We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sarah Jaeger a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Sarah, appreciate you joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

I’ve always been the girl who bought herself flowers every other week from Costco for my kitchen table. After years of this, I was tired of the same selection, but didn’t want to spend a lot for a high end arrangement for a florist just for myself. I felt like it was a shame there wasn’t an in between option- nicer quality and more variety than the grocery store, but not as expensive as a traditional florist. I felt like this was a subscription service that a lot of women would love.

This began a deep dive of research into the floral industry, and what I found was shocking. The average floral shop has over 40% waste! Because they offer dozens of options on their websites, they have to keep a large amount of perishable inventory. Worst of all, the big names like 1-800 Flowers and FTD, do nothing but sell the customer’s order back to a local florist, charging a 30% referral fee- and the floral shop ends up with almost no profit. And it’s us, the consumers, who end up with low quality flowers at an exurbanite price.

With those problems in mind, I created EverWild, which is as much of an innovative supply-chain company, as it is a floral one. We provide a straightforward ordering solution: simply choose by size, and our designers will create a gorgeous bouquet with the freshest in-season blooms. We are local, and do not accept wire fees from National brands. We source frequently direct from local farmers, reducing the long transit time of Internationally shipped blooms, so that when treated equally, our customer’s bouquet lasts up to 3 times longer. We value sustainable practices- partnering with local composter KC Compost for our stems, wrap our bouquets in recycled newspaper, and minimize enviormentally harmful floral foam in our arrangements.

All of these savings allow us to price the bouquets affordably enough that they can be ordered not just on Holidays, but on a subscription basis.

Since launching, we’ve achieved some exciting wins: we’ve grown into a full service shop located in Downtown KC offering not just subscriptions, but also same day delivery for any occasion. We also design wedding florals with no minimums- helping couples of all budgets from small elopement packages up to large-scale weddings and events.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

As a business working with beautiful flowers every day, luckily Social Media is easy! For our wedding couples, Instagram has definitely helped them understand our style and our work history to know that we’ll be a great fit for them. For our daily arrangements, Google has been really helpful for people both in and outside of Kansas City to find our shop. Our large amount of positive reviews has been a big help for customers to know they’re in good hands.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

Starting and staying debt-free as a business for EverWild was very important to me. I began this out of my kitchen with a small cooler in the garage, while still working full time in Real Estate. As EverWild grew, I reinvested the profits to purchase what we needed to continue grow- inventory, coolers, and eventually, our beautiful shop at 909 Walnut, followed closely by an expansion of more space the following year. I’m lucky that we’re in an industry that didn’t need a large amount of capital to get started, so with hard work and a willingness to put in the hours, we’ve been able to cash flow our growth.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.everwildflorals.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everwild_florals/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/everwildflorals
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/everwild-florals-kansas-city

Image Credits
Beth Grimm Photography (Sarah’s headshot) Can provide other wedding photographer credit if you can share which photos you end up using.