Starbright Floral Bloomed Into Big Business by Asking the Right Questions

EMILY: I’m Emily Washcovick, Yelp’s Small Business Expert. Behind the Review features conversations with business owners and customers who wrote one of their Yelp reviews. In our discussions, we talk about lessons they’ve learned that can be used by other small businesses to improve their own reviews…and their bottom line.

Occasionally, I also talk to industry experts who have additional insights into things like customer experience, small business technology, or general advice for running a successful business. Today’s episode was taped in New York City in April of 2023. I sat down with Nic Faitos, owner of Starbright Floral Design, in his business. While I don’t play favorites among small business owners, Nic is now a dear friend and was featured in the very first episode of Behind the Review, along with one other episode last year. He’s been in business for almost thirty years, and while his business has grown beyond what most people consider a “small” business, he’s still got the same mentality about customers — and customer service — as he did in 1994.

Let’s give our conversation a listen.

NIC: The only colorblind florist is walking through the door right now with a big ass bouquet. The phones were ringing off the hook. That is hysterical. Is he really colorblind?

But I’m not entirely colorblind. You know, just like certain things you normally see. I shade. See, yes. Shades. Like, I can’t tell the difference between pastels. Mm. You know, I have a hard time between reds, blues, burgundies, the purples, that kind of thing.

EMILY: So when you were arranging, how were you?

NIC: I never was arranging. Never. I’ve never, I mean, I’ve never arranged anything that you would want to buy.

EMILY: We’re here in person, my very first time touching you. You’re real. How many years have I known you? And this is our first time. Yes.

NIC: It has been a long, wonderful run. It’s unbelievable.

EMILY: Over five years I’ve known about your business, but over 30 years you’ve been in business. Yeah, we are sitting in the business, but for everyone who is not watching. Who are you? Where are we?

NIC: Well, we’re in New York City. We’re on 26th Street, two blocks from the historic Flower District, and obviously it’s Starbright Floral Design. I feel we’ve become part of the fabric of the city. It’s a wonderful place to come to every day and a place everybody looks forward to coming to work. Lots of smiles and we just have a lot of fun.

EMILY: And what I love the most about your business is the variety of everything you do, from the independent consumer who wants an arrangement for a friend, family member, for their house, all the way to these huge mega events.

We’re talking more flowers than you can imagine, big mega budgets. And I sort of knew what to expect when I came here because I know how big you are. But when I walked in, all I thought was. Smooth operation. [NIC: Ah, thank you.] And that’s like your middle name. Walk me through it. What’s it like back there?

How have you gotten to this large scale system? What are you doing in here?

NIC: Sure. Well, obviously it did not start this way. We’ve been doing this, this our 30th year. Mega celebrations in September, by the way, on our anniversary. But it did not start like this, and it wasn’t overnight.

Starbright as a business obviously did not start the way it is now. The creativity, the volume, the ability to turn large projects on very, very short notices.

All of that has become part of our brand. But you learn these things over time and you learn them through developing good customer service skills. Making sure that your clients know what to expect. And that you meet their expectations and you keep all of your promises. And as time goes on, you build on it.

I did not have the experience of a florist of this volume and magnitude 30 years ago. I dare say I did not know the names of all the varieties of the flowers. With time and by bringing in the right people and people that not only want to learn, but also know before they get here – you’re developing an organization that has the backbone to pretty much accomplish just about anything. In fact, a little story which is very, very recent, just yesterday, Horizon Media, which is a very large advertising agency, won the NFL account. Global marketing for the NFL. Well, when they pitched that account, we created a football out of flowers.

EMILY: I saw that. It was beautiful.

NIC: Not only did we have a lot of fun making the football with a real shoe lace, I might add, I subscribed to Ad Age magazine. Yesterday when I saw Ad Age, the issue where it was announced that they won the contract, we celebrated with them. We sent them all kinds of goodies, and we posted the football back on our page, on social media, all over the place. And it’s just something that I’m really, really proud of and beaming, even though it was just one football. It was one thing. It wasn’t a hundred arrangements. It wasn’t some of the large galas and events that we’ve done. I guess you could say the NBA is next.

EMILY: I love it. And what I love about these stories is, none of those new opportunities take away from the independent customer, and that goes back to your customer service. I mean, at the end of the day, when you started and had what, 17 orders for your first Valentine’s Day, you cared about each customer.

And even now, when you’re doing 17 orders an hour, you care about them, you care about their experience. And you started off on the right foot with the high quality product and the incredible floral, but stuff happens. I mean, you are managing so many orders. Not all of them go 100% the way you want. How are you able to continue to bring that customer service even as you grow, and how can you still care about that little guy when you have that hundred thousand dollars event going on?

NIC: Well, for one thing, it’s cultural. And culture and cultural attitudes and expectations flow through the entire team. Whether it’s the way you dress, whether it’s the way you talk to customers, whether it’s the product that you deliver, whether it’s a driver who has his final eyeballs on a product and says, no, I’m not gonna deliver this. It does not look right. I’m gonna take it back to the store, fix it again, and bring it back out. That’s all part of the inner workings of the organization, and that’s where we become a well-oiled machine. That’s where I beam with pride because I have nothing to do with any of that.

All of that is part of who we are and it’s part of the expectation. I like to say that this is an orchestra that has four or five conductors, and they’re all conducting at the same time, each with their own little segment of the instruments. They play a role, and whether it’s customer service, whether it’s design, whether it’s buying quality, searching for new farms, knowing what goes out the door, treating the customer who walks in the store with the utmost respect, regardless of what their spend is.

We don’t look at the volume that a customer brings us, or the potential growth volume. That all takes care of itself. We really do live by a philosophy that if you take care of your customer without having dollar signs in your eyes, the world is gonna be a magnificent place for you and it’s gonna come back to you one way or another.

And we do live by that.

EMILY: I always knew you were operating at this scale, but when I walked through the door today and you showed me that each of your employees has their own station, that was when I realized you are so laser focused on one person doing one part of the process, but also how all of the parts fit together. And that goes in again to your team. Talk to me about how once you hire them, you’re keeping that culture going in the shop.

NIC: Well, for one thing, we don’t have hardly any turnover and I’m very proud of that. For another part, I had a call center experience in my youth, and in a call center what is very typical is you don’t have your own desk. You have a desk that you can use for four or five, six hours. And as soon as you get up and your shift is over, somebody else comes and sits at that desk. You have no privacy. You don’t have a place to put your family photos, your personal articles, your nothing. And whether you’re sitting downstairs in our offices, whether you’re a remote employee, as we have some now, or whether you’re part of the design team, I believe that every employee as part of a overall job satisfaction perspective, I believe that everybody deserves their own personal space, and creating an environment where a designer doesn’t have a bench, doesn’t have a table, but has a desk. And we do call them desks.

And when we first opened this space and we moved here from our prior location, and I looked at the open air, I looked at the space, I looked at the way it was designed or the, what it was like raw. I wanted a Benihana approach to flowers.

And the idea that I wanted was, a customer who walks through the front door – I want them to be able to pick a designer they like. I want them to develop a relationship, that’s their bartender. I want them to be able to walk up to that designer, stand next to ’em. I want them to create their arrangement together.

I want it to be an experience. So the customer’s gonna take 15, 20 more minutes of our time. So what? That’s when we’re building a relationship. That’s when we get to know one another. And you wanna know something? That client who now has developed that kind of confidence in our organization, doesn’t need to come in. He’s gonna call and he’s gonna say, yeah, I’m so and so, and I’d like to place an order. Either delivery or pickup, doesn’t matter. And by the way, I would like Nobal to make it for me because Noal knows what I like. And you know what, Nobal does know. And we take it straight to the station and he then gets to work on it. And yeah, it’s that personality, it’s that fun element. It’s that experience that we’ve brought into the industry. And I’m really proud of that.

EMILY NEW AUDIO: Something else you do in this space is events. You have nights where groups of people are coming in and designing with your team. That’s not normal for most florists, but for you it is.

NIC: Yeah, why not?

EMILY: Why?

NIC: Why not? It’s my favorite answer by the way. When somebody, (EMILY: I know,) when somebody asks me, why do you always answer a question with a question? I say, why not?

EMILY: And what you really mean is, I’m gonna take every opportunity I can.

NIC: Exactly. And you wanna know something? Not every opportunity is gonna work out. [Right!] Not every creative challenge is going to be a hit. Nobody has a monopoly on good ideas. But you try things, and then you evaluate ’em. How do I improve it? How did it go? Do I like it? Am I in a good place with it? And then you kind of build from there. We do nights where we bring in industries. Whether it’s the concierges in the hotels, we bring in private groups, whether it’s Forbes Magazine or an event planning company.

We go onsite and we do events, and it just builds and sometimes it’s a flower buffet. Where people get to come in, pick their own flowers, sit with a designer, designer helps them make an arrangement, they go home and it’s something beautiful.

One of my favorite things to say is that I’ll have a classroom style group of 50 people. Each sitting at a desk with an identical group of flowers assigned to each one of them. And I say, you know, you got 50 people, you got the same flowers on all 50 tables in the same quantities, and you all have the same vase. I venture to say that no two arrangements are gonna be alike when you’re done. They’re all gonna be beautiful. You’ve never done this before. Enjoy the moment. Enjoy the creativity. It’s a spa for the mind.

EMILY: It’s a spa for the mind. That’s one of your longtime phrases.

NIC: It is.

EMILY: That you use.

NIC: I do.

EMILY: And that is all about educating your consumer to want to enjoy this for themselves, to want to send greenery or flowers to a family member or invest in their own space with that.

NIC: Well, yeah, and the truth of the matter is, when you look at it, Emily, I’ve taken a position after 30 years of this, just to keep myself interesting and not bore myself to death with what I do. Cause I really do enjoy what I’m doing. I see myself as somewhat of an ambassador to the floral industry. And I don’t care if you buy your flowers at a supermarket. I don’t care if you go to the local bodega. What I really care about is that you put a glass pitcher on your dining room table.

Go somewhere, buy some flowers, and put a bouquet of flowers on your table, on your desk once every week. It changes the mind. It changes the mindset. You feel good. And that transference of feeling is great. And as you appreciate the existence of flowers in your own space.

You’re gonna come to us or someone like us, and you’re gonna say, you know, I wanna send my friend some flowers because I know how that’s gonna make them feel. The uniqueness about this gifting experience – flowers – is that not only am I gonna send you flowers and you’re gonna feel good because you got ’em and you’re excited and you’re enthusiastic, but when you make that phone call to me or that text message, to tell me how excited you are to have received it, how do you think I feel?

EMILY: Incredible.

NIC: Exactly. And so that transference, that unexpected feel good moment that I get. Because I decided to send you flowers is what propels the industry forward. And it’s what I talk about constantly. And I really do believe that I have the responsibility, as I’ve become the granddaddy of the floral industry in New York, to talk and to take an ambassador’s position, in that feel good moment. And to encourage people to use flowers in any experience that they can.

EMILY: I love that. We’re going to be right back after a quick break.

EMILY : One of the things I really wanted to talk to you about today was your loyalty program. Mm-hmm. And I became aware of it recently. I’ve known you for so long, but I had never seen this email that Starbright sends. And it really is like a roadmap for what business owners should be doing when they communicate with their customers. Can you tell our listeners what that email is and just what it says in there?

NIC: It’s a personal email and it comes from me. It’s somewhat similar, one to the other. But it’s also very highly personalized to the moment and to the person and to the experience. In that note, there is a paragraph dedicated to our loyalty program, which we’re very proud of, and we consider it to be the best in the industry.

There’s a couple of really cool aspects to it. One is that when you sign up, all the important dates that you want to register, whether it’s your birthdays, your anniversaries, your whatevers. You’re gonna get automatic reminders. You’re gonna get discounts and opportunities to pre-order and save and, you know, all the bells and whistles that one might expect.

What’s also very cool about it is that it saves all of your addresses. It’s a private address book that you can pick from. And you build on it over the years. And, you know, your daughter went to Auburn, and when your daughter graduated, now she works in San Antonio. You could change that address very easily and we’ll help you keep track of it. It’s called Frequent Flower.

EMILY: Who came up with that name?

NIC: I don’t know. Someone who flies a lot. [I know who that is.] But before that, okay, when loyalty programs were technologically not possible, because, you know, the web and the internet and whatever were just, were not there. It was codenamed Club Remind.

EMILY: Club Remind and there has to be a reason they wanna do it. Right?

NIC: Right, exactly. And we would remind people by phone calls, because we were working off Rolodex cards and tickler files. So Club Remind was the predecessor to “Frequent Flower”.

You get so many points every time you place an order and every time you reach a certain number of points, you get a gift certificate in the mail that you can use towards your next order. And it’s very high value and it’s very, very useful. Sometimes people let them expire, and they let us know and we say, oops, don’t worry about it, and we will reissue it.

Sometimes when somebody writes back and says, ‘oh gosh, this is very nice!’ When they acknowledge my email, in a passionate way, in a positive way, and they say, ‘I just signed up. Yay. I’m very excited.’ We’re just gonna throw a whole bunch of points into their account as a welcome gift. Just a little something special that we will do for our customers. What’s really cool about it is that you can build your points and at the same time have a discount code that is given to you, say, think of a gold membership, at a gym, or, airlines tiers of memberships and whatnot. Where you’re entitled to certain other discounts with discount codes that don’t expire. When those discount codes are entered, it does not violate the terms of Frequent Flower.

So you hypothetically just placed a $100 order for flowers. You got your 10 points towards your 200, you got your 15% discount, and you’ve got a note in the mail that says, please let me know the next time you place an order and I will look after it personally. And it’s really true. I will look after it personally as long as they write to me and say, Hey Nic, I just placed an order. This is my order number. I will walk that order through and make sure that it’s as high value as possible and it’s an A+ presentation and so on and so forth.

EMILY: So this loyalty program to me is honestly a great example of what you do all the time. Which is, give your customer tons of ways to interact with you and feel close to you. And that doesn’t always mean walking through these doors. [Right.] That is a big part of your business. That has always fascinated me. You have been expressing what happens between these walls digitally for longer than most business owners have even thought of how they’re showing up outside of their business. [Mm-hmm.]

How do you represent your brand and all the different things you offer? Outside of these walls, how do you take this energy and put it out there in other ways?

NIC: Well, for one thing, consumers’ shopping habits have changed dramatically. Very few people, including myself. I don’t wanna walk into a store if I don’t have to. If I have a relationship with somebody, if I know the business, particularly if it’s a small business, particularly if it’s family owned, and you want to support these types of businesses. If they have a way of you being able to reach them and if their trust and the confidence exists, you want to take advantage of it.

So we’ve done everything that we’ve can to expand our relationships, and to build on whether it’s the walk-in customer. We love you, we want to work with you, but we don’t have to see you every time you want flowers. And if you trust us, we’ll make sure that that happens. I can’t tell you how many emails I get, from customers who say, you know what, Nic? I’ve moved, I’m in Los Angeles and I wish I had you. You had a store here. Well, guess what? I do know somebody that I’m affiliated with. If you want, I’ll be more than happy to make an introduction for you or take care of the order.

EMILY: And let me also just say, you don’t just know florists in LA—you know florists in the very small town that I live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (I do) you know florists everywhere. (I do.) And I know that because I’ve had arrangements show up at my house that look like they were made in Starbright, but they were shipped locally.

(Locally, yeah.)That is so huge that you’re willing to be that connector even when they’re not spending money with you. And it goes back to – you just want people to love flowers?

NIC: Yes, I definitely do. And I’ve made it a goal to know who the good guys are in every single zip code, in every single, major market that I possibly can come up with.

It’s loose leaf paper that’s constantly being transposed into databases and excel files and documents, to solidify those relationships. And it’s been a godsend. It really has. Not only in the sense that we have great relationships so that we can recommend, but also florists that are highly, highly appreciative of what we do for them, and they reciprocate. And I’m only using Los Angeles as an example, because this one particular shop that we work with in Los Angeles had a program with Netflix, where they were sending out 200 bouquets on Valentine’s Day. So you can imagine on top of the very, very busiest day of the year, they needed to do a very specific arrangement for Netflix, a hundred of ’em in Los Angeles, and another hundred in New York.

Well, guess what? They called me. They didn’t even ask, ‘can you do it?’ They knew it could be done. I got the phone call and it went something like, Nic, I know I didn’t call you before I in asking, but this is what I promised.

EMILY: But that goes back to why not.

NIC: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

EMILY: Now, something else you’ve always done, even now when you are as big as you are, is you show up when a customer is talking about you anywhere. Mm-hmm. In a review, on social media. Right. Why?

NIC: Why not?

EMILY: I knew I was setting you up for that.

NIC: No, truth be told. absolutely. The personalized aspect of this business is something I never want to give up from. And I’ve heard manager, owner, owner after owner, different managers in the business.

Their constant advice is don’t make the business personal. Don’t make it about you. Make it general. It’s a business. You don’t need to be on the front line and you don’t want people to associate the business with you, because you’re gonna feel trapped, and you’re not gonna have a life. I absolutely disagree with that statement. I don’t live by that rule. And I really believe that I need to be as accessible as possible.

Am I at my desk 24 hours a day, seven days a week? No, absolutely not. Nobody can be. But no matter what, I will answer every email myself. About 200 of them a day. I will return every phone call. I’ll take any call. And I have absolutely no problem taking an order. And that keeps me fresh. That keeps me alive. It lets me know what my customers want. I’m able to keep up with their asks, their trends, to stop issues from becoming major. It’s a lot of different things, and when I read a review, where the client says something to the effect of, ‘Nic took care of me,’ that makes me feel good. It makes me feel like I did something, and whether I’m on the front line with a customer that way, or whether I’m out visiting with a client for a specific project, I want to be involved. I want to be a part of the business. And that’s the part that I enjoy most.

EMILY: You and I have long discussed the fact that sometimes people who have the worst experience turn into the biggest fan. Mm-hmm. But that doesn’t happen on its own. It happens when someone reaches out and tries to problem-solve. [Sure] You have a very unique way of doing that. You don’t go right away to defense mode.

Talk me through how you’re able to maybe remove those emotions and listen to the person who’s upset.

NIC: Well, for one thing, you shouldn’t be thinking about gaining the upper hand in an argument. If you become defensive, you will create an argument. And the customer will never, ever, ever take your side. Now, is every demand, every ask reasonable? Yes, in the mind of the customer. And in the customer’s reality, that is the sphere that we’re living in. And the only one that matters.

I have a lot of favorite lines. One of them is buying flowers should be a happy experience, never a frustrating one.

You choosing to spend money with us is an honor for us, trusting us is an honor. And you never wanted or intended for this phone call to happen. And my only goal right now is to make amends. How can I do that?

And the truth is most people are reasonable. And nobody has ever turned to me and said, ‘Well, you know, that arrangement had two broken stems, therefore, I want free flowers every week for the next year.’ Nobody ever says that. People are reasonable, and when you open it up and you take that full risk, of how, what can I do to make this right, and turn it back over to the customer? ‘Well, you know, you can send me another bouquet. You can give me a store credit towards my next order. You can refund me the money.’

Whatever they say I will do. And when they say, Can I get a refund? I’ll say absolutely. And guess what? You also get to keep the flowers. I know they’re not perfect, but keep them and enjoy them. And they say, are you sure?

And I said, yes, I’m absolutely sure because, and this is another favorite line of mine: ‘I’m absolutely sure that you can keep the flowers because we don’t sell used flowers.’ So think of what it does to my reputation. When I let the customer keep those flowers, not only for their satisfaction – but also for them knowing that when they do order from us again, they’re not gonna get recycled flowers that were in somebody else’s bouquet that wasn’t happy with ’em, we brought ’em back to the store and now he got used roses. We just don’t do that. And because we don’t do that, it elevates confidence. I dare say that nobody does it, I don’t think. But the fact that we emphasize that we don’t do it, we’re crowing about it. We’re yelling out the biggest bullhorn I can find from the tallest mountain. And I want people to know what we do and the extent to which we will go to make sure that they’re happy with us.

EMILY: And what that makes me think of is the fact that by letting them keep it and still honoring what they want, you’ve already decided to look past the dollars and cents, which is where a lot of entrepreneurs get held up.

Well, if I refund this person, what happens with the next one? And you can’t think that way. You’re serving that customer. [Mm-hmm] You’re trying to hear what their experience was, and you’re trying to meet them where they’re at. [Mm-hmm] Even if you’re not seeing eye to eye, sure. You listen to their perspective.

NIC: You listen. You accept the fact that situations like this come up. And the fact is that you want to minimize it by doing your job right the first time. And if you are doing your job right, and hopefully we are, it becomes such a small percentage of your refunds, replacements and everything else. It doesn’t matter if I’m sending out a hypothetical 1000 orders in any given period, and of that 1000 orders, two orders result in those kinds of interactions. I’m gonna look at those two interactions and, you know, hey, it’s the cost of doing business. It’s the cost of my reputation. And those are the two most important customers that I want to get it right for.

That’s who I’m laser focused on at that moment. And I’m not gonna let go of that until I know that it’s come full circle and the customer has been fully satisfied.

EMILY: I think to wrap this conversation up, I wanna take it big scale. We’ve talked about how you are still in the day to day, like you really are ingrained in it, but you also can step away and a lot of entrepreneurs are just hoping one day they can step away.

You are just in Greece for a couple weeks. You do that quite a bit! You’ve got some stuff going on over there. [I do] How did you finally get yourself to the place of, I’m never gonna not be involved, but I trust my team to run without me?

NIC: Well, that’s a big step and a difficult step for most small businesses, for family owned enterprises and for organizations to leap forward from. And yes, I do go to Greece often for family reasons and personal reasons. I will confess that since Greece is seven hours ahead of New York, I start my American workday at three o’clock in the afternoon and I’m on email until midnight.

And I do a full workday regardless of whether I’m here or there. My role in the organization is to feed the pipeline, to keep the marketing alive, to do the emails we talked about, to address customer satisfaction issues, to prepare the higher end proposals, to do some of the cost analysis – whatever the things are that a business needs to run.

And I have figured out how to take my portion and be able to run it from anywhere. Now, having said that, to fully step away the way I do, for a month, six weeks, whatever the time period is, whether it’s two to three times a year. First of all, I’m fortunate enough to have a dedicated son and partner in the business who’s always here when I’m not.

That’s a very big part of it. But it’s also an opportunity for my team to shine, and to do it on its own. And you have no idea when you share and talk and have time with a member of your team, whatever your team does, and say, ‘Hey, I trust you.’ I approve very few things. Whether it’s an email that’s gonna go out, whether it’s pricing on a proposal, whether it’s a design, whether it’s a picture of something that’s gonna go on the internet. Whether it’s this week’s newsletter. I like to see it out of curiosity. But I don’t like to see it with a critical eye before it goes out.

After the fact, I might put in my 2 cents. I may talk about improvements and so on and so forth. For job satisfaction reasons, for creativity, reasons, for reasons of to flourish everybody needs to know that they’re trusted. And everybody needs to know that they have a job, a goal, something to work forward to that doesn’t necessarily always involve supervision. And the more independence you give to your team, and the more you trust your team, the more the team will come through for you. (Absolutely.) And that’s really the bottom line.

There was a time, where if I took a day off years ago, I would call the store and I would say things like, is everything okay? Okay. You look at our store and it’s really no different than the kitchen of a restaurant. In a kitchen of a restaurant, knives do fly all day, figurative knives. And that’s what this kitchen is like too at its peak.

But as time went on, that nervousness that I had, turned into positive energy and I said, you know, what is the worst thing that could have happened? I’m still gonna find the business there tomorrow. The walls are not gonna catch on fire. The culture, the customers, everything is okay.

The quality of the flowers in my refrigerator is A plus. So why do I really need to worry?

EMILY: And you built that trust over time. With yourself, with the team.

NIC: And truly it’s more internal. And it’s a personal problem, not a team problem. And the more you realize that, the easier it is to, I don’t wanna say step back because, you know, I don’t take my time as time off or time. I’m not a lazy person. And I’m not looking to just sit on a beach. I’m looking to sit on a beach with a computer, at a place that has wifi. And that’s the goal, to be able to have that independence, but at the same time have the right team in place that you just know things are falling into place.

EMILY: Well, I am constantly in awe of you, of Starbright. I’m so grateful that you let us come here to film because. It’s wild that I’ve known you for as long as I have and I’ve only imagined what it’s like in here. I just wanna say thank you so much for sharing.

I think where you’re at is a place a lot of entrepreneurs hope to get to and it’s inspiring to hear that you’re still as involved as you are, but have a fully functioning operation that stands behind you and that took a lot of work.

NIC: Thank you very much. Thank you. I want to make this one of many times that you visit our space. The invitation is always open. I never say no to anything. You come up with the ideas and I will make sure that it happens.

EMILY: I love you.

NIC: Love you as well.

EMILY: One of my favorite business owners.

NIC: Thank you, Emily. Thank you very much.