Nemuel DePaula has never been afraid of big pivots. The Brazil native immigrated to Boston at age 10, started his own graphic design business, Grita, while still in high school, and moved himself and the business across the country to Los Angeles in 2013. Four years later, DePaula took a gamble again with Lenita, the part-time mobile flower shop he launched and named after his mother.
DePaula, 35, has been captivated by flowers since childhood. “The first thing I ever stole was a rose,” he said with a laugh as he recalled the perfect bloom he snipped from his neighbor’s garden and slipped to his mom as a small child. Over the years, his aesthetic sensibilities evolved from purloined roses to less conventional species. His latest love is the “graffiti anthurium”, a tropical flower with a natural paint-splattered effect that resembles a bloodied orchid – but in a cool way.
For many years, DePaula operated under the assumption that his flower shop days would come much later in life. Instead, opportunity struck in the form of a used 1991 Dodge Aeromate truck he found on Craigslist. “In Los Angeles, food trucks are popular, and we’re blessed with the sun year-round,” DePaula said. “So I thought: why don’t I just take a stab at a weekend flower truck?”
DePaula bought the vehicle for $6,000. He gave it a fresh coat of shell-pink paint, and took it out around Los Angeles on select Saturdays and Sundays. In addition to flowers, he sold handmade gifts by local artists as well as his own line of greeting cards and cheerfully branded Lenita merchandise, such as truck-shaped enamel pins and mod flower stickers.
What began as a quirky side hustle eventually blossomed into DePaula’s full-time priority: a profitable business with a customer base of its own. The numbers are on his side: according to the market research firm Arizton, the US floral gifting market is predicted to grow from $12.25bn in 2022 to $18.9bn in 2028.
Although DePaula continues to take occasional graphic design commissions, Lenita became his central focus this past May. With the help of three silent partners – two of whom are his twin brother and their 37-year-old sister – he opened Lenita’s first brick-and-mortar retail space in Los Angeles’s hip Highland Park neighborhood. The cozy storefront, which used to house a nail salon, is nestled between a bar and grill and a pizza parlor in a retail strip located across the street from the legendary art deco Highland Theater movie house.
Committing to a storefront spurred more ideas and desires. DePaula wanted to scale the business beyond flowers and handicrafts. “I really want to sell people more of an experience than just a product,” he said. He’d already had a taste of causing a stir with his flower shop on wheels. “The truck already does that for us, just by being a flower truck. It’s very unexpected and unique,” he said of the vehicle that inspires people to snap photos for social media. Ensuring that a storefront would have a similar effect is a bigger lift.
To create a similarly immersive retail experience, DePaula and his team of three part-time retail employees, a part-time events and communications coordinator, and a rotating crew of four to six freelancers are working to tap into Lenita’s potential as an event space. Customers can pay a fee to spend a few hours learning a new skill against the store’s flower-filled backdrop. Recent offerings include sessions on wreath making, flower arrangement and jewelry design.
From an operational standpoint, DePaula sees these workshops as serving a dual purpose: they provide the business with a supplementary revenue stream – workshop tickets cost anywhere from $75 to $185 a person – and the events attract new customers into the shop. Some of those customers might even make in-store purchases after class, or return when a friend has, say, a party or a ballet recital. Eventually, DePaula hopes that the craft workshops will be one among many additional in-person program offerings at Lenita; he’s thinking about things like artisan pop-up shops and artist installations.
But while DePaula believes that workshops are what sets Lenita apart, he concedes that they may also be his small team’s biggest hurdle. “Getting regular people to come into the shop to do workshops is a cool idea, but how, exactly, do we do it?” he said. DePaula has struggled to broadcast the business’s offerings beyond flowers and goods.
He and his team have two customer bases, and challenges to go with each of them. They have been careful not to stray far from their original purpose, for fear of alienating the original client base of flower truck fans who enjoyed the creative flower arrangements. They are also mindful of not turning off new customers who might balk at the store’s unorthodox offerings and artisanal pricing. “When you come into a shop that is sourcing flowers from local farms and is keeping the money within the community, but selling at a higher price point than the grocery store, people don’t always understand why,” DePaula said.
As Lenita puts down its roots, DePaula must ultimately figure out how to continue to grow revenue in a way that feels true to his original vision. The Guardian asked three experts to consider DePaula’s predicament and share their advice.
John Mullins
Associate professor of management practice in marketing and entrepreneurship at the London Business School
DePaula has already deftly positioned his business in such a way that offering workshops led by local crafters and artists will fit right in. He’s long been selling handmade gifts, and his flexible brand does not limit what he can sell in the same way as a brand with a name like, say, “Flower Power” would. Moving forward, DePaula should prioritize developing a regular monthly calendar so that his customers will know when to expect workshops to run. This can even be somewhat minimal at first. He should also focus on sourcing the right crafters and artists from the local community.
DePaula needs to ask himself just a few questions to get started. First: what per-person price points will sell best, and at what times and days of the week? I recommend that he run some experiments and see what works. Second: what should be the revenue split between the partners and Lenita? My advice is to let the partners keep all their earnings. Finally: which local crafters and artists already have a local following? For this, I suggest he ask his regular customers who they’d like to see and what they’d like to make with their own hands.
Puja Bhola Rios
Chief revenue officer for Frame.io, and author of Get It Together: A Winning Formula for Success from the Boss You Need
If I were DePaula, I would prioritize focusing on growing revenue and profit for the current business. Then I would think about the costs and potential strain of scaling the current business. Workshops would be my last priority.
Everything boils down to the numbers. DePaula needs to establish how much revenue he is realistically expecting from workshops in order to determine whether they are worth the strain on his staff. In the meantime, he should focus on maximizing revenue in Lenita’s core competency. Does Lenita have an up-to-date website with online purchasing options? Has Lenita captured as much of the wedding, holiday and funeral market as it can? If the answer to either of these questions is no, he needs to address those gaps before expanding the business.
As for the question of how to market Lenita’s new, expanded brand identity to both new and existing customers: until DePaula fully understands Lenita’s current numbers and has captured as much of the total addressable market that he and his team can, there is nothing to communicate yet.
Vivian Tu
Former equities trader, personal finance content creator and author of Rich AF: The Money Mindset That Will Change Your Life
The first step is to figure out which part of his business brings the most revenue. Since flowers are the main component of the business, my guess is that they are likely also the top moneymaker. I’d advise using the top moneymaker to fund the expansion of the business and brand.
The second and most important step is to figure out who Lenita’s customer base is and target specific activations, add-ons and events that cater to their interests. For singles or romantic buyers, he could host a speed-dating event. For event buyers, he could host a wedding planning seminar for couples and vendors looking to meet future clientele.
The third step is to look at logistics. I noticed after a quick internet search that Lenita is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. Maybe DePaula could consider turning Lenita into a co-working space on those days, which would only require a few modular tables and chairs and a strong wifi connection, and would not demand heavy human capital. Because Lenita is such a physically beautiful space, he could also consider using a site like Peerspace to allow people to rent out the store for photoshoots outside of standard business hours. This approach would have the added benefit of organic marketing.
The fourth and final step is to take advantage of social media to expand brand identity. DePaula can geo-target folks who live in the Los Angeles area and keyword-target people whose interests align with the customer demographics. I’d focus on creating short-form video content, which is what most online platforms are prioritizing these days, maybe about florals or the events he plans on hosting. It could also be a great opportunity to collaborate with local creators.
The choice
Mullins’ plan resonated most. “I think overall he seemed to understand the brand a bit better, to understand that we’re going beyond flowers,” DePaula said. DePaula was particularly struck by Mullins’ suggestion that he maintain a monthly events calendar. When he began running the truck side of his business, DePaula gleaned the importance of tending to an up-to-date schedule with adequate advance notice for letting customers know where and when to find the mobile shop.
“At first, we would just kind of figure out where we were going to be a few days in advance, and then people couldn’t really plan,” he said. “Then we started doing calendars monthly and we realized, hey, the longer people know about the pop-ups, the better it is. That’s something I think we can definitely apply to the workshops.” DePaula also appreciated Mullins’ point that the shop’s scheduled offerings can be minimal at first as the team figures out what works. He plans to apply this scheme to future event scheduling.
DePaula was also intrigued by Mullins’ suggestion that Lenita allow its creative partners to keep all of their workshop earnings. While DePaula doesn’t think that this is a feasible step for his business to take right now, he sees it as a possibility for future months when the shop is more firmly established. “This enriches our community, expands our offerings, supports local artists and gets people inside the shop,” DePaula said. “A workshop attendee might grab a bloom or merch on their way out, but even if they don’t, it will make them think of Lenita next time they need florals or a gift. It’s about building relationships – with our partners and our customers.”
