Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Canada's women's soccer strikes, Rihanna plays the Super Bowl, and a startup prepares for its biggest day of the year. Have a productive Monday.
- Floral arrangements. The NFL's Super Bowl is now over—but a Super Bowl of another kind for Seema Bansal Chada, the founder of Venus et Fleur, is one day away. The 8-year-old brand sells flowers that last for up to one year, and Valentine's Day is its biggest holiday. Over 30% of the brand's expected annual revenue for 2023 will be through this week's sales.
Bansal Chadha has been preparing for this year's Valentine's since, well, last year's. A year out, she and her cofounder husband, Sunny Chadha, start planning what to offer for next year's holiday; this year they introduced chocolates. Eight months out, they begin to get the operational pieces in place with their 100 employees and 10 retail stores, plotting supply chain and fulfillment, the physical setup at the company's two warehouses, and staffing. Three weeks out is when orders start to roll in.
The flowers those customers will receive are mainly coming from South America, most from a farm in Ecuador. Venus et Fleur removes the color from the flowers and treats them with wax and natural oils, dehydrating the roses in the process. The company then dyes the flowers back to their colors; the process allows the flowers to last for up to a year.
The Venus et Fleur Valentine's customer is usually male; during the rest of the year, women shop from the brand for gifts or for themselves. The brand is best known for its "eternity roses" but has added other flowers like orchids and gardenias to its assortment, helping to reach more customers who are buying for themselves at other times of the year.
The married cofounders bootstrapped the business together in the early days of their relationship—and were inspired by their own Valentine's Day story to found the brand.
The brand's second-biggest holiday is around the corner after Valentine's: Mother's Day. "I am always super prepared for the first quarter of the year," Bansal Chada says. "Other times, I really try to stay inspired so we can keep creating new collections."
Already, Bansal Chadha is thinking ahead to Valentine's 2024. The creator of the eternity rose is eager to add more variety to the holiday. "It would be nice to introduce something new—a new flower, a new point of view—into the world of Valentine's Day and the world of love," she says.
Running such a seasonal business has its challenges—as Bansal Chadha knows as she approaches Venus et Fleur's eighth go-round with this particular holiday— but she appreciates the enthusiasm the brand receives from customers every year. "I would love for every month to feel like Valentine's Day," she says.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
@_emmahinchliffe
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