How to Start a Company During the Pandemic: A Discussion with SnapBlooms’ Murali Nethi

Welcome to the Marketing Growth Podcast. I’m Shane Barker, your host. Today, Murali, the founder and CEO of Hana Florist POS and SnapBlooms, is back with us to discuss how to start a business during the pandemic, the major challenges of doing so, and how to overcome them. I wanted to talk about your new company, right? And we have SnapBlooms, and we’re going to talk about that, because you decided to start it in the middle of a pandemic. Rumor has it that we had a COVID situation. You said, “Hey, listen to this: The world needs us, and we’re just going to push this thing out.” I assume you were working on it before COVID. It just happened. Tell us a little bit about SnapBlooms and the idea behind the company.

You’ve leveled the playing field, pretty much. I mean, you’ve made it so that before, they would have to go through a third party, not get any information, and be praying that they don’t disconnect and that you don’t lose that lead funnel when leads are coming in. But you guys have come in and said, “Hey, listen,” take a little percentage off the top, and then they get access. So what you’re really doing is you’re bringing them clients. They could have ordered from you once, twice, 345, 10 times, right? And then you’re also helping them by giving them the knowledge and showing them how to stay on top of those clients, send them newsletters, and handle the marketing side of things that most florists aren’t going to know how to do and really don’t want to do. You guys have made it a done-for-you type situation: “Hey, you can click this, you can do this. Keep it simple,” because that’s what they want. If it’s not going to be simple, they’re not going to do it.

Yeah, I love that. So you guys—was there any reason why you launched during the COVID-19 pandemic? Was it because everything made sense at that time? You said, “Hey, people really need this to generate sales.” And we were going to come out in two years, but we decided, “Hey, we got to push this thing out sooner because florists are not making as much money right now because of COVID.” What was the rationale behind that?

So it’s, yeah, so it was the right place, right time, right situation. Said, “Okay, hey, we’ve got a little lull time. Hey, this is, we can launch this thing, work out the bugs. Work out the kinks.” It’s so funny. The pandemic, obviously, there’s a lot of things that have happened in India and the US, I mean, all over, to people that have been affected. But there are some good things that, I think, businesses have seen on the business side of things. People were saying, “Hey, we’ve got to be ready.” We never would have thought anything like COVID-19 or a pandemic, or any of that, would have affected the whole world, right, other than, say, World War Three or something. Something that literally shut things down. And we’re like, “We’re making you shut down.” And it’s like, “What? This is a movie, that’s not the real world.” I think what you guys put out there with SnapBlooms is awesome because now it says, “Hey, we’ll start bringing in clients for you. We’re going to help you manage them. I’m going to help you stay in front of them. I’m going to help you do things better,” at a fraction of the cost, because then you’re not reliant on me. I mean, you could leave if you want to, but why would you? Because you can go to the other guy that will never even tell you the information—that doesn’t make any sense. Yeah, I love that. I love that which you guys put out. I think it couldn’t have come out at a better time.

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So let’s talk about some of the challenges, right? I mean, it’s not like it’s just easy to launch software. You click go, and you tell a few people on your software team, and then two days later, your software’s out there. I know firsthand, creating software is not easy, and you’ve obviously been doing it for 30 years, so you’re a little bit of a seasoned vet. It’s easier for you because you’ve got the team. But talk about some of the challenges that you faced when you were creating SnapBlooms.

Logistics, yeah, I think that was one of the things with COVID that I didn’t really understand. I don’t think anybody did—how would it affect the supply chain, not only with flowers? I know this once again because I have clients who are florists. A lot of them get their flowers—roses and stuff—from Ecuador and Colombia. Obviously, flowers have a shelf life, and you’ve got to get them over here; they come into the Port of Miami, and then Miami. I don’t know as much about flowers as you do, but I’ve got some knowledge here, and it’s incredible. Then you’ve got to get them to the table, take pictures, and get people together. I was just talking about this a few months ago when there were issues in Colombia—huge shipments of roses stopped for a little while, trying to get things over here. Now, other countries do it, but certain roses only come out of Colombia. That’s what I love about what I do—there are so many different types of businesses. I’m a sponge for new businesses, just to understand supply chains and how people do things. I had never put two and two together: roses just come in and it’s not a big deal. They are made down the street, cut, and brought in, but the logistics of that are pretty incredible. I can only imagine all the variables. Obviously, the flowers need to look good, and you have the photographer there, you need to get the location. Do they wear masks? Don’t wear masks? Are they going to be there in time? How many people are going to be in the room? The logistics, when usually it’s just you book it, get the photographer there, and get the flowers there in three days, are not that easy.

Yeah, that’s the thing. It’s a crazy thing to me because when you really look at it, I enjoy flowers, but now I really understand logistics and what it takes to get a flower to your home, and I appreciate it 10 times more. I just think it’s a big deal. What have you guys seen? Obviously, the picture and all that fun stuff—for the floral industry, how has it changed due to the pandemic? What have you seen on your side?

Wanna tell you another thing is, is that, you know, the there’s gonna be a huge boom. I mean, every now we talk about like events coming back and weddings. I mean, now that things are starting to open up, it’s pretty incredible. I mean, there was, once again, a lot of my the lot of my florist clients, a lot of them are wholesalers, and they would, once again, they had certain parts of the business that were still going well for the most part, but event stuff, I mean, just was a halt. Like, I mean, everybody’s giving refunds, you know. And a lot of these businesses, you know, the unfortunate part is, they collect money, and they go buy stuff. They do stuff like a lot of them, the refunds aren’t always there, right? So it was a difficult situation for people is like, Hey, I already ordered your flowers, or already ordered food, or I already ordered something. It’s like, how do you, how do you work through that? I mean, that’s, that’s a, that’s a hard deal. I do think the good thing, I think, in the floral industry, and just in the world in general, is, you know, or from at least e commerce perspective, is that due to COVID, it accelerated everybody’s need to be online, right? And to really learn that one before it was like, okay, yeah, I’ve got a website. I mean, it’s not that big of a deal, because I’ve got my brick and mortar. I, you know, I’ve been here for 25 years. I know Bob, I know Jane, I know Jennifer, I know everybody locally. This is awesome. You know what’s going to affect my business? I’m going to retire in three years, and then I’ll then all of a sudden this thing called COVID hit. And you’re like, what’s going on? Like, what do I how do I pivot? Yeah, nobody was like, How do you like, now you have to do this thing called online, and you got to do this thing called the website, you know, and a lot of the clients. The reason I’m talking about this is because I was doing a lot of work for the small business administration, I jumped on with the small or the SBDC. And the reason I did that was because I knew so many businesses were going to get screwed, you know, there was going to be such a bad situation. And I was like, How can I help? And so that was why I jumped on with that. That’s how I got florist clients. Typically, I didn’t have florist clients because, you know, nothing against florist clients, but they don’t have the budget to on what I what I asked for. So, you know. And so I said, Well, hey, if I can give my expertise and do it for free, then I’ll do that. And so I did a lot of that during this last year, year and a half, just to help. And that’s, once again, that’s when I got into some interesting industries, like the florist industry, which I think, I think everybody’s now at that point where if you were able to generate some some business online. That’s awesome, right? I mean, that’s really where you have to be, because if this happens again, which I’m, you know, hoping it doesn’t, but now it’s a situation. We never thought that was a deal, and now it’s a deal. And so now you gotta look at that. So hopefully both revenue streams are opening back up online. Can generate some sales. We’ll continue that. It’s always good to, last time I checked, it’s always good to have two revenue streams. It’s two is better than one, I think, is no matter how we look at it, right for the most part, right? I would much rather have two revenue streams than one. I think that’s pretty basic and understanding. Thanks, Murali, it’s been a great episode. I’m sure listeners learned a lot from your experiences of starting a company during the pandemic. If you’re a florist, you probably know why it’s important to have two revenue streams, and how going online can help you bring in sales even when the world is shut down. And our conversation doesn’t end here. We’ll discuss the role of automation in growing your business on the next episode. So stay tuned.