We recently connected with Linda Bradley and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Linda thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.

About 80% of the cut flowers in the US market are imported. Generally, they come from South America and are shipped to Miami. In Miami, they are fumigated with pesticides and then distributed to wholesalers and other large distribution centers. From there, they make it to grocery stores and other outlets for public purchase. This means that the flowers are several days old by the time they are available and it means that the selection is limited to flowers that ship well.

As a local grower we are able to grow beautiful, fresh flowers that would never survive the import process or would at least be very poor quality by the time they arrived. Dahlias, zinnias, cosmos and ageratum are all examples of flowers that are best grown locally.

The comment that I hear most often from our customers is “Your flowers last so long”!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Founded in 2017, we provide specialty cut flowers and cut flower bulbs and plants in the Columbia, South Carolina area. Bouquet subscriptions are delivered to homes and business in the Columbia area between March and October
We also fill wholesale orders from florists and event planners in Columbia and Blythewood.
We offer three seasons of specialty cut flower bulbs for those who like to garden
We grow our flowers on less than an acre of land
Over the year, we grow 50+ varieties of flowers. We cut about 1000 stems each week, harvesting on Mondays and Thursdays. Those stems are delivered on Tuesdays and Fridays.
Events – we have a holiday open house and other events.
Orders for Bouquet Subscriptions, flower bulbs, and classes can be placed on our website: www.purpletuteur.com

We’d love to hear your thoughts about selling platforms like Amazon/Etsy vs selling on your own site.

We sell our products directly from our site with the exception of our “merch”. Our website is on Squarespace and we love it. The product is pretty easy to use and the customer service is excellent. If you are not clear on how to do something, you can get help 24×7.

I come from a technology background so my learning curve was short. This may not be true for those who have no technology experience. The best thing about this is that we can make changes anytime we need to. Direct sales have the highest revenue/margin potential. We accept payments on the site for our retail clients so it is mostly hands off. The cost of this are fees charged by the site and by the collection service that Squarespace uses. They can seem high, but there is no staff to do the collections other ways.

Regarding “merch”, our printed t-shirts and logoed products are available from our site but integrated behind the scenes to Printify. With Printfy’s print on demand service we do not have to order merchandise ahead or ship it. This solves the problem of having merchandise leftovers in odd colors and sizes. Printify gets most of the revenue in this scenario, but it fills a customer request for merch and we don’t have to do much other than getting the designs created and set up in the store.

The downside is that you are limited to the merchandise that Printify offers. We would like to make higher end merchandise available but cannot invest in inventory at this point.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

We are a flower farm. We grow the flowers that are used to make our bouquets. As a Master Gardener, I had the fundamentals of growing flowers down but had to learn how to have flowers continuously from spring through fall. The flowers have to be high quality, in desirable colors and long lasting.

When we started, we only sold at farmer’s markets. This way, we could just bring what we had available. Failed crops or small volumes did not have the impact that they would today. This gave us a way to work out the planting schedules and volumes necessary to have consistent offerings and a steady flow of flowers.

Over the six years we have been in business we have learned a lot about what grows well in our area and what flowers our clients prefer. Breeders are constantly introducing new offerings that we review and consider for our lineup. The weather is a dynamic influence and each year presents its own weather challenges. No two years are the same.

Today, our key offering is our bouquet subscription. We initially offered 10 subscriptions during 8 weeks of summer. Orders are made on our website. Most of our first customers were family and friends. This small start gave us a way to establish processes for harvesting, bouquet making, subscription tracking and delivery.

In the second year, we increased the number of subscriptions available with good results. In the meantime, we were also trialing several flowers that would grow in spring and in fall.

In order to expand our operation, we installed a flower cooler and a hoop house for season extension. With the addition of these two items we were able to offer 3 seasons of subscriptions.

With Covid, our subscription orders really grew. We developed a contactless delivery method by asking customers to leave a vase or bucket of fresh water on their porch. We could drive by and drop the sleeve of flowers into the bucket for them to pick up. People were working from home and given the travel restrictions, many could not visit their loved ones. Flowers were a great way to show the love. Many of those customers place orders every year.

Since moving away from farmers markets, we have started adding on-farm events to personally connect with our client base. We offer farm tours. Last year we held our first Holiday Market and now we are offering classes for growers, like the On-farm Dahlia Growers Class. We will offer a Spring Bulb Garden class too. We enjoy the face to face interaction and enjoy the reactions of those who are seeing the blooms up close.

The biggest lesson we have learned about having flowers available is to grow more than you think you will need. We grow 20% more to allow for poor germination, weather events and “misses” on new crops that don’t do well in our climate.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.purpletuteur.com
• Instagram: @purpletuteur
• Facebook: @purpletuteur

Image Credits
Dahlia Class Image – Karen Bickley All other Images by the author