Maintaining Relevance | Dirk Lorenz

About Dirk Lorenz

Dirk Lorenz ventured out and acquired Fremont Flowers while only 21 and has owned and operated the business for over 25 years. Dirk takes pride in giving back to the community and has started several events at Fremont Flowers over the years such as Good Neighbor Day and Welcome Teacher Day. Dirk is also a founding member of Real Local Florists, an organization dedicated to promoting local floral shops across the country.

Interview Transcript:

Alan
Welcome back. I’m here today with Dirk Lorenz. Dirk is the owner of premium flowers, a business that has been around Fremont during business since 1959. Correct? Dirk, welcome to today’s show.

Dirk
Thank you for having me.

Alan
So there, give me your background of what you did early in your career and how you came up to be the owner of Fremont flower.

Dirk
Okay, good question. Because it wasn’t something that I ever anticipated I would do in my life. I knew in high school after being voted the most artistic that I wanted to do something with my hands. And I always knew I wanted to be owning my own business. So after high school, I went to college for computer science, learned all those languages, hated, it, just hated it. It wasn’t for me, and went to work at the San Jose airport. During my late teens worked at hertz and budget, rent a car. And I started thinking, you know, I think I want to be have something to do with automobiles. So I met with a family friend here locally in Fremont, whose real estate agent. And she said, How about a florist? And I said, Oh, I don’t know the difference between a daisy and a carnation. I said, I want to do something with automobiles, repair something, something. She said, well keep an open mind. And I tell you, after being personally in business now for 30 years, that was the best advice anybody ever gave me keep an open mind. So bought the flower shop in 1984. And the rest is history?

Alan
Well, it must have been an interesting venture, not knowing between the carnation in the days and to say, I’m going to be a florist.

Dirk
Yeah, well, let me assure you, I now know the difference between a carnation and a daisy. So not on me no concern.

Alan
But But moving into that did you have to do any research or what what really drove you say I want to do the florist route.

Dirk
You know, I was 21. At the time, I did have an open mind. And just a willingness to jump all in. And once I got into the business, there were several trade organizations where I could get my education on not only design, but the business aspect of it. And that’s really was kind of on the job training. At that time. There wasn’t a formal school, let’s say, for floral design. So that’s how I kind of moved into the business and and mastered it. But I think most important to any business, especially the floral business is marketing, just being able to market your business. And that’s where we’ve had a lot of success.

Alan
Now, when you when you started dealing with former players, they had been around for 25 years. Correct. And so what what vision Did you set out from what they were doing to what you wanted to do with great company?

Dirk
Great question. And I’ll just mention this, the company is the floral business is really very unusual insofar as small businesses are concerned, because you’re both a sales organization, a production facility, and a delivery business kind of all wrapped into one, the only one that I can think is a little more challenging, perhaps as a restaurant business, which isn’t that different. You sell, produce and deliver your product. Except I always say that well in the restaurant business, you can make somebody sick if you don’t do it, right. But that was that was the most challenging aspect of getting into this business. And I was 2121 years old at the time. And I think it was just having this open mind and going into it, and no preconceived ideas of what it should be. That I was like a sponge. And the people that I work with, then and now we we really worked together in this business. It’s it’s, it’s another family, if you will. And so I think that that’s probably what’s contributed to me being successful in the business is just open to these. My team members, if you will, my family, floral family.

Alan
Your family has been a longtime resident.

Dirk
Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. For four generations at back to the 1860s.

Alan
That is putting us some of the early pioneers here. That’s right. That’s right. So when you got involved with you read you get your family involved with you and working the business?

Dirk
Yes, as a matter of fact, at the time we purchased it My brother was my partner. And we had a discussion and we said you know Dad’s getting ready to retire. We want we want to keep them busy. Let’s let’s bring them into the business. So dad came into the business also. And since then, both my brother and my father had passed, but I’ll tell you, it’s been a blessing, really working with family He, in the business you hear a lot of stories of and see anymore on some of these reality TV shows about family conflict. Well, our business really created family harmony. And that probably is I’m sitting on the rocking chair on the porch, hopefully many, many years from now looking back on my career, that’s probably the one aspect of the business that I will look back on fondly, because it really brought myself and my father together, working together and create a greater understanding about how hard my father worked, supporting a very large family. And as I stepped into the business, I work that way off so and it just create a greater understanding for everything youget.

Alan
Visiting here today with Dirk Lorenz. He’s the owner of Fremont flowers and business has been in Fremont since 1959. And owned, you’ve owned it since 1984. I need to take a quick break. And we’ll be right back to these messages. And I want to get to where we are today with the flower shop.

Alan
Welcome back. I’m here today with Dirk Lorenz. He’s the owner Fremont flower shop. A business has been in Fremont since 1959. And he’s owned it since 1984. At the world of flowers is a business you’ve, you’ve had changes happen involved in this market. You go to the local grocery store, and they’re selling flowers. And, you know, I imagine that trying to keep pace with a family owned business and an ever changing market is not easy.

Dirk
You are absolutely correct. And Alan, that’s probably the one word that I think my employees hear me say the most is relevancy. How do we maintain our relevancy, not only going through the great recession that we went through, but also in this day and age, as you pointed out of everybody seems to be selling flowers. Actually, US consumption of flowers is up to an all time high. But the brick and mortar retail florists percentage of that has decreased over the years. So that’s where the comments on relevance come in. How do we maintain relevancy as a business in this day and age of national chains, and internet? Commerce? How do we maintain relevancy? One of the ways that we’ve done it and we’ve just celebrated our welcome teacher days, the kids start back to school is reaching out to elementary school kids who probably don’t know that a freestanding brick and mortar flower shop exists because they’ve gone to the grocery store or, or the farmers market and they see flowers here. And that’s where a lot of the flowers are purchased. Well, we started welcome Teacher Day. And what we did on welcome Teacher Day was we invited the elementary school kids down to the shop for a free bud vase to take to their teacher. On the first day of school, we saw over 1200 students at welcome Teacher Day, to the degree that we were talking earlier, we had to have traffic controls on Fremont Boulevard to control the traffic coming in. So that’s one way that we’re trying to maintain our relevancy in our marketing efforts in our outreach efforts to let this new generation of buyers know that hey, we exist.

Alan
So you have to be creative. Was that your brainchild, or who came up with the Welcome Teacher Day?

Dirk
I will take total credit for welcome Teacher Day, it was an extension of what we used to do called Good Neighbor day where we gave a dozen roses to anybody who came to the shop. Well, in time, that wasn’t as relevant anymore. So we transitioned to the welcome Teacher Day, which which we branded and it’s just huge anymore.

Alan
It’s now the logistics for the flower market worldwide. And you said most flowers pass through at Amsterdam.

Dirk
Well, a lot of flowers go through the auction in Amsterdam, but so many of our flowers these days are coming from South America. The US has made deals with many countries to grow floral product products as opposed to other products. And then they come through Miami, and then they’re shipped out throughout the United States and Canada. But Miami is the main port of entry for these flowers. So South America primarily a little bit from Amsterdam, but so much worldwide depending on the season. Like now we can get tulips out of Australia because it’s a spring when into flour. And so we that’s where we sourced those.

Alan
It’s amazing how you were able to keep in all seasonal flour?

Dirk
Correct with logistics, correct logistics, it’s all about logistics.

Alan
So Derek, I need to take a quick break and like to come back to these messages and want to talk more about the online competition or the floor level. And visit your declaration. florenzi is the owner of Fremont flowers we’ve been visiting today about his, you know, the evolution of flower market here in Fremont, and how they’re staying abreast of the market. We’ll be right back after these messages.

Alan
Welcome back and visit here today with Dirk Lorenz. He’s the owner of Fremont flowers. floral shop has been in pretty much since 1959. And Dirks has owned it since 1984. We’ve been visiting it about you know how to stay abreast of the market in a fast paced society. I wanted to turn the page show to talk about the new national association that was created and how it competes with the online florist. Can you tell us more about that how that came about?

Dirk
I would love to tell you about that. Well, several years ago, after a very busy Mother’s Day season, I was talking with a florist friend back in Atlanta, Georgia. And she was saying how the national chain really had let her down, that you’re making promises that they didn’t deliver on. And they said we need to do something about this. And so I reached out to a florist up in Oregon and one in Sparks Nevada. Along with this Atlanta florists and we came together in Sparks to brainstorm how we would transition our industry if we even could do that. And as being one of the core four, that’s what we refer to ourselves as the four members that came together, we established the real local florist brand, and I’m wearing the shirt here today. Real local florist is all about improving the economics of the brick and mortar flower shop nationwide. Well, it’s extended beyond our borders. Now it’s in Canada, a little bit in the UK and in Australia. So it’s really spreading. Right now we have 300 plus members. We have a national consumer directory on the web, real local florists.com that a consumer can get on into a city. And it will display the information for the brick and mortar florist located in that community. Why this is important is because a lot of the national, what we call order gatherers are those that sit in offices in Detroit, Michigan, and market themselves as local florists in my market. We need to educate the consumer because there’s been so much deception in their marketing practices. And it hurts the floral industry in general, when consumers are disappointed, they stopped wanting to send flowers, and they go to other online gift giving choices that they may have. So what real local florists is doing is assuring the consumer that yes, you’re going to be dealing with a real local florist and you’re committed community where the money you spend in that community stays in that community, which is vitally important, as you know, that as we support our local businesses, they’re the ones of the many times are the heart and soul of that community, and they give back to that community. So we just feel it’s it’s imperative that we raise the awareness of the real brick and mortar shops throughout this country. And it’s even spread since then. We’ve had some conversations with the corner drugstores of brick and mortar drugstores about doing something similar to raise the awareness of the importance of doing business locally.

Alan
Have you been able to take advantage of the technologies that advances and helping to create this organization with the real local florists are?

Dirk
Yes, absolutely. And I’m very happy to say that the software suite that accomplishes all this was developed right here in Fremont, by a local software engineer, who is brilliant. As a matter of fact, he’s in this building. And we’ve been marketing it throughout the United States and just building more and more awareness for the cause. And also having more and more members join. I think last last week, I got a report that we had 145 have new members join. There’s just this desire out there on the part of these brick and mortars for someone to help them help the brick and mortar shops as opposed to the national wire services that compete against these shops. So we’re finding we…

Alan
That’s interesting so they say you look at the the wire services actually competition as a way to try to accomplish.

Dirk
Those traditional wire services, which many of them know the names of those services now compete with the retail florist. They compete when you place an order with one of their.com businesses, they may very well send it back to my shop. But I’m receiving 68 to 69 cents on the dollar for each one of those orders. And I know it’s a brilliant play. It’s very difficult to make money when you’re discounting that order.

Alan
Taken over third off, you’re absolutely so so. So with the real local florist. It’s all about combining an independent network of florists and making them available to the to the end user by a central website, or what?

Dirk
Is a reallocalflorists.com is a central website that not only does it give this directory of florists, you can click on any shop, and it’ll take you directly to that florists website. So if I look at it not unlike the Ace Hardware as of this world that are all independently owned, and you’ve got aces and over writing kind of organization that handles marketing and driving the consumer to those individual brick and mortar stores, or the Good Neighbor Pharmacy kind of the same.

Alan
How do you get the word out 145 stores is is no easy undertaking correct and manage that and but how are you marketing or recruiting more members to that?

Dirk
Sure. It’s a very young organization, it’s probably about three years old at this point in time. So we’re gaining momentum. But a lot of it is just getting out doing the trade fairs, or the trade shows, floral events throughout the United States. We travel quite a bit. We recently had the SAF Convention, which is a society of American florists convention back in Florida, where we had a presence there. So kind of taking it to the streets, one shop at a time at this point in time until we get the critical mass of members that the marketing fund, then we’re developing the collateral now can be produced and mailed to shops to again, gain more members and organization.

Alan
You’re the president of that?

Dirk
I am the secretary of that organization. I’ve got some other things I’m obligated or working towards this year that I said, Well, I’ll be the secretary but I can’t be the president at this point in time.

Alan
Okay, I visiting here today with Dirk Lorenza, Dirk and someone who wants to get in contact with you for more information on the real floors network. How would they do so?

Dirk
They could get on to real local florists.com Enter Fremont, California my shop has their contact information is there or Dirk dot Lorenz at Fremont flowers.com is my email address? Always on that smartphone? You know, so? I’m good about returning as.

Alan
Well Derek, thank you for joining today’s show.

Dirk
Thank you for having me.

 

 

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This transcript was generated by software and may not accurately reflect exactly what was said.

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