UrbanStems CEO on Mother's Day Trends

Put this into context for us, is Mother’s Day basically your Super Bowl? It absolutely is. It’s our Super Bowl, Black Friday, Christmas all combined into one, nicely packaged with a little bow on top. So there you go. And I mean as such, I mean, what does the ramp up into Mother’s Day look like in terms of how you’re managing inventory, what your marketing looks like? How do you make sure you capitalize on that moment? Yeah, inventory is a fun game when you’re dealing with perishable product. We have an end to end 12 day cycle to get the product in country, get it to our fulfillment centers and get it to our customers. So we intend to ship 13 million stamps this Mother’s Day weekend. So that give you a little bit of perspective on what the scale up looks like for a business our size. But the ramp up starts, we plan months and months and months in advance and wait for the week to arrive and it’s here and we are in it and there you go. And so let’s talk about our inventory a little bit more because I understand that it’s been a really tricky subject. It sounds like it always is, but especially when you think about some of the extreme weather patterns that we’ve had, droughts in California, you think about a lot of rain in South Africa. How is that translated into your business and the supply of flowers? Yeah, absolutely. And South America where we import, we import flowers from 11 countries across the world. South America has the largest concentration of floral farms and naturally the largest import base for us. They have also experienced a lot of change in weather patterns and which has impacted the output of flowers. So this just makes our planning and forecasting cadence more and more tricky. The level of accuracy that our planning and forecasting teams have to bring to ensure that we have enough product to hit the sales number that we intend to, but also ensure that it’s not over projected so we don’t spoil the product at the end of the week. So it is a kind of a science and math all combined in one well, walk us through that a little bit because for the uninitiated, I mean how long can you actually keep flowers for and how how much inventory are you comfortable having on hand at any given time. So it’s seven days from the time it hits our fulfillment centers at the very map within seven days we have to get it to our customers. Now this is to ensure that when the bouquet gets to our customer, they still have one to two weeks for them to enjoy the product and to watch it bloom and to watch it look as amazing as it does in some of these pictures that you see online right now. So to ensure that the customers get that way’s life and are able to enjoy their product, we we aim to get it out sold and get it shipped to our customer within five to seven days. And so I mean with that in mind, have you thought about shortening your supply chain like you said, I mean you shipped from 11 countries. I’m just wondering about the logistics of that. For example, Sure, the reason our sourcing matrix is as broad as it is, is because we want to bring all the novelty stems to our consumer. We want to give them the peonies and the tulips from Holland. We want to give them the beautiful roses from South America. We also want to give them the luscious sunflowers from the West Coast, from California and Oregon. We want to give them all the gorgeous stems that exist in the world for them to enjoy at their tabletop. And that is not possible if we limit ourselves to sourcing from a certain region. Also this is Urban Stamps unique proposition, right. This is how we differentiate and stand out in the floral space. We take a position on the inventory and we have a extensive supply chain network and an extensive fulfillment network in country here where we ensure that the product that you want, that you purchase is what we deliver to you. It’s a great point of course that you can only get certain flowers from certain regions and it makes sense to diversify from that standpoint. I am curious about when it comes to your business, how much of it is shipping direct to a customer getting that order to their business or their doorstep. However it may be versus for example a grocery store or in New York a bodega for example, where you can buy actual flowers at the store yourself. Sure. So we we are a floral gifting brand. So our business is for sending flowers, it is to ship flowers to the customer that you intend to. But we do see a lot of our customers upwards of 18% that do a lot of what we call self sent. They love to enjoy our flowers and just send them to send it to themselves just because. Just because. Yeah, I like that. That should be a holiday as well, just because. So again, so you have your Super Bowl, your Black Friday, Christmas, etcetera, all coming up in Mother’s Day. How is this Mother’s Day shaping up compared to previous Mother’s Day is when you think about the past few years. Yeah, absolutely. So you know it’s it’s we go into this holiday with a ton of planning and what we continue to see is that 70% of the shoppers wait until the week to search for a Mother’s Day gift, 26% wait until two days before and 16% wait till the day off. So they make it really hard for us but we are here from them. Urban Stamps will be in market providing You Beautiful flowers nationwide until Saturday and in seven same day cities until Sunday. So get your orders in, if you have not already nationwide, until Saturday. If you’re ordering on Sunday, you’re probably too late. So that’s the Mother’s Seven Days, 7 same day cities. We’re still there, but yeah, still there, still there. But still you should be ordering ahead of time. Come on, We all knew this was coming, but we’re talking about Mother’s Day. But let’s broaden out a little bit because I am curious from your perch, how are you viewing the state of the consumer? We know that inflation has been very high for quite a while. The level of prices is still much higher than it has been in past years. How has that affected your business? Yeah, it has definitely impacted our business. 70% of the demographic that you know that our brand resonates to or speaks to is that 18 to 34. So it’s that millennial and Gen. Z age group. And we know that the economic downturn and the inflation has impacted this age group. So we’ve definitely seen an impact on it. But what we have also seen is that the customer is willing to pay for quality. They’re willing to pay for premium design, the premium experience. So as long as we can guarantee them a beautiful product on time, delivered to their doorstep, essentially, you know, sending and helping them communicate the sentiment that they want to send with their bouquet. They come to us, they come to us and they want our products. So we’ll continue to keep working on giving them that.