The French Florist CEO Michael Jacobson shares strategies for leaning into brand positioning and reinventing a stagnant industry.
When buying flowers in the 21st century, consumers often turn to corporate aggregators to make their purchases online – but that might change as a new wave of entrepreneurs enters the market.
“Retail is making a comeback, but it’s slightly different than what we might have thought about 20 or 30 years ago,” says Michael Jacobson, franchisor and CEO of The French Florist, a floral brand that is leveraging the power of technology and innovation to challenge the industry’s status quo.
With eight boutique brick-and-mortar flower shops scattered throughout Southern California and Arizona, and a digital platform designed to rival the largest floral aggregators online, the small but mighty franchise brand has established itself as a disruptor in a stagnating industry dominated by a few corporate giants. With its emphasis on delivering an elevated client experience alongside elegant floral arrangements, the company also has the potential to set a new standard for the blossoming resurgence of retail in the franchise space.
Leveraging the power of technology
While The French Florist might be seen as a David among Goliaths these days, getting the brand off the ground wasn’t easy for Jacobson, who took the helm in 2018 after his uncle decided to sell the small florist shop he’d owned since 1978.
Trading his corporate job in Seattle for a new role as a florist in Los Angeles, Jacobson’s first move as a budding entrepreneur was to modernize his uncle’s former business – including streamlining the floral shop’s systems and processes, updating its technology and establishing a brand centered around client satisfaction.
“We were using a blue and white (computer) screen where you had to push F12 to get to the next page. It was like a DOS-based PuTTY software system built in the ‘90s that never had really been updated. And that's what the largest florists in the country were using,” Jacobson recalls.
Although Jacobson says the system was “robust,” it often required nearly four to five months of training for new hires to get the hang of it. The shop also utilized an intricate system for printing orders that required six separate printers, including two fax machines, and cost the small business around $14,000 per year for ink.
To overcome those challenges, Jacobson ordered iPads for each floral designer and developed a custom app to help staff manage orders through a simplified digital process. Despite its high up-front price tag and time investment, the hi-tech solution ultimately helped the small floral business operate more efficiently while enabling it to scale more effectively in the future.
“Since then, millions of dollars have been invested into continuing to improve our platform, and that had profound results for us. We were able to operate the shop a lot more efficiently and allowed us to focus on ultimately the most important thing: the client experience,” Jacobson says.
Building a meaningful brand
For Jacobson, technology was only part of the process of making sure The French Florist lived up to its potential. The next step was differentiating the business from competitors by creating a strong brand identity and positive customer experiences that turned customers into repeat clients.
“There's meaning behind being a great brand, and so we've been investing a lot of work on surfacing the deeper meaning of why we do what we do,” says Jacobson.
Rather than positioning the shop to compete against other small local florists, though, Jacobson focused on taking on large online floral aggregators instead – honing in on their weaknesses and identifying areas where The French Florist could outdo them in terms of quality and client service.
“People are ordering more flowers online than ever before. There's a little bit of, I don't want to call it fear, but unexpected results when you are ordering online. So, then you have these national aggregators … that traditionally have been, at least in our industry, the dominant market force. And in our opinion, are not really adding value. As a matter of fact, they're probably detracting value because they're taking huge commissions from florists and ultimately, the most important part is providing a poor customer experience,” Jacobson says.
Noting the impact of brands like Tiffany & Co. – recognized as much for its signature turquoise boxes as its fine jewelry – Jacobson worked to develop a compelling brand story for The French Florist based on creating memorable moments. He then marked those concepts online through search engine optimization while emphasizing relationships with clientele in person.
“When you're purchasing French Florist flowers, there's a special moment. There's a recognition that you're sending love and that you're saying to the recipient, ‘You are loved.’ It's an unspoken, intangible message that's being conveyed. And it's an important one that's meaningful,” Jacobson says.
Embracing a ‘virtuous cycle’
At The French Florist, finding ways to elevate the customer experience has been an important part of the business model since the beginning – and it’s been critical to the brand’s growth over time.
“We are in the retail and brick-and-mortar floral space, but we're approaching it in a very different way,” Jacobson says.
Part of that approach included innovating the brand’s supply chain by becoming a wholesaler, allowing the brand to purchase flowers directly from farms rather than following the traditional supply chain from farm to consolidator, processor, distributor, wholesaler, retailer and finally to the consumer. Today, the company purchases fresh flowers from farms in the U.S. and across the globe.
“We're able to get flowers that are higher quality because they're coming straight from the farm. And they're lower cost because we're skipping the intermediaries. And so what that translates to, is a better client experience,” Jacobson says, adding that time saved also translates into fresher, longer-lasting flowers.
In addition to bolstering customer satisfaction, those cost-effective strategies also allowed The French Florist to open two more corporate locations in Southern California, with both outperforming the industry’s average metrics – and inspiring Jacobson to take the business to the next level.
A principled approach to scaling
For Jacobson, deciding how to scale the brand was a tedious process that involved weighing the advantages and disadvantages of franchising while comparing options for launching a tech company or opening corporate locations across the U.S.
“I had a very negative stigma of franchising at the time. Since then, obviously it's changed. There's the bad systems out there that create the negative stigma, then there's good systems out there. And then there's great systems out there, too. So we started to study the great systems, ultimately focusing on franchise owner profitability and success,” Jacobson says.
In mid-2024, The French Florist launched its first franchise opportunity with a business model emphasizing those concepts.
“It's been great so far, but there were years of infrastructure-building and making sure that when we launched this program, we wanted our franchise owners to experience a level of success, ideally, that is beyond our expectations and hopefully beyond their expectations as well,” Jacobson says.
As a new franchisor, Jacobson has flouted the idea of private equity and investors he says “love gobbling up a good franchise.” Pointing to the company’s profitability, he notes that quick exits can sometimes leave franchisees without support. Instead, he’s adopted a principles-based approach to business, carefully determining the company’s core values and selecting new franchisees based on whether their principles are aligned with the brand – including a willingness to invest in 15- to 20-year time horizons.
“I think that if your company looks inward and defines those principles and operates based on those principles, we don't spend very much time looking at the competitors around us,” Jacobson says.
To learn more about franchising opportunities with The French Florist, visit frenchfloristfranchise.com.
