VBE Spotlight: In Bloom
Featured Veteran's Business Enterprise®:
In Bloom Flowers
Headquarters: Dallas, Texas
Year Founded: 1989
# of Employees: 50
Website: www.inbloomflowers.com
Service Overview:
Flowers, plants, and gifts for all occasions.
Founder/CEO: Nick Smith
Service Branch: United States Navy
Years Served: 2007-2015
Military Occupation: Submarine Warfare Officer
Highest Rank Attained: O-3
Fun Facts:
- "I do a lot of gardening and home improvement."
- "I like to cook & play with my kids."
- "Swimming is my poison of choice for exercise, and I try to get some laps in as often as I can."
- "I love the Dallas Cowboys and Texas Rangers!"
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What types of services do you offer?
Flowers, plants, and gifts for all occassions.
Who do you primarily serve?
We are the largest retail and sympathy florist in DFW. We also provide corporate and event services to all types and sizes of businesses including: Dignity Memorial, Chic-Fil-A, Seconds and Surplus, Salad and Go, Microsoft, Samsung, Tyler Technologies, and many more.
When and how did you start your business?
It’s an unconventional story. I started my career as a nuclear Submarine Warfare Officer in the Navy serving in San Diego and Lisbon, Portugal. I loved serving our country but my wife and I wanted to come back home to Dallas to be near our families and start our own. So I transitioned out of the Navy after 12 years to follow in my mom’s footsteps and pursue entrepreneurship. My path to entrepreneurship and into our industry was through purchasing In Bloom Flowers in December of 2021.
When I came across In Bloom, I fell in love with the business and with the mission. Founded in 1989, we’ve grown into one of the largest retail florists in the state. We’ll produce and sell about 50,000 arrangements and deliver 35,000 across Dallas Fort Worth this year.
While I am biased, In Bloom Flowers is a pretty cool and impressive operation. I love how many things we are at once. We’re a florist of course, but we’re also a high volume, asset light manufacturing company. We’re an omni-channel retailer with multiple locations. We’re a distribution company with a warehouse and a fleet of delivery vehicles. We are a part of celebrations, of births and accomplishments, of happiness, and part of sorrow at losses. We have a lot of stuff going on.
As I evaluated companies, the mission mattered to me. The flower industry has this amazing combination of sales, operations, execution, creativity, and a chance to make an impact on our customer’s lives. It is personally meaningful and rewarding to own a company with a mission to make people happy or to help them celebrate a loved one."
What challenges did you face when starting your business?
I purchased the business from the retiring founders. The biggest challenge for me was establishing credibility with the existing staff while simultaneously laying the groundwork to support where I wanted to take the business.
What has been the key to your business's success?
- It’s about the people. We’ve been fortunate to retain and bring aboard some incredibly talented employees who have helped us rethink our processes and improve our service, quality, and throughput. Not only that, energized and excited team members just make better arrangements and sound better on the phone. They are proud of what we’re trying to do, they recruit their friends to work for us, they make the walk-in customers feel great. They simply deliver a better experience for our customers. So we spend the time creating a great environment and culture for our team.
- We’ve adopted some technology. This hasn’t resulted in less people, but it lets us do more with the same people. Our tools improved the utilization of our staff, vehicles, facilities, and other assets while minimizing waste. This frees up cash for the investments we’ve made to support growth.
- It’s about focus. On the sales side, we’ve been lucky to partner with a world-class digital marketing team who is the driving force behind In Bloom becoming the best-known florist in Dallas Fort Worth. Additionally - I’ve been listening to the Texas Rangers playing play-off baseball so to use a baseball analogy - we swing hard in our strike zone. We’re doubling down on doing more of what we’re already great at (everyday and sympathy) rather than stretching ourselves thin.
What important lessons have you learned that can help others succeed in business?
I have a few core ideas that help guide our flower business:
1. Take care of your people.
2. Treat every arrangement like it’s the only arrangement
3. Revenue is vanity, margin is sanity, cash flow is king.
What common mistakes should they be aware of and avoid?
Have a plan, communicate that plan, and don't be afraid to have the hard conversations.
What else would you like the NaVOBA community to know about you and your business?
While we specialize in Dallas Fort Worth flower and plant services, we can help you send flowers world-wide (we helped a customer send flowers to Japan and Germany last month!).
Just give us a call at 1-800-BLOOMER or 972-256-6637!
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Our Mission
NaVOBA’s mission is to create corporate contracting opportunities for America’s Veteran’s and Service-Disabled Veteran’s Business Enterprises (VBEs/SDVBEs) through certification, advocacy, outreach, recognition and education.
Thank you for your interest in the National Veteran Owned Business Association’s Certified Veteran’s Business Enterprise® (VBE) and Certified Service-Disabled Veteran’s Business Enterprise® (SDVBE) programs. This initiative creates a nationally recognized gold standard in certification for veteran-owned businesses of all sizes and enables corporate America to proactively source and confidently utilize businesses that are at least 51% owned, operated and controlled by U.S. military veterans.
