We built our company hoping to source from U.S. farms. It turns out, many wouldn’t work with a woman founder.
was 2015 and I had been successfully bootstrapping my e-commerce floral delivery company, Farmgirl Flowers, for five years. I’d started with a clear mission — to support domestic flower farms and use their product to create unique daily arrangements that we’d eventually ship nationally. However, that goal was starting to feel increasingly impossible. As a founder, I was running into just about every startup obstacle — some anticipated, some unexpected. But there was one I never would have seen coming, nor would I have believed had I been warned: gender discrimination.
Now, if I were to share all the instances my gender has affected my ability to run, scale, and source for Farmgirl, I would have enough material to write a book. For now, I’m going to talk about just one situation. A situation that is representative of dozens of such instances, all of which had the potential to stop my company in its tracks.
Let’s start back in 2013. We were trying to source flowers from one of the largest, and better known, farms in Northern California. I’d blindly reached out several times requesting to buy from them, and hadn’t received any response for months. Finally, I received a curt reply via email stating that the farm did not sell directly to retail florists like Farmgirl.
About a year later, I was able to get a connection with the grower through a mutual acquaintance who had relationships with many California farms. This acquaintance asked if we were purchasing directly from any farms, and specifically any of those within his network. When I told him I’d reached out to several but had never heard back, he’d mentioned this particular farm as an important contact for me to have as I continued to grow Farmgirl Flowers. He reached out to the grower personally to set up a visit.
As it turns out, he had much better luck at convincing the grower to meet with me than I had. Soon, I found myself driving a few hundred miles to meet the farmer with this mutual contact to discuss a direct sales relationship. The tour of the farm and the shoptalk went as expected, but I found myself unable to get to the point. Each time I tried to bring up next steps or to talk details about purchasing, I was met with what I would characterize as vague and noncommittal responses. He said he didn’t normally sell to retail florists, only to other wholesalers, and that we could “continue the conversation later.” I thought what I perceived as stalling was just part of the process. This perception was reinforced by our mutual acquaintance who I recall telling me that “these things take time.” So, at least, at first, after I returned home, and I followed up with that same grower about buying directly, I didn’t flag his lack of responsiveness.
When your supply chain is limited by systematic and ingrained sexism in the domestic agricultural industry, the choice seems to be made for you.
But that retail comment really stuck with me. On the tour, I’d personally seen boxes that this farm was shipping on behalf of a large-scale competitor in the e-commerce floral space. The very same category of business that this grower had specifically said he did not, or would not, sell to. When I asked the grower directly about that relationship, he said it was just “different.”
Frustrated by the lack of response, I asked our mutual acquaintance for his advice on how to convince this farm to sell to me. He told me that I needed to invest in better relationships with the farms. It’s a very “relational” industry, I recall him saying. I was doubtful, but I listened. After all, it seemed more productive to follow his advice rather than to fight it.
I did my level best to forge a relationship with this farm, even flying myself to Washington, D.C. with him and other growers to help secure legislation to support the domestic cut stem industry. And still, when I returned home, I was met with the same vague replies when I directly asked him about establishing a sales relationship.
CEO Christina Stembel puts together an arrangement of flowers.
Courtesy of Farmgirl Flowers
At that time, I’d also discovered they were selling to yet another one of our direct competitors. This one was a younger company and, I believe at the time, though funded, was smaller than we were. It was also male-owned. I asked the grower about this relationship and was met with a similar answer I’d been given when I visited his farm — that this was a “separate” deal and it was different than selling to Farmgirl. When I pressed, needing to know what was different about us, he didn’t respond.
Looking back, even I tried to talk myself through all the possible reasons why this grower just wouldn’t sell to Farmgirl. It’s true — the competitor was funded, and because Farmgirl was (and is) not, it could seem like the other company posed less of a risk. But statistically, funded companies aren’t more successful. What’s more, women only receive about 2% of the venture capital given each year. If, in fact, funding was the reason, then it still came down to gender. I felt completely at a loss.
Then, some two years later, an email landed in my inbox that confirmed everything I’d known in my gut. The email was from a rep at the farm that wouldn’t sell to me. It was a forward of an email chain between their sales rep and a buyer from another one of our male-owned competitors. The buyer at our competitor had included what I — and clearly they — recognized to be photos from Farmgirl marketing materials and was inquiring about buying those same flowers from the farm. Attached to that email were orders for flowers from that competitor, revealing that they had an established relationship of buying directly from that farm. Meanwhile, when the farm rep read the email and saw the images, they, for obvious reasons, mistakenly thought someone from my team had sent the note.
For me, this was the last straw. The noncommittal answers, his reasons for not selling to me because I was a “retail” florist were just not cutting it. What started as an innocent mistake by a sales rep was the proof I needed to verify that Farmgirl Flowers was being repeatedly denied the ability to purchase from this farm while two of our male-owned, VC-backed, much newer competitors were not.
Now let’s look at the data — what fundamentally made Farmgirl Flowers different from these other companies at the time?
First, we’re bootstrapped. I started Farmgirl Flowers with a high school diploma I got from an Indiana public school after a childhood spent on a corn and soybean farm. I’m about as unpedigreed of a founder as it gets. So when I started the company in 2010, I knew I didn’t just need an idea, I needed an idea that solved an actual problem and that I could self-finance. No one with my background was going to get funding out of the gate.
The business opportunity I recognized: online shopping was surging, but the floral e-commerce industry was shrinking. When I tested the giants in this space, it was, at least for me, obvious why. The product typically never matched up to the photos that were shown on the website when it arrived, and there were too many options that were, in my opinion, mediocre at best. Our new model turned this industry on its head: limited SKUs, not filled with the flowers you choose but rather the best of the best from American farms.
So I had the idea, but knew that with my pedigree “problem,” I wasn’t just going to waltz into any office on Sand Hill Road and emerge with a check. It turns out, I was right: As a solo female founder of a perishable business with, by most standards, terrifying margins, to this day I still haven’t managed to get funded, even with a projected 2019 revenue of $34 million. The few offers I’ve entertained have, in my estimation, undervalued my company considering the growth we’ve achieved in almost nine years, nor were they comparable to the valuations some of our competitors have gotten with less proven success.
What’s the second difference between Farmgirl and our competitive set? We’re the only larger scale floral delivery e-commerce company that is female founded and owned and primarily run by women; as of today we’re 60% female. In an industry where over three quarters of purchases throughout the year are made by women for other women, I’m amazed that all of the online flower companies are founded and owned by men. This difference is one of the reasons I’m most proud of Farmgirl. One of the reasons I think we’re able to serve our customers so well is because we are the customer.
Now, back to this farm.
Before the email incident, I’d always suspected the reason the grower wouldn’t sell to us was due to gender discrimination. I just couldn’t say it definitively. It felt crazy even thinking it then, but so much has happened with this farm and many others, that I don’t feel the least bit crazy writing this now. Whether it’s outright prejudice or people “just” doing things the way they’ve always been done, there are many practices in place that help to perpetuate the systemic sexism in agriculture. It’s a self sustaining system and questioning it feels like swimming upstream. But I couldn’t (and can’t) help it.
This wasn’t an isolated incident. In trying to build my supply chain, I’ve experienced outright and more subtle forms of sexism. There are growers that “honey, sweetie, baby” their way through a “negotiation” with my team. Those same growers are the ones who will blatantly evaluate our bodies while we engage in shoptalk. Back in 2016, a longtime farm partner of ours decided to increase our prices by 50% overnight and without notice because of “supply and demand.” I remember standing in this grower’s stall at the market and calling the owner to ask if these prices were for every customer or just for us. They were just for us.
I’ve been told I’m the “joke” of the industry by a prominent U.S. floral wholesaler — that I’m, and I’m (lightly) paraphrasing, “ridiculous for thinking that I can do this on my own.” Mind you, he gave me this unsolicited “advice” at a bar when we were visiting his company as we were one of their top customers for the year. And why? Not because I’ve wronged them, or said something about them. I think it comes down to power. As a successful woman, my accomplishments are viewed as threatening when not mitigated by — or due in part to — a man.I think it comes down to power. As a successful woman, my accomplishments are viewed as threatening when not mitigated by — or due in part to — a man.
I know what some of you might be thinking. Surely this is, at worst, a few farms. But in my experience, it’s not. It’s been the majority. In fact, these incidents happen with such regularity that I’m rarely fazed by them anymore. But when I see the impact they have on my team I’m reminded just how bad it is.
Now don’t get me wrong. There are some good men in the domestic cut flower industry. There are partners we’ve worked with for years that have treated us with respect and kindness. I am, and really as a team, we are extremely grateful for these partners.
And finally, back to the email.
With proof in hand, I emailed that grower and let him know that in light of this new evidence the only reasonable assumption I could conclude that he would not sell to me, the only difference between Farmgirl and the strikingly similar competitors to which he was selling, was gender. The retail aspect of my business made no difference. My lack of funding had, in no way, made me less stable of a customer. And, based on volume purchasing, there was no way these competitors were purchasing at higher prices, making their business more lucrative than mine. In my email, I let him know, in no uncertain terms, that if he did not sell to me I would explore legal recourse. The very next week, the farmer set us up with a sales rep so we could begin a sales relationship.
That’s a win, right? Well, yes and no. We’re now able to buy from this farm (and do), but every time we receive a shipment or send a new order I think about the fact that we’re buying from a farm that we had to threaten legal action before they’d consider selling to us.
So where did that leave us? In 2016, with the few amazing, domestic farm partners and the considerably less “friendly” growers we actively fought to sell to us, we still only received 26% of our confirmed orders from domestic growers. Let that sink in for a moment. You cannot successfully run a company when you only receive about a quarter of the inventory you need to run that company. The lack of availability and supply due to multiple farm partners who refused to work with us was, without a doubt, the biggest danger to my business. I needed to do something quickly about it. That, or quit — and quitting was not an option.
My next move ended up being one of the biggest, if not the biggest, pivot I’ve had to make since starting Farmgirl. I abandoned one of the original (and most important, at least to me) tenets of the Farmgirl business model: to work exclusively with domestic flower farmers.
I began sourcing internationally.
In the three months between Thanksgiving 2016 and Valentine’s Day 2017, my team and I completely altered our supply chain which, ultimately, led to a successful, albeit insanely stressful, holiday. February 14 is a special kind of nightmare for florists, but going into a such an enormous holiday with a dramatically different supply chain bordered on lunacy. But we did it, and we’ve continued to do it, and in the past nearly three years, we’ve developed strong relationships with growers outside of the U.S. My team and I feel fortunate that these growers recognize Farmgirl for the leader in the industry we are, and, accordingly, they treat us with the utmost courtesy and respect. But I also know that we began these relationships at a radically different point in our trajectory than I began those with domestic growers. We have brand recognition and nine years of incredible growth numbers on our side. We are a fundamentally different company than we were back in 2013.
It’s unrealistic to even hope that no other woman in the floral industry or beyond will experience what I have — or worse.
And I can’t say this move hasn’t come without a cost. There’s the obvious. When we abandoned one of the things that made Farmgirl, well, Farmgirl, there were some customers who wouldn’t come with us on this new journey. And I get it. But it feels like an especially bitter pill to swallow since this wasn’t a decision I wanted to make. When your supply chain is limited by systematic and ingrained sexism in the domestic agriculture industry, the choice seems to be made for you.
And then there’s the less obvious cost. Rebuilding the majority of a supply chain of an established company, let alone one that was purchasing millions of dollars of flowers each year, was a Herculean effort. Much of 2017 was spent solidifying and building new relationships with international farms and growers. And every second I was visiting farms, reviewing grow lists with teams, and otherwise reworking our entire supply chain was a moment I was stabilizing the company instead of growing it. As a high-growth, bootstrapped company, growth should have been my focus.
But, when all is said and done, the benefits of our choice to begin sourcing internationally have far outweighed the costs. Since integrating international partners, we’ve received more than 90% of confirmed orders.
Courtesy of Farmgirl Flowers
As deplorable as the behavior of some domestic growers and wholesalers has been, it is dramatically better than it was when I started in the industry. But it’s not the growers that have changed: It’s our buying power. As an even younger business woman with a younger business, I came to every relationship feeling like I was at a disadvantage. But as Farmgirl has continued to grow, our ability to purchase hundreds of thousands to millions of stems has helped to level the playing field. Our brand and buying power has helped to make our relationships with some of these growers “better,” but if this is better, then this is crazy.
It’s, unfortunately, unrealistic to even hope that no other woman in the floral industry or beyond will experience what I have — or worse. If the gender politics that are part and parcel to farming remains intact, I know that just won’t be the case. And while I certainly cannot change the actions of others, I can use the platform that I’ve built with Farmgirl to be able to not only call attention to, but to effect change, to these politics.
My predominantly female-fueled company has changed the face of flowers. Walking into the flower market all those years ago, when I was still a one woman operation, I remember being so surprised at just how many men I saw. For an industry that it is driven by women on the consumer end, there were remarkably few women involved in driving the farming, production, and sale of flowers. With Farmgirl, my team and I have been able to push the needle on women’s representation in this part of the industry. And the bigger Farmgirl gets, the bigger our voices get.