Farmgirl Flowers Revolutionizes Flower Industry by Going Local

When Christina Stembel was working as an event planner for Stanford University, she noticed that the cost of flowers and bouquets were quite staggering.

“I started researching the floral industry on Friday nights instead of going out. I was blown away by how big the flower industry was for how little innovation there was in the space,” Stembel told Forbes.

She eventually decided she found her calling and launched Farmgirl Flowers with $48,000 of savings, according to Forbes. Today, business is booming and Farmgirl Flowers is revolutionizing the industry like never before.

In a video posted by AOL Finance, Stembel says how “80 percent of flowers that are sold in the U.S. are now imported,” and that “58 percent of the local growers have gone out business since the early 1990s.”

Stembel aims to change that. Farmgirl Flowers works only with local growers and picks the flowers that are freshest that day.

She says in the video that she gets asked a lot why growing local is so important. It turns out, buying local flowers is better in a multitude of ways.

Most countries where flowers are imported from don’t have the laws we have against using a lot of pesticides. This means the flowers you get have pesticide residue. They also aren’t fresh, which means they die soon after you get them.

Stembel also says that about 40 percent of flowers grown, are just thrown away.

“So, the reason the flowers cost so much,” she says, “is because the flowers that sell have to subsidize the flowers that didn’t sell.”

Perhaps, though, the best reason to be in the local flower business, according to Stembel, is the smiles they get to put on peoples’ faces when they hand deliver their flowers.

“We get to provide this amazing product that brings joy to people’s lives, and, on the flip-side, we also get to make a difference in an industry that really needs it. So, it’s kind of a win-win.”