Michael Jacobson·January 6, 2025

Taking a Flower Shop from $600k to $9 Million | Michael Jacobson Interview

Michael Jacobson acquired his uncle's struggling West Hollywood flower shop at age 23 after initially being called in to help sell it. The business was doing $600k in revenue but was effectively unprofitable due to inherited wage-and-hour litigation, sky-high workers' comp insurance, and 60% revenue dependency on wire services (1-800 Flowers, FTD) that took 30-40% commissions. Rather than selling, Michael took over and systematically rebuilt: he cut all wire service relationships, redirected that marketing spend to Google, and spent $300-350k over two years building proprietary end-to-end technology (e-commerce, POS, designer workflow, dispatch, AI-driven inventory forecasting). When the new tech stack launched in October 2021, revenue doubled overnight — from improved SEO, higher conversion rates (2-3% to 8-14%), and higher average order values ($105 to $170+). The single Melrose location grew from $600k to $4.7m to $9.4m by 2022. Michael then opened two additional locations (each doing roughly $1-1.2m in year one), developed direct farm sourcing relationships globally to cut flower costs further, raised outside capital in 2024, and launched a franchise program under the French Florist brand — offering franchisees the full tech stack, supply chain, and marketing engine for a 6% commission vs. the 30-40% charged by legacy wire services. The episode doubles as a deep industry education on floral industry dynamics, intermediary structures, and the opportunity (and difficulty) of acquiring a small independent florist.

Deal facts

multiple: 3-4x EBITDA (stated as typical for the industry; not confirmed for this specific deal)
sde ebitda: ~$60-70k SDE at acquisition (uncle taking home roughly that amount before litigation costs wiped it out)
revenue: $600k at acquisition; grew to $3m (2020), $4.7m (2021), $9.4m (2022) from single location
notes: Guest acquired his uncle's flower shop; purchase price not stated. Business was effectively unprofitable at acquisition due to wage-and-hour litigation, workers' comp claims, and high insurance premiums. Guest invested ~$300-350k in proprietary technology over two years (2019-2021). Raised a small outside capital round in 2024. Opened 2nd location in late 2022 (did $912k year 1), 3rd location in 2023 (did ~$1.2m year 1, on track for $1.8m year 2). Launched franchising program May/June 2024, had 5 locations open as of early 2025.

Why this business

Michael was 23, fresh out of corporate consulting, and craving direct ownership over outcomes. His uncle called asking for help selling the shop, which led Michael to dig into the industry. He found the floral industry was massively fragmented (30,000 florists averaging $350k revenue, no dominant brand), plagued by predatory wire-service intermediaries taking 30-40% commissions, running on decades-old technology, and ignored by venture capital — all of which he saw as enormous opportunity rather than deterrent. He also had a software/finance consulting background that gave him a clear playbook: digitize operations, cut out middlemen, invest in SEO and direct customer acquisition.

What's working

Dropping wire services (1-800 Flowers, FTD, etc.) and replacing them with direct digital marketing via Google — eliminating 30-40% commissions and retaining customer data for lifetime value development
Building proprietary end-to-end technology from scratch (~$300-350k investment, launched October 2021) covering e-commerce, point-of-sale, designer iPad workflow, dispatch/routing, CRM, predictive inventory analytics — revenue literally doubled overnight on launch day due to dramatically improved web architecture and SEO
Conversion rate jumped from 2-3% to 8-14% and average order value rose from ~$105 to ~$170 after new website launch
Cutting out wholesale middlemen by purchasing flowers directly from farms in Ecuador, Colombia, Holland, Thailand, Mexico, and California — lower cost, higher quality (flowers lasting 10-14 days vs. 3-7)
Keeping overhead extremely low: not paying for premium retail real estate, viewing physical location primarily as an SEO signal and fulfillment center rather than a walk-in retail investment (96% of revenue is online)
Hyper-specialization of labor: designers only design, customer service reps only take orders, drivers only deliver — results in a calm, highly efficient shop running multi-million-dollar volume
Franchise model launched 2024: offering franchisees the full tech stack, supply chain, marketing engine, and bookkeeping support for a 6% commission vs. 25-40% from legacy wire services

What's hard

Acquired a business encumbered by wage-and-hour and workers' comp litigation inherited from the uncle operating as a sole proprietor, which wiped out the business's profitability and made it nearly unsellable
Had to rebuild the entire tech stack at once because the systems were so interdependent — no open APIs on the legacy point-of-sale, so replacing any one piece broke everything; required a full cutover overnight
Living on essentially no salary for years, reinvesting all cash flow into the technology build
As resources grew, the temptation to pursue too many projects simultaneously led to half-executed initiatives; had to relearn the discipline of singular focus
Dropping wire services meant risking losing 60% of revenue overnight — a leap of faith that required both financial modeling and emotional conviction
Managing a perishable product with a highly variable demand profile; solved with AI-driven predictive inventory but required significant data accumulation time

Notable quotes

The more time I've spent in the industry the deeper and deeper I fall in love with it. There's a lot of pain in the industry and honestly that's what made me fall in love with it.

I came in the next day and we had double the amount of Revenue than we did the day prior and I literally thought it was a bug in the system.

Being really small and scrappy and having hugely limited resources we were really put in a position where we were forced to have a huge singularity of focus on what is the absolute number one — we have four or five paths that we can go down but we can only afford to do one, what's that one path, and let's do it really well because we only have one shot at it.

We can certainly help them with all the boring stuff but if they can deliver on that last mile delivery and just provide that best customer experience — that's awesome. We can do the email marketing for them, we can do the search engine optimization, we can do the financial bookkeeping for them.