the company. I remember when I tried to, I told him about the idea and I wanted him to, you know, potentially help me out in the concept of starting a company. And the fact that he like, no question was like, whatever you need, I'll put money in, I'll support you. It allowed me to actually quit my job.

And I was doing really well on my own. I was an investment banker. I was in finance. I was doing well. But just his trust and like him being involved was so powerful that it really made me wanna like make it work mostly for him.

Ramon Vela (03:12.281)
Well, that's powerful, And I guess, should I assume that he's no longer with us? But I wasn't sure.

Farbod Shoraka (03:23.086)
No, is. It sounds like it the way I'm reacting. sounds like it. But no, it's just that he's really believed in me from the beginning. Like everything that came from like even school, he paid for my school. He worked his butt off so that I didn't have to go through the challenge of having like school debt, for example. Like that was another very grateful moment. Not knowing I had no idea until I was older that like most people would graduate.

and had to deal with debt and paying off their student loans. And I was able to go and actually have the freedom to go and like start it, you know, go to the workforce and then build a career in finance and then have the luxury of saying, hey, I actually want to quit and I want to start a company. And for him and not having the challenge of financial struggle to be like, well, I still have to pay this loan off. I still have to, like that was paid.

Ramon Vela (03:57.315)
Yeah.

Farbod Shoraka (04:20.92)
was something that he took care of. And then when I said I want to start the company again, he like doubled down on investing in me. So it was just like a very like as I've gotten older appreciated it. But as as you know, in my late teens, early 20s had no idea the value of that. And I think just having like coming full circle and, you know, having my own kind of like life now and seeing like

Ramon Vela (04:40.13)
Yeah.

Farbod Shoraka (04:50.446)
how important that stuff is and how powerful that is, made me, when you asked me this question, I think I was like, man, like easily, without a doubt, that was like 100 % my dad. Like it was the most powerful and grateful moment is like he's a part of both those, but no, he's still with us. Yeah, luckily.

Ramon Vela (04:58.393)
You

Ramon Vela (05:11.565)
Yeah. Well, and, you know what the thing is, is that you're, you're fortunate. You're fortunate that you understand his sacrifice and what he's, the sacrifices he's made for you. You know, now enough about the world and about the working world to realize how difficult it is to, you know, to, to, to pay for the student loans and to pay for all this stuff. and you're fortunate because he's still alive.

Farbod Shoraka (05:35.352)
Yeah.

Farbod Shoraka (05:40.641)
Yeah.

Ramon Vela (05:40.979)
Because a lot of times people don't understand all this stuff until it's too late.

Farbod Shoraka (05:44.686)
until it's too late, Yeah, and I think like he'll probably hear it for the first time on this podcast, because I haven't really got a chance to tell them that way.

Ramon Vela (05:55.993)
Well, believe me, know, parents, think, realize that you how you feel, you know, in their own way. They know this. of course, it's always great to hear as a parent. Are you a parent yet?

Farbod Shoraka (06:03.296)
Yeah. Yeah.

Farbod Shoraka (06:09.688)
Yeah.

Yes. Yeah. And that's like coming full circle around and seeing like, that's the value that you can bring as a parent. It's like taking care of your children. You know, it's like the most powerful thing. So for me, not realizing that until this part of my life, you know, and saying, wow, that was so such a, not even generous. was just such a fatherly thing to do when you can, you know, step up for your son and seeing that. yeah. But he's, he's, you he's an act of service kind of guy.

Ramon Vela (06:36.237)
Yeah.

Farbod Shoraka (06:41.398)
You know, he doesn't tell you he loves you, but he will pay for college and rent you a check to start your business, you know? And then this is not from like, you know, wealthy family. It's not like we were like ultra wealthy where that's it's a drop in the bucket. Like you had to make sacrifices and work, work really hard to be able to provide and, you know, not do luxury things in his life so that he can do these things for us. Like that was the luxury that he chose.

Ramon Vela (06:43.737)
Yeah.

Farbod Shoraka (07:10.486)
He could have, you know, gone and bought a, bought a nicer car or bought a bigger home like these things. And he decided to pull back to have the ability to pull the trigger on these types of things. So it was powerful and very grateful for it.

Ramon Vela (07:14.745)
Yeah.

Ramon Vela (07:23.06)
You know, well, and you know, you know, I don't know how old your children are, but I just know that the biggest compliment I ever received, I actually lost my dad when I was very young. And but he was so impactful into my life. And one of the one of the biggest compliments that someone paid is that when my kids, I don't know, they were like I had three of them, but when they were all young, you know, like in their three.

five, know, all below 10 and so forth. I remember someone told me that he goes, you know, they like you are like, you are so much like your dad. And his example, even though I didn't get a chance to like have conversations with them or whatever, about all this stuff is when I was young, I would see him like he was also like not a man of a lot of words.

He just always helped people. always was just very service oriented. He was very involved in his church. And I would just see them all the time. Like whenever the church needed something, he was like there and always like doing things for people. So as I got older and I had children, like I just felt like that. I just wanted to follow that example. Like I just wanted to do what he did. And I don't know, it's amazing what these people have in our lives. All the sacrifices and the work they do.

Farbod Shoraka (08:22.712)
Yeah.

Farbod Shoraka (08:39.254)
Yeah, right.

Farbod Shoraka (08:45.954)
Yeah.

Ramon Vela (08:48.985)
And it really comes circle when you have kids and you realize like, oh my God, like this is, you know. So thanks for sharing that, I appreciate that. and yeah, with Father's Day is coming up. And then I think that's a, this episode, yeah, will probably be out in June. So yeah, this is a good, good Father's Day for your dad. So, you know, for, for those who don't know,

Farbod Shoraka (08:53.079)
Yeah.

Farbod Shoraka (08:56.558)
Yeah.

Farbod Shoraka (09:02.386)
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Right. You started with the most intense question, man. We'll be right into it.

Ramon Vela (09:18.617)
company, Blue Nation. Just as a side note too, you and I talked a little bit about this is that back in 2020 or 2021 or somewhere around there, we actually exchanged emails and you wanted to be on the show and for whatever reason, and know, how did that happen? We just never able to schedule time and then fell off my plate and all that other stuff. So I'm glad that we finally got a chance to speak.

Farbod Shoraka (09:20.355)
Yeah.

Farbod Shoraka (09:32.353)
Okay.

Yeah.

Farbod Shoraka (09:42.68)
Right.

Ramon Vela (09:46.339)
But for those who don't know, you guys have been fighting the good fight for a few years now, and you guys are growing and you've just acquired another company. We'll talk about that in a second. But for those who don't know who you are, can you kind of give us, let's start off with a sort of a high level overview of the company. And then from there, we're gonna get started on some of the journey.

Farbod Shoraka (10:07.148)
Yeah, so the company's like fundamentals around it is helping small business owners. So it's about creating software that helps them not only, you know, survive in the world of big e-commerce, big tech, big retailers, all the big box chains, but really thrive in it because the local businesses really provide an extraordinary service and the level of attention and love you get from a small business. Yeah, just

outweighs any sort of larger e-commerce or big retailer. So our software essentially helps mainly flower shops. To this day, Bloom Nation, the brand, is software to help florists sell online with e-commerce websites. We help them offline with point of sale systems, all the back office tools for them to run their business, like delivery, logistics, and inventory, and then also all their marketing. So it's kind of a...

a turnkey solution for them to run their business right out of the box. And it kind of counters to what someone would normally have to go use maybe Shopify or Squarespace, but they're so generic, it's not catered to the floor industry. So we have all our tools and software is highly customized to work without any sort of need for them to adjust anything it's made for their business.

Ramon Vela (11:12.921)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (11:23.385)
Hmm.

Farbod Shoraka (11:35.122)
And on top of that, we help them generate new customers through our consumer brand, bloomination.com. So there's just a whole ecosystem where they can plug themselves into and they get access to a lot of tools and resources, education and software, all of it in this really powerful platform of Bloomination.

Ramon Vela (11:57.635)
Mm-hmm.

Farbod Shoraka (11:58.998)
we said, we, you know, about a few years ago during, right after the pandemic, we expanded into some other industries as well to help restaurant owners, liquor stores, pet stores, things like that, and give them solutions to, to sell online. And we created a glow, like a more of a umbrella brand called Promenade, that Blue Nation kind of tucks under. And so you have Blue Nation and then you have Promenade for restaurants, Promenade for liquor stores and et cetera.

And that's kind of like our bigger mission around helping all small business thrive online and offline.

Ramon Vela (12:35.325)
And let's start talking about a little, take a step back and kind of get an idea of where it was that you, where you started. Because if I remember correctly, I think you've pivoted a couple of times. But what was the original idea and why was it so enticing for you guys?

Farbod Shoraka (12:57.55)
Yeah, we've evolved quite a bit. So the original idea when I was actually doing, I was in investment banking doing finance and kind of learned about the floral industry, the consumer side of the floral industry and saw that companies like 1-800 Flowers and FTD and Teleflora, they were, I didn't know anything about them, but I realized quickly, I was like, they're just brokers. They're actually not important to the transaction at all. You have the flower shop.

Ramon Vela (13:16.483)
Hmm.

Farbod Shoraka (13:27.606)
of the consumer and they can't interact directly, you actually have to go through this middleman and the middleman is actually taking most of the money from the transaction. So in a hundred dollar order, the flower, the consumer is paying a hundred dollars, the florist is really just getting 30, 40 dollars, you know, of the amount that the customer is paying. The rest is going up in fees, just costs to make that order go through.

So I realized that, you know, there's probably a better way to do this. And I went to Berkeley for my undergrad. And part of the thing that, one of the things that took away from Berkeley was kind of like make the world a better place. Like, you know, I learned about a lot more than just my economics degree, but it was just like, how do you be a better human? think that was kind of culturally, a thing about Berkeley is just making you want to solve problems, you know, world problems.

Ramon Vela (14:10.605)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (14:24.313)
Hmm.

Farbod Shoraka (14:25.58)
And I saw this as like a problem of like, are the two most important people in the transaction getting hurt the most? And this big corporation in the middle is the one that's gaining the most out of it. And so I decided to quit my job and build this platform to start off just by being more of a consumer facing product, which was bloomination.com.

And the idea was to make it more like Etsy, where it was like, let the florists list their own designs and control their prices, put exactly what they want to sell on the site instead of, you know, teleflora is putting up a fake photo of something that's like Photoshop to look huge and charging, you know, $80 and then forcing the florists to like fill it, not telling them who the florist is. There's just a lot of lack of information.

Ramon Vela (14:53.273)
Hmm.

Ramon Vela (15:05.817)
you

Ramon Vela (15:16.237)
Mm.

Farbod Shoraka (15:16.686)
through the Teleflora or 1-800-FLOWERS, FTD, any of those companies actually. And I was like, well, no, show the florists. Tell them who's the florist that's selling this bouquet. Show their reviews. Let the florists put their exact price that they wanna sell it for, where they wanna deliver. Let them control everything and just be the conduit, the marketplace to allow the transaction to happen. So we went around flower shops all over Los Angeles where

We started the company and every florist was frustrated with these large companies. So we knew we had an idea and we got a ton of florists just to sign up without having to even really build out too much of the platform. They're like, yes, I want to stop dealing with these big e-commerce players. I want to be able to sell my own stuff. So they're able to show off their own work and stand out from other flower shops instead of just being a stock photo that gets.

Ramon Vela (16:01.07)
Mm-hmm.

Farbod Shoraka (16:15.498)
It's like a lead gen that gets sold off for commission. So yeah.

Ramon Vela (16:18.295)
Hmm. And was there, were there already, cause I remember back in the day, a lot of these companies like 1-800-Flowers, obviously like the name, they were deeply entrenched in the technology at the time, right? Telephone, for instance. Was there a lot of competition in terms of the online world?

Farbod Shoraka (16:34.05)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (16:41.803)
I mean, because these companies were more like brokers, you mentioned, heavily attached to a lot of the old media, whether it's phone or print or whatever. When you guys came, did you have or did you envision not only just having a different and better business model that...

Farbod Shoraka (16:46.05)
Yeah.

Ramon Vela (17:04.109)
benefited the floors as well as the consumer, but did you also see an opportunity to enhance the technology side of it?

Farbod Shoraka (17:12.748)
Yeah. So what we realized is that all these companies were just focused on marketing and then the technology was just like an afterthought. And we started the company with like technology being on the first and foremost thing that we put in to the spotlight and focus in on that. the marketing kind of was, you know, for us, the marketing was like secondary and like let the florist show off their talents, let them

Ramon Vela (17:21.005)
Hmm.

Farbod Shoraka (17:42.476)
you know, show off what they're doing and get the word out on it and then the consumers will come. So we ended up building this marketplace and trying to aggregate all the different flower shops and their products and when they're delivered to was a lot of work. It was a lot of technology built into that. But what we realized quickly was like, well, you're not doing any marketing. You're not getting any traction. So we built this platform and we weren't really getting any orders. There was a lot of engagement on the floral side.

Ramon Vela (18:04.013)
Mm-hmm.

Farbod Shoraka (18:10.51)
Like a lot of florists were signing up and listing their products because I was like, sure, of course I want to sell my own products. And I want to deal with like an FTD order coming in, forcing me to fill like their design with their vase and their price points on it. The issue was that we were just not able to put any marketing dollars forward in that. I remember going to an incubator with the idea at the time and they were like,

Ramon Vela (18:10.563)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (18:19.607)
Yeah.

Farbod Shoraka (18:38.158)
this model doesn't actually make sense because they're out spending you on ads. don't, you know, you're not taking a high enough take rate because we were charging less too, because it wasn't fair to the florist to take 40, 50 % of the order. So we were only taking 10 % at the, at the, at the transaction. Um, and so we had to kind of go back to the drawing board and be like, okay, well if we can't spend a lot of dollars on marketing,

Ramon Vela (18:48.089)
Mm-hmm.

Farbod Shoraka (19:05.518)
We're spending a lot on technology. We a great set of technology here. What do we do? And I ended up going having like the most powerful lunch that I could ever have. I remember I went and had lunch with the CEO of Chow Now, Chris Webb. And this was like in the early days where he was just starting his business. We were starting ours and we were kind of in the same Silicon Beach community. And so we went to lunch just kind of, you know, exchanging notes and

Ramon Vela (19:28.963)
Mm-hmm.

Farbod Shoraka (19:33.858)
his platform was building websites for restaurants. So he was like, an apps for restaurants. He's like, yeah, I'm just independently creating these apps so that people can go directly to these restaurants and order. And maybe later I'll build the marketplace. And I was like, I remember leaving that lunch. I was like, why are we not building websites for the floors? They need websites too. Their websites were terrible. They had a really bad experience. And so I left the lunch. I remember going to the one engineer that we had at the time because it was like the company was like,

Ramon Vela (19:54.105)
Mm-hmm.

Farbod Shoraka (20:03.384)
three people, like three co-founders and one engineer. And I asked them, I was like, Hey, can we take all the technology that we just spent a bunch of time building around, all the sophistication of like product upload and all that stuff. we then give it to the florist to run their own site through? And he's like, yeah, well, you know, yeah, we can. So I called one of the florists and I said, Hey, can we take your really bad website that you're getting no orders on? Can we host our own site on it and see what happens?

Ramon Vela (20:23.097)
Hmm.

Farbod Shoraka (20:32.581)
And the guy said, sure, try it out. All of a sudden we were getting orders on his site. Like on our entire marketplace, we were probably getting one or two orders a week. We launched this guy's website and he was getting three, four orders a day. And he was ecstatic because he was getting orders and we were ecstatic because we're like, my God, like there's actually orders coming through the platform. And that moment I realized, we have to build more independent tools for the flower shop. So that was the.

the whole trajectory of the business shifted into like, let's create technology that empowers these flower shops to sell online, whether it's through bloomnation.com or their own site. And now today, you know, we've transformed into a, like a complete SaaS platform that gives them that whole ecosystem, which I was telling you about earlier. It all started from being a marketplace, going to lunch with the CEO of Chao now and walking out of that lunch being like,

Ramon Vela (21:20.782)
Hmm.

Farbod Shoraka (21:28.78)
wow, we to try something new. So it was the best lunch I've ever had.

Ramon Vela (21:29.453)
people.

Ramon Vela (21:33.549)
Yeah, and it sounds like it's what you did was you unleashed you unleashed a power that was already there.

because people obviously already wanted to do business with them, were looking for flowers in their neighborhood, but were unable to really do business with them because their websites, maybe they weren't e-com enabled, maybe they weren't optimized for SEO or whatever. Like it was just like the experience wasn't there.

Farbod Shoraka (21:51.383)
Yeah.

Ramon Vela (22:04.089)
for the online consumer, especially even just a few years ago. Now people like expect you to have a website, expect you to have a good customer experience, expect you to have all these expectations. Back then a few years ago, it was different. And what you did, at least from what I'm hearing, what you did is you unleash the power for the consumer and the power that the floor has already had.

Farbod Shoraka (22:11.566)
That's right. Yeah.

Ramon Vela (22:33.027)
but they just weren't tapping into it. And so they able to tap into this. So I love that. I love that aspect of it. And by the way, I really love this model because you are not only helping the consumer, which benefits everybody, but you're helping these small businesses. I'm wondering, like during the pandemic,

Farbod Shoraka (22:37.26)
Yeah.

Ramon Vela (22:56.185)
How was it during the pandemic? you, like, I'm really curious at what your pandemic story is because I would imagine these floors may have had to like close down or at least not be open to the public. How did that affect the business and was it helpful to them having this platform?

Farbod Shoraka (23:13.778)
It was, it was such a scary situation, not only obviously the pandemic itself being scary, scary, but from the business standpoint, when everyone was forced to just shut their doors, there was this so much unknown in that moment of like, what's going to happen. but we quickly realized that, you know, this whole idea around contactless delivery and everyone was still able to operate like online businesses. was a lot of the storefronts were being shut down for.

people to walk in. Well, our florists were primed up for e-commerce. So it was like the most lucky position to be in for a flower shop because two things were happening. One, you're slowly able to operate because you had the whole online ordering experience and it was really dialed in. Secondly, consumers weren't able to celebrate going to someone's house for the birthday or weddings were being canceled, parties were being canceled.

Ramon Vela (23:44.44)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Farbod Shoraka (24:13.224)
And the one thing that people wanted to do is express their emotions still. And flowers were obviously since the beginning of time, the most beautiful, powerful way to express your emotion. So they were like order volume for flowers just skyrocketed. We've never seen anything like that before. It catapulted us into a whole new trajectory of volume in terms of consumers wanting to send flowers.

Ramon Vela (24:22.553)
Hmm.

Farbod Shoraka (24:41.358)
So the florist went from like a brief moment of panic and fear of like, what's going to happen to all of a sudden overwhelmed with the volume of orders that are coming through and actually having a problem sourcing the flowers because there were shutdowns on supply. You know, we've been through the whole supply chain drama. The flowers were no different because there's actually a quite complex path from the grower to the retail florist.

Ramon Vela (25:00.483)
Hmm.

Farbod Shoraka (25:09.908)
around flowers from Colombia and Ecuador and Holland. So it ended up being one of the highest demand moments for flowers was during the pandemic.

Ramon Vela (25:24.185)
Yeah, and I would also imagine, because I remember during the pandemic, one of the things that I noticed that so many small businesses were having to either close down or severely limit their public facing establishments. Many just had to close down. And I remember hearing stories that it was almost like a race from their point. they needed to, they had to pivot and they had to change.

Farbod Shoraka (25:40.718)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (25:51.319)
If they didn't already have a website or anything like that, it was like a race to come online, right? Everybody was trying to figure out what, how can I figure this out? How can I do curb, curb pickup and all this other stuff? I'd imagine like you, you probably had on, and correct me if I'm wrong, you probably had on both sides, you had flower shops who hadn't already been part of your platform.

Farbod Shoraka (25:57.166)
That's right.

Yeah.

That's right, yeah.

Ramon Vela (26:15.891)
want to get ASAP on your platform. So you had a rush there, I would imagine. And then you had a rush because now consumers were trying to convey their love and their show of emotion by ordering flowers to their mother, their father, their loved ones who maybe they were separated from. Is that correct? mean, did you have a rush?

Farbod Shoraka (26:35.424)
Yeah, there was a rush on both ends. you know, since we started Blum Nation and even Promenade, there was this convincing, somewhat of a convincing that was required to the small business owner that online was important because they lived in a world where people would walk into their store and they would engage with the customer there. So it wasn't a default of like, yes, I need a website. Yes, I need my online orders to grow. In fact,

Ramon Vela (26:53.026)
Hmm.

Farbod Shoraka (27:05.121)
The flower shop still relied on walk-ins, on phone calls, and the world was slowly changing prior to the pandemic, but there was no greater force than saying like, the world is entirely now online. There is nothing else that exists. And there was a whole new understanding of how important it was to have an online presence. And that happened not only in floral, but...

Ramon Vela (27:08.707)
Hmm.

Farbod Shoraka (27:33.044)
it like in restaurants. I mean, there was just like a flood of restaurant owners or any like those industries that they knew like I need a website immediately. So you saw this new understanding and appreciation for e-commerce that you would have never it would have probably taken another five, 10 years to get there. It happened overnight with the pandemic.

Ramon Vela (27:51.769)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, for you guys, it feels like you guys just were fortunate on both sides of the aisle, And again, what I really love about this is that you're not only able to help the consumer side of it, but you're also helping the small business owner because the majority of these flower shops are small businesses, I would imagine. People who love flowers and love all that kind of...

Farbod Shoraka (28:00.48)
Yeah. Yeah.

Farbod Shoraka (28:13.751)
Yep.

Ramon Vela (28:20.505)
that world and then want to share it and build and help people, you know With buying these things

Farbod Shoraka (28:28.354)
Yeah, and I will say that like when you talk about small business, it's their owner operated, right? So you're talking about, you know, someone who when they make more money, they're that money is going straight into their pocket. They're able to then go eat at the local restaurant or the coffee shop. And then it goes into that, you know, small business owner's pocket. That dollar. I mean, I

This is kind of a nerdy economics thing from back in the day, but the multiplier effect of that dollar staying local is so powerful. It like really changes the community. You don't realize when you're shopping local, you hear all this branding like shop local, small business, but what does that really mean at the end of the day? It's like the human side of it is that that dollar is being regenerated through every small business around in that community. And then those people are making real actions based on that. They're buying

Ramon Vela (29:05.44)
Mm-hmm.

Farbod Shoraka (29:20.362)
a new delivery van, they're investing in their business, they're helping their children go to school, they're also hiring more people, right? Like employment goes up and that the secondary effects of that is like crime goes down, you know, like there's major effects to spending the dollar locally, then trying to order something online from a big company that then ships it out of a warehouse, buying it local changes the communities. And so that's

Ramon Vela (29:29.091)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (29:48.313)
Hmm.

Farbod Shoraka (29:49.376)
a major driver for us as helping small business grow and thrive is that we're helping the communities around them too. And it's really powerful stuff.

Ramon Vela (30:00.869)
Yeah, I love that. As a of fact, as I'm listening to you speak, I remember covering another brand. You may have heard of these. It was a company called bookshop.org. And they're kind of doing what you're doing, also for bookstores, which are for me like are near and dear to my heart. love bookstores.

Farbod Shoraka (30:13.56)
Hmm.

Farbod Shoraka (30:21.122)
Yeah.

Ramon Vela (30:23.769)
But you guys are serving a community of small business owners and that's what I really love. you guys are really, that's, that's, so important, just the multiplier effect that you're talking about. But, you know, the fact that, I think it's like 47 % of all people, 47 % of people are employed by small businesses around, around the world, around the United States.

Farbod Shoraka (30:45.027)
Yeah.

Ramon Vela (30:48.397)
So from that time to now, what have been some of the additional challenges that you guys have had to face? Other pivots that you've had to make? You first talked about the marketing side of it. Since then, have things changed in terms of your ability to market the Bloom Nation side of it, the consumer facing side of it, and or what other challenges have you guys come up against?

Farbod Shoraka (31:16.162)
I would say the biggest challenge was like kind of piggybacking off the positive reaction to pandemic shutdowns was the aftermath of actually things from a human level getting better, right? Like as the pandemics are becoming more sustainable around like people going out and spending time, the order volume of flour delivery

Ramon Vela (31:41.187)
Mm-hmm.

Farbod Shoraka (31:45.902)
tapered off and then started declining. And so there was a big shift in like this, all of a sudden you got spiked in revenue, spiked in orders. Everything's like flying high. And then all of a sudden it starts dipping back low. That's a huge adjustment for, for the florists. It was a big adjustment for us. And, if you combine that with the mass amount of people that did not want to work during

Ramon Vela (31:53.208)
Yeah.

Farbod Shoraka (32:15.722)
post pandemic, we had to spend a lot of time trying to recruit people as we were growing. And that became incredibly difficult to get someone to want to work, to, to hire somebody like the talent, the pool of talent was really small. Every tech company was trying to hire somebody. So it was like, if you had a pulse and you understood what it meant to be in a startup, you were able to get a job. Quite quickly. There's people fighting for you to get a job.

Ramon Vela (32:17.529)
Hmm.

Ramon Vela (32:27.545)
Hmm.

Ramon Vela (32:44.482)
you

Farbod Shoraka (32:44.91)
So this combination of like all of a sudden having to overspend for employees to join the company. And then you had all of a sudden like a shock to the system around order volume kind of declining. That was a big challenge for us. And it really made us have to pull back on a lot of investment and growth opportunities because the macroeconomic conditions were so wacky that it was kind of tides were kind of.

Ramon Vela (33:08.462)
Hmm.

Farbod Shoraka (33:12.44)
throwing us left and right. So we ended up having to do a round of layoffs like a lot of tech companies did. mean, if you probably remember the, about 18 months ago or two years ago, there was like, whether it was Facebook, Google, everyone, right? Everyone was kind of downsizing because they were overpaying to get talent. And then the market was shifting. So we kind of went through that situation as well. And there was a, all of a sudden,

Ramon Vela (33:18.915)
Yeah.

Ramon Vela (33:27.469)
Yeah.

Farbod Shoraka (33:39.31)
the venture investor world was like, everyone needs to get profitable. Like profitability was far more important than growth. And so we pulled back on a lot of the spend and had to like reduce staff and really hunker down, tighten the belt to survive through like just a major shift in the markets. And so that was a big challenge for us, for sure.

Ramon Vela (33:43.543)
Hmm.

Ramon Vela (34:03.98)
And a lot of people have told me, well, not everyone, but I have heard from other founders that these experiences have really, um, it really taught them a lot of lessons. You know, like for instance, I was talking to someone about the tariffs that long ago and they were like, you know, they, their businesses had already been around like 10, 15 years already. And they just said, listen, we had the 2008, you know,

recession or whatever you call it. We had the pandemic, know, so these tariffs to me are like, you know, there's just another thing that we're going to have to get over. like in their market, it was a little bit different. But the point was that they've already been through so many of these things that they're just, you know, it doesn't phase them. It's just about like, what do we need to do to make it, to get it through? Have these experiences

have they, what have they taught you and how have you prepared the company to kind of like, you know, withstand like the new stuff, right? You know, we're talking about potential recession and then now there's 40 % chance before there's 50 % chance and then the tariffs have been lowered and there's a lot of uncertainty in the market. How are you preparing right now the business? And, and, and I'd like to know that. And then I'd love to know about how this new acquisition is kind of, kind of plays a part in all of this as well.

Farbod Shoraka (35:29.102)
Yeah, I mean, there's really two pieces to that. There's like long term planning around how do you how how do you want to build your business? And then there's the more reactive in the moment. How are you addressing like a situation in front of you? So as a company or as founders or directors of the business, you got to decide like, am I going to be more of a risk taker and live on the edge with the company, which has probably a higher reward potential, but

Ramon Vela (35:56.974)
Mm-hmm.

Farbod Shoraka (35:58.382)
but also a higher likelihood to fail if anything goes wrong? Or do you want to play it somewhat safer, maybe sacrifice some growth or some vanity of how fast you're adding headcount and how fast your revenue is growing? And I think like, you know, five, 10 years ago, like we would brag about how many employees we had. That was like a vanity metric. You're like, oh yeah, we're at a hundred staff. And that, that, that would kind of be like a status symbol of how big your company was.

Ramon Vela (36:17.113)
.

Farbod Shoraka (36:28.398)
So the more you live on the edge in terms of how you're building your business, smaller things can disrupt it and take it down. So the long-term plan that we've always had was playing it a little bit safer, trying to grow as fast as we could, but never jeopardizing the company. I never wanted to put the company in position where if something went wrong, we would have to shut our doors, right?

Ramon Vela (36:52.589)
Mm-hmm.

Farbod Shoraka (36:53.634)
maybe we would do some staff or do some things like that, but always have a path to then breaking even or getting profitable. So we kind of like took ladder, like a baby steps up and laddered our way into like bigger head count and spending more money. So that was like a long-term plan that just from the beginning. So when things go wrong, like pandemic ends and people are buying less flowers, you're not all of a sudden like, we're not gonna survive this.

Ramon Vela (37:04.483)
Thank you.

Ramon Vela (37:20.75)
Mm-hmm.

Farbod Shoraka (37:20.95)
you know, because we've kind of been building a strength around and resilience around it from the start. And then there's some shorts or stuff like tariffs, I don't know, are pop up and all of a sudden the prices are going to increase. Then you have to react to that as well in the short term. But it's really hard to, if you don't have a good foundation of like protection that you've built in to the business, because then you're just kind of scrambling to figure out a solution. And it's usually not something that's going to really

Ramon Vela (37:30.051)
Thanks.

Ramon Vela (37:37.913)
now.

Farbod Shoraka (37:47.63)
help you if you've already been, if you're already living on the edge and you're in a bad situation. So I can't tell you how many founders and CEOs that I know that were high flying. They wanted to do everything the cool way, the fast way, something goes wrong and then now they no longer exist as a company. And we've been doing this now for 13 years and it was the first company I ever started. And I'm really proud of the fact that we like built with safety and strength.

and maybe sacrifice some growth, but now we have the ability to weather some of these things that are coming through, whether it's COVID or inflation, supply chain issues now on the tariff stuff. we've adjusted things on our end to just be more safe and secure around the unknowns that are going to come. But specifically around tariffs, think I kind of thought that

Ramon Vela (38:30.627)
Mm-hmm.

Farbod Shoraka (38:47.85)
it wasn't set in stone and there's going to be shifts. So we didn't, we didn't do too much dodging and weaving because it felt like there wasn't this concrete plan of how the tariffs are going to play out. So we're really still in a wait and see pattern on, how it's going to shake out.

Ramon Vela (38:50.121)
Thank you.

Ramon Vela (39:00.665)
Yeah.

Ramon Vela (39:04.953)
Well, and there's a wait and see pattern, however uncertain it is, and there's a lot of uncertainty, this also gives you a little bit of an opportunity to kind of brainstorm a variety of different scenarios, right? Like you can now look at different scenarios, like, okay, like if these stay the same, here's the path we can go. If they increase to above this level, then here are the tactics that we could do and go.

But I really love the idea of what you just said about having a strong foundation. Because you're right, a lot of companies, they sacrifice having a strong foundation because it was always growth at all cost. And even though I think, you know, there's a little bit of forgiveness because everyone was sort of drunk on this easy money flow.

And then also just listening to VCs and so forth and so and all of this. So there's a little bit of forgiveness, but at the same time, though, you know, I love these brands and companies like yours that have like really created a strong foundation, because as far as I'm concerned, what this does is that this doesn't necessarily eliminate any particular growth per se. It allows you to be strategic.

Farbod Shoraka (39:58.935)
Yeah.

Farbod Shoraka (40:27.086)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (40:27.797)
in those risks that you take and then in those growth endeavors that you take, it allows you just to have a choice. Whereas someone who is just flying high and just growth at all costs, I almost feel like their choices are actually more limited because they only have one choice. They got to keep moving forward and it is a shaky ground because they could fall at any point. And we've seen so many companies do that, unfortunately.

But with yours, feel like you guys are growing and building and you have that choice to say at certain points, hey, we're going to take this strategic action. And so I'm wondering around that, is that where this acquisition comes in?

Farbod Shoraka (41:13.868)
Yeah, absolutely. And just to give you a quick analogy of how I think before I jump into that, like, you know, it's like you want to, if you're running a race and you're in a car and there's obviously a lot of twists and turns in this race, how fast can you go without being able to crash if you see an unexpected turn, right? And so the faster you're going, every little, there could be a rock in the road and that could, you know, spin you out of control and you can crash. So you want to be able to

Ramon Vela (41:30.734)
Thank

Farbod Shoraka (41:41.272)
drive with confidence as fast as you possibly can, but without like the idea of like, here's a turn. I'm not going to be able to make this turn and then crash into the wall. So we always think of ourselves like that. It's like, it's definitely a race. You want to go as fast as possible, but not at the expense of slamming into a wall because you didn't expect something to happen, you know? And so that's how I think about it. And that's exactly around this acquisition is like we had the opportunity because we were

Ramon Vela (41:57.049)
you

Farbod Shoraka (42:05.634)
we were being strategic and smart around how we thought about our business that we're able to be like, Hey, the market is, it's a great opportunity to expand. And we saw opportunity with this other company to join forces and acquire them and grow our business through acquisition instead of going and trying to, you know, expand ourselves into the UK and try to get floors from the UK to join the platform. This is one of those moments where you're like, I have, now with all the preparation we've done and the planning we've done, have

we could capitalize right in this moment. Now in itself, it's a risk, right? Like things can go wrong and you'd be like, I shouldn't have bought that company. put, it put too much weight on the business for sure. Those that could go the other way. But the idea of having the ability to even buy the company was due to our fundamental way of like being cautious and protective of the business and being able to capitalize on that when the moment was right. So yeah, we're really excited about this.

Ramon Vela (43:00.831)
Mm-hmm. Well, and I don't know the numbers and I'm not going to ask you to give us the numbers, but, you know, given what you've just said, I'm assuming that you've ran the math, you understand the risk and the rewards. But, you know, part of it just from outside or looking in, I mean, you're starting your European expansion.

in probably the best market in the EU or around the EU. I know it's not part of the EU anymore, but it's the strongest market in there right now. And so if you're going to start anywhere, that's the place to go. And you already have a footprint of assuming with this new company. So I just think it's a smart move, long as all the fundamentals and everything else is good. I think it's a smart move. And again, it's kind of just illustrating the fact that

Farbod Shoraka (43:31.202)
Mm-hmm, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Ramon Vela (43:55.243)
that by creating a strong foundation, you can make those strategic growth initiatives or endeavors or whatever at your choosing. Like you can choose, whereas there's a lot of people who have made mistakes and believe me, I've done that too in my own business where you...

Farbod Shoraka (44:08.686)
That's right.

Ramon Vela (44:16.788)
you're put up against a corner or a wall and you just got to choose and your choices are limited. you're you're tossing the dice, you know, because you're hoping that things work. But with you, I just think, feel like you guys have different strategic and now you guys can choose and make those choices. To me, that's being able to have a strong foundation, being profitable. And they mean like the choice. That's like the best place to be. Like that's the place you want to be, I think, for the long term.

Farbod Shoraka (44:22.316)
Yeah. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

Farbod Shoraka (44:43.714)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (44:46.717)
so let's talk, let's talk a little bit about the different sites. So let's talk a little bit about what, bloom nation, what people can find on the website. And I'd love to talk about this and talk about, promenade and, or promenade and, and any of the other, things that you guys have, but let's start off with balloon nation. What are people going to find there? And, and, and this is the consumer.

facing sight, correct?

Farbod Shoraka (45:16.654)
Yes, correct. Yeah. What's, what's cool about bloom nation is that, um, kind of the best experience around sending flowers is going to a local florist. If you can, if you can call or order online directly from a local, so you get the most attention from that florist, right? Or walk into a flower shop, let's say if you're able to walk into a flower but most of the time, if you're sending a gift, you're not able to walk into a flower shop. You don't, you're not going to deliver the flower yourself. So what we did is basically brought the experience of

seeing what's really available from each florist in one place. So you're really just typing your delivery location, like if you're sending it to Santa Monica, California, we're gonna show you all the florists that are available to deliver to Santa Monica that day that you need it to. It could be the same day. It could be three o'clock on a Tuesday and you can tell me who's still available to send at three o'clock today flowers.

and you actually get to see their real photos of the designs that they have for sale that they're capable of making. Again, to contrast, like FTD Winery Flowers, they're taking the photos, they're Photoshopping them, and then they're just telling a florist, like, hey, can you make this for $40, even though the consumer spent $100. So the Bloomination, the florist is proactively listing their own designs, so you get to see their work. Each one has a different style, so you get a lot more creativity.

Ramon Vela (46:29.753)
Mm-hmm.

Farbod Shoraka (46:39.96)
You get a sense of the culture and the geographic area. San Francisco has different designs in Los Angeles and New York or rural towns are all different. And so you get a taste of the flavor of that community. And then you're getting real pricing that that florist is charging. It's not what 1-800-FLOWERS is deciding or FTD decides that they're charging. Each florist gets to decide and they also get to control how much the delivery is.

how far they can deliver, what their cutoff times are. We have all that information in one website. Wherever you want to send across the country, you're getting access to all the local florists in the area. So it's a powerful tool for people who want to shop local, but also the convenience of being able to just go to one website, not having to search for which flowers do I like and have to go to five different sites.

The sites that are not powered by Bloomination, they're not as convenient to use, if we're also, if you go to their website, we're powering their website, it's just as convenient as an experience. So, we also encourage people to go directly to the Flourish website as well, but Bloomination just makes it easier because it's all in one place.

Ramon Vela (47:35.705)
.

Ramon Vela (47:49.017)
Yeah, I can imagine. And I'm there, by the way. So I'm looking at a bloomnation.com is the website. Bloomnation.com is the website and you have everything there. mean, you've got, you got a navigation buttons around flowers, around what's available for same day. And then you also have same day as well as next day.

by occasions as well. And then you have your own navigation button there for occasions, whether it's anniversary or birthday, like my birthday is today. Also Father's Day is coming up. you know, I'm a father as well. you know, there's all sorts of things. You're getting well. Yeah, lots of stuff. There's Mother's Day. There's graduations. I graduations are going on right now. So this is a perfect gift. And then, of course, you have sympathy.

Farbod Shoraka (48:27.468)
Lots to celebrate, yes.

Farbod Shoraka (48:33.422)
That's right.

Ramon Vela (48:39.513)
What I really love is that you have the shop by city so that I can, I feel good about being able to do business with people who are local to my, to my area. So small businesses that are local to mine. Actually, I clicked on the Los Angeles, California one, and I found a flower shop in my own neighborhood where I grew up, Highland Park, Los Angeles. So I see that right there. I see there, you know, if I wanted to support a,

Farbod Shoraka (49:02.766)
Great.

Ramon Vela (49:07.679)
a flower shop in my old neighborhood, I can do that. so that gives consumers a lot of flexibility. So I love that component of it.

Farbod Shoraka (49:17.878)
Yeah, and you know, to kind of double down on this idea of story of a brand like this, we actually give all the florists ability to give their story of their brand. So you learn like the owners there, the the about us, like you the reviews, like you get a sense of who they are as you're purchasing. And again, no one's no one ever did that. It was all hidden before.

these other services, you're just buying from 1-800-FLOWERS or FTD and they like in the background will select the florist for you. You have no control over it here. The consumer has the power to be like, oh, I really like the design. I see the reviews are good and look, the owner is like very passionate. can see, you just feel connected to the purchase. Very similarly, if you were to walk into that flower shop and get to, know, most of the flower shops that are run and their owner operated. So the owner is there, you know, they're.

So you get that same sense when you're shopping online. So they get to share their story of their brand too.

Ramon Vela (50:12.877)
Yeah, I love that. And I did click on it for the company that I was looking at, Highland Park Florist. I'm looking at it and it has a picture. It talks a little bit about they've been there for 30 years and she's been serving fresh flowers in Highland Park in greater Los Angeles for over 30 years. Talks about what she specializes in, talks about their design team.

Farbod Shoraka (50:27.95)
right.

Ramon Vela (50:38.361)
So lots of really great information and you're right. I'm looking at it. There's 839 reviews and these are what three four five five star reviews. So that's amazing Yeah, I mean this is powerful for a small business This is really really powerful for a small business and and really, you know Helps to I mean here. I mean we're talking about the Highland Park one, but I mean we could have I could have chosen anyone so

Farbod Shoraka (50:53.995)
Absolutely.

Farbod Shoraka (51:06.126)
That's right.

Ramon Vela (51:07.126)
This is really just amazing. I love that. Yeah, and then I see that you have a Flores login and so forth. Anything else you want people to know about this website?

Farbod Shoraka (51:18.402)
Well, I think what's cool about BloominatioN and specifically as a consumer being able to shop online with these different florists is that you're really helping these businesses like we were talking about earlier. so like, you know, as you look and see like, yeah, this this flower shop, again, these are all owner operated. We don't work with like chains or big companies. So you're helping an individual florist and you get the sense like they're doing it because they love

to do this. It's not necessarily like a lucrative thing to go into flower, you know, flower delivery. It's really artistry. They're artists. And so it's really nice to be able to tap into the artistry across the country and find unique designs from each flower shop. It's a really powerful thing. And I'll tell you one story that I always like, it always held onto. It really impacted me was we were, you know, we go around the country and like meet with different flower shops. We have little events.

that we host and one of the events, um, there was a florist that came up to me and said, Hey, you know, I owned a flower shop and it wasn't doing well at actually, you know, brink of shutting it down. And I couldn't afford to run it anymore. I discovered bloom nation, started using all your tools and getting onto the marketplace and powered my website and you started doing my marketing. And not only was I able to keep my shop, I now I'm making enough money where I can save up for my kid.

college education. So I'm putting money to the side to save up for his college education. He was a younger kid and I was like, wow, how crazy that you think about why you do what you do, you know, it's not to just like sell flowers. Like I talked about the multiplier effect, like the human side of it is that we're helping communities grow. But then here, this kid like this, her son is now able to have an easier time going to college because of the software generating orders for his mom's business.

making his life easier, right? And then he goes and impacts the communities and he's educated to go and like make a difference. So it kind of comes full circle to how my dad helped me with my education. I'm like, wow, now this software is kind of doing the same thing and helping these individuals like plan for their, you know, their families and to have easier lives. So it's, that was kind of a really cool feeling to hear that story from her.

Ramon Vela (53:24.055)
Yeah.

Ramon Vela (53:39.863)
Yeah, I love that. mean, bottom line, feels like what you're doing is empowering. You're empowering the business owner and you're empowering the consumer, right? Because they're both getting something. They're getting value out of this whole transaction. And to me, that's, I don't know, I love those type of businesses. I'm always envious of those business where you can create a good business, you can make a living, but you also create a, you create an ecosystem.

Farbod Shoraka (53:54.509)
Yep.

Ramon Vela (54:09.677)
that can benefit numerous different people, right? Yeah.

Farbod Shoraka (54:13.102)
That's right. It's a feel good. It's capitalistic, but it's also feel good, right? Like we're not like a nonprofit or it's not a charity, but it is for profit. But it's the best version of that because it's helping real people. It's doing what's better for the industry. We're disrupting the industry and making a more effective way of people finding florists, ordering flowers online. We're helping the small business owner. It's a win-win for the two most important people in the transaction, the sender, the florist.

Those are the important people, not the broker. So we sit in the background, let those two people be important, and then we're just a facilitator in it. And so, yeah, and expressing emotion. Flowers are very emotional. Some of the greatest joys happen when you're sending flowers. Some of the saddest moments happen, right? It could be a sympathy for someone passing. It could be new beginning of life for a newborn or a birthday celebration. So it's a very powerful moment in helping

Ramon Vela (54:41.613)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Ramon Vela (55:06.04)
Yeah.

Farbod Shoraka (55:10.414)
consumers express those emotions to their recipients is like it's an honor to be able to do that.

Ramon Vela (55:15.383)
Yeah, no, I love it. love it. I want to be respectful every time. But before we go, I just wanted you to talk a little bit about Promenade because I know that's similar model but for the restaurant business. And those are also a group of people that suffered a lot during the pandemic. I always, feel, I know that restaurant business is such a hard business and my heart goes out to many of them.

Farbod Shoraka (55:24.46)
Yes.

Farbod Shoraka (55:28.29)
Yeah.

Farbod Shoraka (55:32.718)
That's right.

Ramon Vela (55:41.721)
who weren't able to survive the pandemic in particular. My favorite seafood place, just a few blocks from my house, they had the best place in the world and just were not able to survive. so I feel bad, but I'm glad that there's companies like yours that are out there extending this type of empowerment to the restaurant business. Tell us a little bit.

Farbod Shoraka (55:44.749)
Yeah.

Farbod Shoraka (56:05.678)
Yeah, absolutely. And I'll tell you the restaurant industry fast tracked what happened in the floor industry. Floor industry was like for the last like 20, 30 years has been kind of shifting online. It was one of the first industries to go online. Like 1-800-Flowers had the first e-commerce website. So they've been dealing with the idea of order gathering and aggregators for a long time. All of a sudden restaurants went from zero to a hundred in aggregation and

third party apps overnight. And so they didn't have the ability to really react. most of their orders now that are coming online are coming through DoorDash, Grubhub, Uber Eats, right? And those companies are taking really big commissions off their orders. So having a platform like Promenade for Restaurants to help those restaurant owners get their own customers.

and be able to have someone order directly from their website and still make it just as easy as ordering through those apps. the website should be just as easy and convenient, but them not having to pay those crazy commissions to the third parties. It's become to the point where their own customers that have already ordered from them before just go through the app because it's just easier and they're paying commissions on their own customer, which is just insane. I understand if you're getting a new customer and Uber Eats is going to give me a new customer, fine.

Ramon Vela (57:03.874)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (57:18.434)
Yeah.

Farbod Shoraka (57:26.626)
But now everyone is doing it. so you're losing out. You're just all of sudden cut down your profits by 30%. It's really hard to survive. So we built software to help them independently grow, getting orders directly and not paying high commissions through those third party apps. And so it's just, it's exactly what we kind of helped with the floor industry. We've seen this movie before. We've been involved in it for 13 years. So we're now helping restaurants and butcher shops and

Ramon Vela (57:33.677)
Yeah.

Ramon Vela (57:42.335)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Farbod Shoraka (57:54.124)
liquor stores kind of stay independent.

Ramon Vela (57:56.961)
Yeah. In the same thing, I would say even the same thing just based on our previous conversation, that it's about empowerment because a lot of these other services, and I don't want to throw shade on any of them because I know there's a value in what they do, but when you're a restaurant, you're basically at the mercy of these companies. What they charge, their fees.

Farbod Shoraka (58:20.61)
That's right.

Ramon Vela (58:23.083)
Also all sorts of stuff, know, I mean, it's just, I've heard some horror stories from restaurant owners about this stuff and it's not an easy place. And what you're doing is you're empowering them. You're giving them a little bit of that power. And in some ways it kind of reminds me of what you said about your own foundation of a business is that you are empowering them to strengthen their business, to keep the customers that they have like retention, to be able to retain their customers and make it easy for them. But also,

Farbod Shoraka (58:27.255)
Yeah.

Ramon Vela (58:52.237)
to give them a little bit more control over it. Now, that doesn't mean that they don't have to use these other things in order to gain new customers and so forth, to acquire new customers, but at the same time though, they can take back. They can figure out retention strategies once they acquire a customer and all that kind of stuff. I know I'm getting a little too deep on the marketing side, but you I mean, you see this, you see that, right?

Farbod Shoraka (58:58.155)
Yeah.

Farbod Shoraka (59:09.71)
That's right, yeah.

Farbod Shoraka (59:13.484)
No, this is great. love this stuff. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. That's what it's all about. It's like having them have the control to gain their own customers and, build a brand independent of these shops. Cause as soon as the Uber eats decides that they don't want to push your business forward, all of a sudden they can tank your business. So you can't rely on them heavily. It should just be a external marketing angle, but the restaurants have just overnight had to rely on them almost a hundred percent to gain online orders. And it's a dangerous place to be.

Ramon Vela (59:30.723)
Mm-hmm.

Farbod Shoraka (59:43.214)
So we're trying to help them de-leverage themselves from these order gatherers and third party apps.

Ramon Vela (59:48.225)
Yeah, well, mean, quite frankly, we eat out quite a bit. And I'm still amazed at how bad some of the websites are.

Farbod Shoraka (59:58.39)
Yeah, yeah.

Ramon Vela (01:00:00.857)
I think would you, I mean, if it looks anything like what we just saw in Blue Nation, I would imagine it's a much better customer experience. I'm surprised like how hard it is to look at someone's menu sometimes after, you know, and I don't want to go to the grub hubs. I just want to know for myself before I go to the restaurant and it's not a great experience in many cases. So.

Farbod Shoraka (01:00:06.828)
Yeah.

Farbod Shoraka (01:00:13.09)
Yeah. Yeah, that's right.

Farbod Shoraka (01:00:20.62)
Yeah, and that's where I don't blame the consumer because the consumer wants convenience, right? That's fair. Like we should all accept that the consumer wants to have a convenient, fast experience. And so it's really hard to order locally if it's not a good experience. So we kind of give them the best of the world. They're able to order direct, but it's not annoying to order. It's just as easy as using Uber Eats or Grubhub. It's the same. So, but you're supporting the local business. You're giving them 100 % of the profits instead of 70%, you know.

Ramon Vela (01:00:46.935)
Yeah, well, I think that's the best part. Now, what is the website for that platform?

Farbod Shoraka (01:00:53.336)
So that's a joinpromenade.com, but the company, the brand is Promenade for Restaurants, and then you can learn more about it on Join Promenade.

Ramon Vela (01:01:01.409)
All right. Well, I want to make sure that we're going to carry that link on our podcast description as well. So this has been fantastic, man. I can go on forever. I'm just touching the surface on a lot of stuff because I only have an hour with you and I want to be respectful of your time, but there's so much stuff, other stuff that we can talk about. It was fascinating. We talked a lot about a lot of stuff already. And typically I always ask people about their lessons, but you gave some really good advice in just to...

Farbod Shoraka (01:01:06.179)
Yeah.

Farbod Shoraka (01:01:16.355)
Yeah.

Ramon Vela (01:01:29.974)
in the midst of the conversation that we had. didn't ask that part of it, but.

Farbod Shoraka (01:01:34.318)
Well, I will say one thing about that. Don't listen to anyone else. Everyone who's been successful always has their own recipe of success. So they'll tell you these are the five things you need to do to be successful. Those are all gimmicks. You need to just carve your own path. There are some basic fundamental things they need to do. But generally, when people ask me, well, what's your advice? Do you have any secrets to success? I'm like, the only secret is don't listen to anyone. Don't let anyone tell you what to do. Learn from your mistakes quickly. That's it.

Ramon Vela (01:01:37.323)
Ha ha ha!

Farbod Shoraka (01:02:02.36)
You're going to make your own mistakes. got to just make sure you don't die. You continue to go in your mistakes. But that's about it. Just don't listen to anyone else.

Ramon Vela (01:02:09.677)
Yeah, no, that's good. When I hear that, think be confident in your own convictions because people always give you advice whether you ask for it or not. And you have to have these confident in your own convictions.

to kind of forge your own path, because it's your decision, your business, your vision, and so forth. So we'll leave it there, but that was fantastic, man. Thank you. This has been a great conversation. You are always welcome back. I'm glad we finally got you back on the show. for everyone out there, I just want to make sure. it's bloomnation.com is the consumer website. Joinpromenade.com is for the restaurant. Am I missing any other websites?

Farbod Shoraka (01:02:33.91)
Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

Farbod Shoraka (01:02:42.434)
Wonderful. Thank you.

Farbod Shoraka (01:03:00.34)
And if there's any florists that want to be a part of our platform, it's just join Bloominatio.com for flower shops.

Ramon Vela (01:03:07.865)
Great. Well, I highly recommend if you know of a flower shop or if you're a flower shop or you're a restaurateur and you want to, you love this conversation, go visit the websites. I highly recommend it. And then of course, if you're a consumer, I don't know what is better. The ability to not only get the flowers that you want or the thing that you want to send to someone, but also helping someone in your local neighborhood. I did a quick search right now when we were

talking, I found someone in my old neighborhood who I would love to support. And that's what you can do. You can find someone who you want to support, someone that you, flower shop down the street from your house, whatever, you can look to see if they're in the database. can support them. And what's better than that? You're empowering yourself. You're getting what you need, but you're also helping your local businesses. So as far as I'm concerned, that's just a huge win-win. So thanks so much for being on the show. I truly appreciate it,

Farbod Shoraka (01:04:06.402)
It was a great time. Thank you for having me.

Ramon Vela (01:04:08.505)
So everyone out there, have just had, and hopefully I apologize if I messed up your name, Farbod Shoraka, who is co-founder and CEO of Bloom Nation. And then of course, all the other websites that we just talked about. I'm going to make sure that we have all of those on our podcast description, which you can find on Apple, Spotify, anywhere you listen to podcasts, you should be able to type in the story of a brand show and find it. Beyond that, everyone, stay safe, stay sane, stay healthy. And one last thing.

We've all been going through something just crazy. We talked a little bit about COVID and the pandemic. There's the economy, there's geopolitical wars, there's, you know, recession talk, there's tariffs, there's all sorts of other things. You know, it's a little stressful. So let's just be a little kinder to each other, remembering that everyone is going through something. And if we can do that, I know we can make this human experience a better one. Beyond that, thank you from the bottom of my heart for listening to another episode of the story of a brand.