Juan Palacio is no stranger to travel — just like the products his company sells.
For years, the native of Bogotá, Colombia, has spent time between his native country and his home away from home, Miami, for more than two decades after arriving in the U.S. in 2000.
Along the way, the company he founded in 2015, BloomsyBox, spread its national reach, delivering fresh flowers to customers throughout the country. In a regular month, the company will ship in the vicinity of 30,000 to 40,000 boxes of flowers. That number can exceed 70,000 around certain holidays.
In September 2021, Palacio planted the roots of his family — and of his company — in Louisville.
“Miami is easy … because Miami is almost Latin America, right? Just speak Spanish. We find everything there. The Hispanic population is massive,” Palacio told me recently while in his home in Crestwood, Kentucky. “So moving to Louisville was literally getting out of our comfort zone. I mean, it’s a different world for us, with not only the weather — but the people [have] been amazing. It’s been amazing in every aspect.”
As a sign of his commitment, BloomsyBox recently agreed to terms for an approximate 5,000-square-foot distribution center in Louisville — where the bouquets are assembled — at 720 Locust Lane, just to the northeast of the Kentucky State Fairgrounds. The company has a small production that started earlier this summer, but hopes to have a full-scale operation running out of the facility by the end of September.
Palacio said the decision to relocate from South Florida was “50% business, 50% personal.”
On the business side, he realized the major advantage would be to live in the city that is the home base of the air delivery operations of UPS, one of BloomsyBox’s main carriers. By being here, he would be able to have a later deadline to send out flower deliveries — around 11 p.m., usually — and guarantee their arrival the next day.
Palacio had made several visits to Louisville over since 2019 for this sole purpose. In 2021, he was traveling to the Derby City once a month.
About three years ago, someone had recommended to Palacio that he should look for customer service team members in Louisville. As a result, out of the seven of the company’s employees who live in Louisville, a majority of them work on the customer service team. BloomsyBox has a total of 33 employees, Palacio said.
On the personal side, Palacio and his wife have two daughters (ages 10 and 13) and were looking for a part of the country that was more conducive for children.
“We wanted our girls to experience a different type of city, a smaller city — I want to say the real American experience,” Palacio said.
Palacio has also embraced the bourbon scene.
“Now that’s my drink of choice,” said Palacio, who enjoys rye whiskey in particular. “If you were to have asked me that just two years ago, I would have said ‘What is that?’”
Successful subscriptions
When Palacio started BloomsyBox in 2015 with a silent business partner, he wanted to go beyond what is known as the “occasions market” in the floral industry — Valentine’s Day and Mothers’ Day, to be exact — by using a subscription model that would “close the gap between the occasions.”
Furthermore, the company has been able to increase its monthly subscriptions where the flowers of that month are a surprise until they arrive. Palacio said that subscriptions account for approximately 80% of his business, with 60% of those orders being at the monthly rate.
The cost for a single delivery ranges from $60 to $100. There are, on average, around 150 different bouquets from which to choose.
“We spend a lot of time and resources on curating the flowers that we send to our subscribers,” Palacio said. “We don’t tell the customers what they’re going to receive. In the end, that has proven to be, I guess, our main success factor.”
The company has been a mainstay on the Inc. 5000 list over the last few years, growing its revenue around 400% in 2020 (a Covid-induced bump) and 300% more in 2021.
“I thought we were going to close the business, but then we bounced [back],” Palacio said. “And, we grew [like] crazy … We started hiring people. It was just a rollercoaster, but we ended up growing tremendously.”
Palacio attributes the fact that customers’ average life cycle with BloomsyBox is nine months to the way he was able to organically grow its customer base.
BloomsyBox relies upon the collective harvests of approximately 20 family farms for its flowers, many of which are located in South America.
“Given the fact that we know what our consumption is going to be, we [make] very precise forecasts,” said Palacio, who added that his company is always thinking six months down the road when it comes to what it requests the farms to plant.
Earlier this summer, Palacio was chosen to take part in the 15th cohort as one of 70-plus founders at a business scaling program through Latino Business Action Network. The 10-week program took place both online and at Stanford University.
“It was a great experience for me,” he said. “It gave me a lot of perspective, and the networking was fantastic.”
Going forward, Palacio hopes to make Louisville the official main hub of his company, with a traditional office space for employees.
In the here and now, the company is actively looking for venture capital firms as it looks to raise $10 million in a Series A round.
Recently, BloomsyBox began offering specialty Colombian coffee — a tribute to his roots as his grandfather owned a coffee farm. Customers should expect to see more offerings in the near future, such as chocolates.
“The coffee has always been there,” Palacio said. “It’s part of my DNA.”
