THE WORLD OF FLOWERS AT YOUR FINGERTIPS

Florist shopping online flowers

THE WORLD OF FLOWERS AT YOUR FINGERTIPS

My name is Antonio Crespo aka “Tony”. I’m passionate about life and my business. I was born in Quito, Ecuador into an agricultural family. My Grandfather in the early 80’s planted one of the first rose farms in the region. The farm grew into a 50-hector farm producing some of the best roses in the industry. The farms name was Love Roses. Some of you might recognize the name. It was a beautiful farm that during my youth I had the pleasure of running around and playing in. My Brother Daniel and I decided to jump into the business in 2006 during our college years. We’re proud to say we are 4 generations now with our children getting involved.

FMI Farms has always been an importer that distributes to florists nationwide. We source product from all over the world (Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Holland, Italy, England, South Africa, Kenya, California, Alaska, the Carolina’s, and Florida). We started out with just roses from Ecuador but ran into so many florists that needed too many novelty items that developing those sources was necessary. Today we have at any given day 10,000+ line items we manage and over 50 partner farms.

A retail florist in any part of the United States, and neighboring countries can log onto our website and shop. Items are sold by the bunch and by the box. The website displays what is available depending on the season and which items are sold by the bunch and which are sold by the box.

Things haven’t always been so rosy! Our early days, we were 4 guys picking, packing, and shipping. We would speculate on an inventory and hope to sell every stem. It took a very long time to learn how to speculate. And that is the name of the game in our business. As we know, fresh cut flowers have a fast shelf life.

This brings me to my next point. Trusting your sources. Every person in the chain of flower distribution must take “time” into consideration. Once a flower is cut off its plant, its days are numbered. A rose has approximately 14 days from when its cut to be on someone’s table.  This requires everyone in the process to do their due diligence.

Traditional Logistical Path

Grower to importer, importer to wholesaler, wholesaler to florist, florist to consumer). There are a lot of steps here for that poor little flower. Trucking companies, and wholesalers.

Modern Logistical Path with us

Grower to importer, and importer shipping over night to retailer.

This is why, we believe in our distribution process!

After 15 years, I think we figured this one out…