Meet the Guys Brightening Chicago With Blooms That Give Back

Flowers for Dreams in Chicago is preparing for Valentine's Day, but for co-founders Steven Dyme and Jo Dickstein, ramping up for the crazy-busy holiday doesn't involve stocking baby's breath, chocolates, or stuffed animals.

It does, however, involve deciding which local Chicago charities will benefit from the flower sales. Each month, the company features one worthy cause and contributes a quarter of all profits. Since launching in 2012, Flowers for Dreams has donated nearly $200,000 to local charities.

History and growth

Flowers for Dreams started as a way for Steven and Jo, two college students at the time, to make a little extra money by peddling flowers outside graduation ceremonies. Today, just five years later, Flowers for Dreams and its 25+ employees offer much more than just flower delivery.

In 2014, the company added event services to its repertoire, offering beautiful flowers for everything from weddings to corporate events. Last year, they launched a flower truck that sells flowers throughout the city. Learning opportunities like wreath-making workshops were previously just seasonal, but thanks to a recent space expansion, Flowers for Dreams plans to offer workshops year round.

But there's one thing that hasn't changed since Steven and Jo started the business: a commitment to offer what larger, big-box florists can't like local small-batch designs, complete quality control, and prices that even a 20-something customer could afford.

Modern yet affordable floral design

One reason for the rapid growth and success of Flowers for Dreams is its focus on designs that are simple yet affordable – something totally different from what most large-scale florists tend to focus on. After selling flowers for just a year, Steven and Jo realized how uninspiring and inaccessible traditional floral shops were – especially for millennials.

"The big online companies often felt stuck in the 1990s with huge catalogs of choices and tons of teddy bears, chocolates, and more," says Steven."The local florists that had such neat designs seemed so limited with their delivery capacity and scale. Not to mention they were so dang expensive."

With this in mind, Steven and Jo set out to create a business that offered affordable blooms. Their bouquets start at $35, a price that doesn't have any service fees attached and doesn't require a six-figure income.

"We think our design aesthetic and values reflect more modern, millennial preferences," Steven points out. "That's what our business was designed to cater to, and we felt frustrated that a lot of the big-box online flower companies did not reflect that."

The cofounders know the millennial market well. In fact, the cofounders are millennials. While that's beneficial for catering to a younger customer base, it also comes with its challenges. "We're pretty young guys. That often makes things like recruitment, management, credibility, and financing more difficult," Steven says. "That challenge hasn't gone away, but we tend to own our youth, using it as a means rather than a crutch. We like to think we see the industry and the world in a different, often less jaded way."

Flowers for Dreams even keeps millennials in mind when they're choosing packaging for the designs. While most florists use materials like plastic that aren't environmentally friendly, Flowers for Dreams uses recyclable cloth wrap and boxes. Some clients even get creative and reuse the packaging for things like bags and place mats.

Community connection

Something else millennials crave that big-box florists don't provide is a business with strong connections to the community. "We want to be a leader in using business as a force for good," says Steven. "There is an emerging beyond-profit group of companies that are interested in making money, but also care deeply about the community they support and benefit from."

For Flowers for Dreams, that community connection comes not just from donating a portion of its profits to local charities. It also comes from how it sources materials.

Steven and Jo both have previous experience in the floral industry, running a seasonal flower business and even working briefly at a wholesale florist. This experience revealed an ugly side to the flower business: florists supporting farms that mistreat workers and pay subhuman wages.

They also saw how disconnected the industry often is from the communities it serves. "We wanted people to be able to see, feel, and smell their product, from where it's made to the delivery," Steven says. "We hope we're helping usher in a more local, craft flower movement and bringing ethical decision-making and a more social conscience to an industry that hasn't always been known for that."