NYLP: Welcome to the New York Launch Pod the New York Press Club award winning podcast highlighting new startups businesses and openings in the New York City Area. I’m Hal Coopersmith. It’s spring and in this episode we are talking all about flowers with It’s By U a subscription flower business that you assemble at home. There’s been a movement towards bringing more natural items like plants and flowers to the home and office and Its BY U is a part of that. Here’s Caroline Strzalka, a Co-Founder.
Caroline: It’s been a generation that we’ve lost that need, that desire for fresh flowers and flowers are actually really good for us. So we, as humans, we’re kind of coming back to this need for flowers again. We’ve been with flowers for thousands of years and it’s something innate in us
NYLP: In the episode you will learn why flowers are so important to happiness, why Its By U has you assemble the flowers at home, how these flowers last longer and a whole lot more. And if you are a fan of It’s By U or think they may be good for Mothers Day there is a discount code at the end of the episode and the show notes. So lets go to the interview.
Stepping onto the Launch Pod are Caroline and Christine Strzallka. They have the same last name. They tell me that’s because they’re sisters. Welcome Caroline and Christine.
Christine: Hi.
NYLP: So you have started a company, It’s By U, Subscription flowers. How did that come to be?
Christine: It’s actually more than subscription flowers. It is do it yourself subscription flowers. You’re learning flower arranging with us and, in a way, it started out because of me. This is Christine speaking by the way. I was a part time florist. I had my own floral studio in Philadelphia called “Secret of Flowers” and things were going well for us and my old business partner and I were seven time winners of the Philadelphia International Flower Show.
NYLP: I saw that. It’s very impressive.
Christine: Thank you. What’s really impressive about the flower show itself is that it’s the oldest flower show in America and the largest indoor flower show in America and it takes place the first week of March in Philadelphia every year and it’s amazing. I was working with my business partner and we were doing this great floral business. We saw that there were opportunities where people would come to us and ask us for do it yourself, flower arranging workshops and we started doing a lot of them on a regular basis and they got to be actually the majority part of our business. I was talking with Caroline, who is very entrepreneurial-minded, and you know, Blue Apron had just come out at the time and the meal kits were on the cusp of becoming something big, and she said, take a look at these meal kits. Do you think that there’s something that could be done with flowers and plants? And I said, maybe, and we had to do some experimenting, so we started experimenting and it seemed that it was working and It’s By U was born.
NYLP: And why are people interested in do it yourself flower arrangements? You said that that was a growing part of your business, but why is that?
Christine: You know what? I think there are a couple of things. I think it actually started around 2007, 2008 when things were going south in the economy and people still wanted flowers, but could not afford to have a florist on a regular basis or just either couldn’t afford it or didn’t want to. So they were going to grocery stores and picking up flowers and trying to follow instructions on Pinterest or Instagram. And it wasn’t really working out for them. So they would come to their friends, us and say, can you take this? How do we do this? Can you teach us just how do I put this into a vase the right way? Or what are some of the tips and tricks that you use? So we saw opportunities there and I think that were the basics of do- it-yourself, flower arranging. I also think that there’s a renewed interest in trying to get back to nature, trying to have hobbies that beautify the home. People are spending a lot more time at home lately and I think that people just want to do stuff with their hands. So I think all those things combined, lead to a company like It’s By U being born, the do it yourself kind of nature of things across the board.
NYLP: And why subscriptions?
Christine: We started off as a do it yourself wedding flower company and we saw there was a great opportunity, but we also knew that home decor was where it’s at. It was a bigger opportunity and from there, we also saw that people wanted to do it on a regular basis. So it wasn’t just one time, like for a wedding. They had fun while they were doing it. They saw that there were opportunities for them to do it at home and flowers need to be renewed, so it makes sense. It’s a natural subscription.
NYLP: People like flowers and flowers make people happy. What are the flowers, what are people getting when they have an It’s By U subscription?
Christine: It’s By U customers get flowers specifically from California and Ecuador. We have a little bit of Mexico mixed in there too. The reason why we chose California and Ecuador is we started off with California flowers and we were really proud of that because our chief operating officer is a flower farmer himself in the Southern California area and around San Diego. He had the most beautiful protea and eucalyptus and protea is just an exotic, beautiful looking flower. So we started shipping out things from that point of view and then we moved recently to shipping from Ecuador. The flowers that come from Ecuador are so varied and so gorgeous because Ecuador is on the equator so there’s even temperatures all year round. They’re grown in volcanic soil and the Andes Mountains. The altitude is really high, the soil is rich in nutrients, which means that the flowers are bigger. They have bigger heads, they have stronger stems, they have thicker leaves, which means a healthier plant. They have the capability of cutting a plant very quickly and then shipping it very quickly, so we have the opportunity to get it straight from the farm to our customers within a very, very short period of time, as opposed to something that’s been sitting in storage or in a grocery store for weeks and or in a bodega for many weeks. The opportunity for It’s By U, you get fresher flowers straight from the farm. There are a variety of flowers. I could go into it, I could talk about everything that’s available, but once again, you’d have to have a couple of hours.
NYLP: Well, I actually looked into where flowers come from in preparing for this interview and it seems like most of the flowers in the U.S. come from Colombia. Am I mistaken about that?
Christine: Oh, you are 100% correct. It’s Colombia and Ecuador.
NYLP: So why Ecuador as opposed to Colombia?
Christine: Our connections in Ecuador are nice and strong and we were focusing on roses. We actually have a wonderful rose subscription with an amazing company that grows the roses on the sides of a volcano.
Caroline: Cayambe volcano.
Christine: Just north of Quito. It’s about 45 miles north of Quito.
Caroline: They’re
an amazing farm because they grow 130 varieties of roses and they’re also the
farm that releases, there’s one rose released to the world every year. They are
that farm that creates over the period of many years, graphs the rose, creates
the new rose and releases it to the world. They released a rose last year
called Toffee and Toffee kind of looks like a beautiful cappuccino. It’s a really
wonderful rose. It’s structured in a really kind of cool angular way and when
it opens up the petals kind of curl down and it’s just this beautiful rose and
we’re just so pleased to be working with them. They’re the same farm that
supplies to the White House, to embassies, to some very fancy Hollywood homes
and
this is the first time they’re actually supplying direct to consumers through It’s by U and so we’re really thrilled about that. That’s one of the reasons too why we went with Ecuador.
NYLP: And how did you establish that relationship?
Caroline: Our Chief Operating Officer, Frank Biddle, we love this man with all our heart. He is probably one of the preeminent importers of flowers into the United States. He has some very beautiful relationships with fair trade, everyone, good farms in Colombia and Ecuador and he helped us open the doors to places that we could not have gone as a small flower company a couple of years ago.
NYLP: That’s very interesting that you brought on a COO, a business decision and that opened up the relationship. Can you talk about how you brought on a COO?
Christine: Sure. Actually, Frank brought himself on.
NYLP: He brought himself on.
Caroline: Yes. One of the things that we always tell entrepreneurs, especially as they’re starting off and they ask us questions, how do I begin? How do I build a team? You just want to talk to as many people in the industry as possible. Christine had a lot of connections within the floral industry just within the City of Philadelphia and then in the New York area. And you start making the rounds, you start telling people about your dreams and what you want to build. And there’s always people who say, Oh, you know, my uncle knows a guy who you might want to talk to, let me get his email and then you go and grab coffee with that guy and then you talk about someone else and they were like, well, let me refer you to someone else. But especially with Frank, we were referred to Frank about three times from three different people after we told them what we needed for the business. And everyone kept on saying, Oh, you should talk to Frank Biddle, you should talk to Frank Biddle. So it’s like, okay, just give me Frank Biddle’s email and let’s fly out to California and meet him. And we flew out to California and what was supposed to be a half hour meeting turned into a four hour meeting and we found out that Frank was also from Philadelphia, we’re from Philly. You know, he’s,
NYLP:: We’ll excuse that. You’re in New York now.
Caroline: We’ve been in New York a long time though, but we’re honorary New Yorkers. I own a place here, so we just had so much in common. His son also went to the school I went to and so I became a mentor of his and all of this stuff. We had this very long meeting, we were really very open with him as to where we were headed with the business. He seemed very interested and then he gave us a call the next day and he’s like, Caroline, I talked it over with my wife and I want to be your COO and so that’s how that happened. We really didn’t need a COO though. We had in terms of, when you look at your business and you see what various skill sets the team has. Christine definitely on the design side, the connections within the floral industry on design and things like that. Me, on the business side, I used to be an investment banker and then I also built some digital businesses, and then the dream was always for us to source directly from the farms and to actually, send the bouquets directly from the farms to cut out all the middlemen. And so we did need someone who is really deep in the industry and it turns out that Frank was perfect for us in that way.
NYLP: You mentioned cutting out the middleman in terms of your business model. What does that mean? What do the logistics mean?
Caroline: The way the flower industry generally works is, I’ll take it from a florist’s point of view. A flower is cut at the farm, then it is pulled into cold storage and then it is transported to the airport and it usually stays for another day or so in cold storage. Then it’s comes to the United States and then it sits in cold storage while it’s being cleared. Then it gets picked up by distributors and trucked around the country, or flown around the country and then it sits at a distributor in cold storage. So there are a lot of people, there’s actually another piece, another seven before. There are floral handlers. And by the way, it might not be sitting in cold storage. It actually might sitting on a hot tarmac in Miami.
Christine: It depends on when the flowers are coming through. Regardless, there are a lot of hands touching the flowers.
NYLP: And how long does it take to get to a consumer?
Caroline: It takes anywhere between a week to 10 days, maybe sometimes more if the flowers are sitting at a local distributor, who might have a cash and carry or they might have, a cash and carry is when you can just go in and grab flowers on your own, but that’s usually not even open to normal people. That’s open to a florist. It’s open to the industry, and then maybe it sits at the florist for another two or three days. So those flowers might be more than two weeks old by the time it gets to the consumer. That’s when we cut out a lot of time. We give the flowers time to actually bloom in your house. So it was important for us too, and at a bodega, add another week to that because those flowers are at the bottom of the barrel, unsellable, they’ve only have one or two days of life left on them.
Christine: So for us it was important to get quality up very high, increased vase life and also to be working with people who are, we work with farms that are fair trade and eco-certified and they are employee friendly. So we know exactly where our flowers are coming from, we know the exact process it took to get from the ground to our customers. So other than saving money for our product, we’re also getting a better product without so many people touching in the middle.
NYLP: And so farm to house. How long does it take?
Caroline: Field to vase?
Christine: So our flowers are then put into a kind of a deep sleep in cold storage for two days and then they’re sent to the customer. So I would say it’s about five days.
NYLP: Partnering with a farm, you mentioned in Ecuador, I think that’s pretty far away from the United States. You have to have someone there for quality control and how does that work?
Caroline: We work with the farms. We have a long relationship that various shippers have in the floral industry. And actually it’s great because back to our COO, he was one of the people that actually created those relationships between Ecuador and the United States in shipping flowers. We’re part of this grandfathered-in system and we luckily have been able to, another reason why we’re working out of Ecuador, is that they just built an amazing airport, a hanger just for flowers and so that clearance that Christine was talking about, that normally happens in Miami, we actually have it happening in Quito, in the cold storage, hanger area for the flowers. So the anti-narcotics and all of that clearance stuff that happens, it happens right then and there. So that way, it flies directly into the United States without issue. And so we’re really happy about that. That helps our flowers get to the states much more quickly and we ship right now entirely via FedEx.
NYLP: And do you have a warehouse someplace where you’re getting the flowers direct or are they boxed in Ecuador?
Caroline: They are boxed in Ecuador at the farm. We actually cut out all the middlemen, including ourselves.
NYLP: I was reading up on the floral industry and it didn’t seem like it was a very positive outlook. One of the things that I saw was that floral jobs will decline 9% annually between 2010 and 2020 and that’s from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Is this a growing industry or is the industry changing?
Caroline: The industry is changing cefinitely. I think there’s another statistic that since 2000, something like 45% of all florists’ businesses in the United States have closed.
NYLP: Why is that?
Caroline: It’s just that people are going online and people are buying for themselves in grocery stores and the quality in grocery stores, in the good grocery stores, they’re pretty good quality flowers. They might not last you two weeks, but you’re going to get a decent quality flower and the floral business online, you can just order with a click and you don’t need to talk to anybody. You can just look at a photograph and have it sent on its way. So flower buying has become easier and people don’t need the artwork anymore of flowers. There’s a general kind of feeling that a lot of florists, in the future, will just be specialty florists, just for big events and for smaller events, even for birthdays and everything, that’s just like an online business where you just click and go. It seems to me that’s the trend in the floral industry in the United States. Across the world though, things are also changing. Florists are still very popular in Europe and people buy flowers on a much more regular basis than they do in the United States. It’s part of the European culture to have flowers in the home on a daily basis. It depends on where you’re talking about, but here in the United States, we are definitely moving to an online type of feel and a grocery store feel.
Caroline: It’s actually a $16 billion market in the United States and it’s growing at a 6% rate. It’s a growing industry, but it’s growing because it’s changing. So back to online and grocery sales, and as Christine mentioned, the thing that we think that we see as being missing is this artistry component and it almost feels every time we talk to someone, especially to, we have a pop-up right now at show fields and we’ve been talking to people who are kind of desperate. They come into the shop and they’re like, oh my God, these are amazing. They know nothing about flowers, but they remember their grandmother always having fresh flowers in the house. And we also have people of a certain age, we have a lot of women in their 50’s coming in and saying, oh my mother always insisted. She always said, you must have fresh flowers in the house, but I feel like it’s been a generation that we’ve lost that need, that desire for fresh flowers and flowers are actually really good for us. So we, as humans, we’re kind of coming back to this need for flowers again. We’ve been with flowers for thousands of years and it’s something innate in us where people are just so attracted to what we’re doing. So that’s that artistic component and the ability to be able to create something beautiful again. That’s kind of where I see It’s By U filling that space where yes, we are online flowers, but it’s that experience of making that is really connecting to something much deeper in all of us.
NYLP: So who is your target consumer? Who is your ideal customer that you’re shooting for?
Christine: We have two, actually maybe there’s a third. Our primary market is women and women who are empty nesters and either approaching retirement age or of retirement age. That’s our biggest market. Our second market is millennials, millennial women, and our third market is the LGBTQ community. Those are our three primary markets.
Caroline: We also are exploring the enterprise space in a much larger way because there are needs within hotels, restaurants and other places too where, we’re talking about boutique hotels and other places where the staff could make the floral arrangements and save money and all sorts of things. So we’re looking at enterprise as well.
NYLP: Enterprise certainly seems like a great opportunity because you have people who want flowers on a regular basis, who need that and can outsource that design. But you both touched on interesting concepts that came up during my research. First, that Americans don’t have that European culture of having flowers in their home and the second is the millennial generation, which is certainly growing in spending power. How were you trying to reach both of those demographics? It seems like one, you have to sell the culture of having flowers back in the home and, and two, that lost generation, which you mentioned.
Caroline: Well, we’re approaching that in a couple of different ways. The millennial market, if you look at the way they’re spending on live products, they’re going towards plants and plants, even though that’s not what we’re completely focused on, we do have some do it yourself kits for planting succulents and air plants. That’s where we’re at now and we’re finding that millennials also enjoy cute containers and the experience of actually planting and keeping something alive and growing it. So it’s like having a pet. That’s actually kind of an intro and if we’re going to be talking about adulting, that’s a good way to start. Adulting. If you can’t have a dog, go get yourself a plant and make it grow from day one.
NYLP: If you can’t do a plant, have a flower.
Caroline: Have a flower and if you’re really bad, if you just kill everything, just grab a flower where it’s going to die anyway in a couple of weeks. So we’re approaching it that way, but in a much larger way. Plants and flowers are so much a part of health and wellness if we’re going to be diving deeper into studies by universities into happiness and the sense of peace that nature brings. But if you take a step back and don’t look at it as flowers or don’t look at it as home decor, don’t look at it as plants, don’t look at it as a market, but start looking at us as a society as a whole and the amount of anxiety and stress that we’re experiencing. Because if you just turn on the news for five seconds, you are just inundated with badness, so it just causes such difficulty for us, the way to bring our blood pressure down, the way to get back into the zone, the way to be kind, to be able to sleep better, to be able to be inspired and the way to just bring your happiness levels up is to bring nature. If you can’t get out to nature then bring nature into the home and that’s where also It’s By U comes in with a beautiful freshness that we bring into the home. We’re hitting the market in a different way. We’re approaching it in that health and wellness way and when you’re doing something with your hands and you created something, you created a floral design or If you planted a plant, it changes you and there’s something to be proud of and there’s something that just kind of sparks that joy again. When you see us going towards a millennial market, we’re breaking in in a different way because millennials, more than anybody, they’re feeling it bad and we need to just help everybody get back on level.
NYLP: It’s very interesting because you mentioned that when people see and smell the flowers, they have a different environment. But that’s a hard message to communicate online and a hard story to sell. How do you get that out?
Christine: This is all because of our customers. What we actually think of It’s By U now is that they’re really botanical therapy kits and botanical meaning, it is about bringing nature into the home and into the office therapy, meaning it’s something that you do regularly as well. This all started with a review actually that we got in the Fall from one of our customers. The way that the first sentence starts out from the review is “as a young widow, I’ve been giving myself permission to heal from my husband’s passing by using It’s by U”. Then it goes on where she talks about how her husband used to get her flowers every week and now she’s buying herself flowers. But It’s By U is taking it to the next level and showing her how to make her own arrangements and it’s giving her this extra peace and Zen. We got this review and I always get chills when I talk about it because that was where we realized it’s not just DIY, it’s that our kits are doing something different to people and we have the ability to touch people in a different way. That’s when we started doing this research and seeing, your brain on flowers and there is a lot of academic research and yet your brain on flowers is a happy brain.
Caroline: Right. We do a lot of the touch points of workshops, of bringing people in to see our flowers. Right now we’re focused on New York, but we are planning to do workshops across the country and building a nice little team to go out so people can actually experience the product and then go online and say, oh my God, if I can do that, I can do the other kits too.
NYLP: This may be an overly simplistic question, but the kit comes to someone’s house. Maybe they are a busy New Yorker and they don’t have the time allocated to put everything in a vase. How quickly do they have to put it in water? And I was looking at your website, you have to spray or you recommend spraying the flowers as well.
Christine: Oh yeah. When when a kit comes to your door, the cut flowers are still sleeping. So after they’re cut, they’re put into the cold storage to put them to sleep and it keeps the buds tight and I guess puts them in this unconscious state. We actually teach you how to wake them up so you kind of wake them up within their own time. You do have about maybe less than 24 hours to wake them up before they start to wilt. But what you do within 24 hours, you take them and cut them on a 45 degree angle. You cut the bottom of the stems on a 45 degree angle under water and it allows them to gasp up that, that water straight up into their heads. You let them soak for about half an hour to an hour and then you can begin working with them later in the day. If you can’t get to it within the next day, we just say keep it in a cool room. So, you have time to work with them. If you can’t do it that day and you wouldn’t do it the next day, or if you know you’re a very busy New Yorker and you have somebody who comes and helps you with a lot of things around the house and they’ll do it, they can do it for you and you come home from work. Even if your kids come home early and they said, you know what mom, I put this together for you and it’s absolutely plausible to have it done in 20 minutes or less.
NYLP: How frequently does the subscription come and what day of the week, is that crazy to ask?
Caroline: No you can choose. So right now, we offer a once a month or twice a month subscription, so every other week, and our flowers will last at least seven days. But we’ve found through our testing, they frequently last anywhere between 10 to 14 days and maybe even 18 days depending on the type of flower. So you have that choice of once a month or twice a month and we’re actually working on trying and making that a weekly subscription. Right now, flowers only arrive on Thursdays and Fridays, but we’re also working on making earlier in the week arrivals.
NYLP: You brought some flowers in. Let’s talk about them. Let’s get happy looking at these flowers.
Caroline: They’re so sweet.
NYLP: What makes an award winning flower arrangement? Because you won, you said seven times. How did you do that?
Christine: Well, my business partner really I’m a good floral arranger. My business partner, Anna, my old business partner, she is, and I’ve never met anyone who can take a flower and turn it into art like she can. I think what makes a good floral arrangement in a very artistic sense is a sense of rhythm, of color, of space, and it’s kind of like building a piece of music. It’s like building a concerto and you have to know all the little pieces together. There’s an innate sense of artistry with that, but you can learn it and we make things. It’s By U makes things very easy. So you’re learning super basic floral design, but there are lots of florists out there who are giving really great lessons in floral arranging. I think that as It’s By U grows, we’ll be able to provide that same type of experience. But right now, a really good floral arrangement is just hardy good flowers, maybe just a focal flower for, in this case, this bouquet has roses, beautiful Freedom, red roses. These are your traditional Valentine’s roses. They’re absolutely gorgeous. Then you’ll see also in this bouquet we have some, just a typical berry called a Hypericum Berries. It’s also known as St John’s Wort. A wort is just another word for berry and these are in a white color. Then you also have some additional kind of complimentary flowers in here. We have Status and we have Liatrus. These are purple flowers and we also have some Delphinium, so it’s hard to say what’s the standard? But you want a focal flower, you want some back-up flowers and you want some texture in there and that’s what we strive to do every week.
Caroline: The thing about it is we have one of the vases in today from one of our most popular kits, this is our fresh garden kit and this was actually the kit that was featured in Oprah Magazine. So that’s one of the reasons why we think it’s the most popular, but also we have a very unique vase. It’s a vase that has nine holes. It almost becomes paint by number for flowers. You can’t screw it up. So actually when you get our kit, and it’s not just the flowers in the vase and the tools that you get, but you also get a digital guide and streaming video lesson that you can follow and see the actual technique and you just watch it and then you also learn everything about the flowers too. We see a big part of our mission is education because once again, people really don’t know anything about flowers anymore. We tell you exactly what the flowers are, what their meaning is, how to cut them, and then you just follow the instructions and anyone can do this.
NYLP: That is certainly very important for me. How long on the business side of things are people subscribing for their It’s By U subscription?
Christine: On average now we see about seven deliveries. Mind you, we’ve only been in business with our subscriptions less than a year. So we launched our subscriptions in March 2018, so people are staying on for a long time, which means that they really liked the diversity of the flowers. They liked that they’re learning. We have a lot of people who post on Instagram every month what they made. We’re so impressed with them because we follow their progress. We want people to feel really confident and proud of what they’re making and so we followed them, and man, after you get a few deliveries, you become an expert and you kind of know your way around that vase really well. Then you see the other comments that their friends are giving them. We had this one guy, Matt, who ordered, he lives in New York, and Matt has been a subscriber of ours for, since probably the beginning and he always puts his designs on Instagram and his friends cannot believe what he’s making. It’s been really cool too because people also make, it’s not just that they’re making the arrangements but it could be me time where you’re pouring yourself a glass of wine and making your own arrangements. We have people who are making arrangements with their friends together. That’s their time together. We have a woman on Wall Street who does this with her 12 year old daughter. This is something that they look forward to. We have people who do this with their parents. They actually go into retirement homes and this is something that they’re doing together. So it’s really you’re creating time to do something awesome with someone or for yourself.
NYLP: How much does a subscription cost?
Caroline: It’s about $50 a delivery. It’s free shipping. Since we cut out all the middlemen, we are passing the savings onto our customers and as we continue to scale, we are looking to make our subscriptions even more affordable across various populations as well. So we’re really excited about what we’re going to be able to do as we scale.
NYLP: And one of the things, at least in terms of the flower industry, and I don’t think this comes as a surprise to many people, but it’s very concentrated in a few businesses that have been around for a while. Businesses that people probably already know, FTD, 1-800-Flowers, what’s to stop them from getting into the subscription game and say, you know what, floral employment is going down. People want direct, people want fresher flowers, we want to jump in and, they’re the big people in the room.
Caroline: So there are those businesses, FTD and 1-800-Flowers. The ones that you had mentioned, they work with the florists. So the florists, and when you call 1-800-Flowers, it’s the florist in your city or down the road who is supplying those flowers to you, who’s giving the flowers to you. It might come in a 1-800-flowers box, but it’s Joe’s Florists that’s actually getting it to you. Our model totally disrupts all of that so their business model is entirely built on using a florist. Our model does not use a florist at all. That is not a natural fit. What we’ve done is not a natural fit to the business that they’ve built. There could be acquisitions in the future or something like that where they do start selling directly from the farms, but we believe that what we have with It’s By U, the kind of containers, our floral quality offering, and sourcing from fair trade farms, and to be honest with you, the fact that we’re selling to a lot of, we are women selling to a lot of other women. We feel like we can speak to that market very well. So there’s something very different from It’s By U that you’re getting and there’s once again back to that educational component as well, where we want people to know all about their flowers. It’s not just about getting a gift, when you open up an It’s By U box, you’re beginning your experience, it’s just the beginning. It’s an adventure when you’re getting a box and as a gift from let’s say 1-800-flowers or something like that, it’s somebody gave you a gift and you’re like, Joe remembered my birthday, but it’s not, it doesn’t, it’s not taken anywhere from there. When you open our box, it’s just the beginning.
NYLP: I mentioned this at the beginning of the interview, but an important component to your story is that you two are sisters who founded this company. What has it been like being sisters working together? Founding a company can be pretty stressful.
Caroline: Working with a sibling is like the best of things and at first start-up or it can be very difficult. It really, we’ll be very honest. It’s awesome because the trust level is tremendous. We know our roles and what we take care of. There’s a lot of unspoken okay, I’ve got this. Don’t worry about it. We don’t, we can, we’re so close in age too. We can finish each other’s sentences. We’ve always been very close as sisters, so it works out very well. Sometimes though, and we have the same vision for It’s By U. So we know where we want to go. Sometimes though there are times where the stress levels are super high and we know each other’s weak points and we’ll actually kind of pick at each other’s weak points that might not even have something to do with the argument. So you’ll have stuff there that comes up, that’s like old childhood stuff and you’re like, oh, where’d that come from? And why are you saying that? And there were moments of that. But then because we’re so close and because of this trust level, we kind of circle back and we give ourselves a couple hours, we circle back and then we’re able to refocus and move in the same direction again. Another thing too is that because we have a similar vision and I think that it’s unspoken in a way, when this is where things need to be headed. We never fought over that. The vision is something that we never were like, oh, that makes sense and to be honest with you on the creative side, I just hand everything over to Christine, and on the business side, she hands it over to me and we talk about these things together, but we kind of have that responsibility and it’s been one of those things though too, that we’ve done a lot of hard things together, just family stuff and things like that, even before we started our company. So this is just another hard thing that we’re doing together.
NYLP: Did you always think that you would have a business together?
Christine: Yes. Somehow.
NYLP: What age I’m going to hold you to that.
Christine: Back in the day, we were very lucky in Philly. We had a, even though we lived in a row home, we had a garden and we used to have peach trees in that garden and Caroline and I and our little brother John, we would pick the peaches, we would bag them and we would sit in front of the house on the sidewalk and we would sell peaches. So we’ve been in business together since we were eight years old. Our brother’s also an entrepreneur, so we’re driving our parents crazy.
NYLP: Well that is a wonderful note to end things on. Christine, Caroline, thank you for stepping onto the New York Launch Pod and sharing your time with us.
Caroline: Thanks so much. It’s been awesome. Thank you.
NYLP: And how do people find out more about you two and It’s By U?
Caroline: There’s a couple ways. Follow us on Instagram. That’s pretty easy. We are at It’s By U. That’s Itsbyu or you can go to It’s by U.com . That’s our website and you can check us out there. We’re going to be launching our blog soon, so that’s going to be cool. We will have a 20% discount for your first subscription delivery using the code NYLAUNCH.
NYLP: Well, that is wonderful. I’m sure listeners will appreciate that. And if you want to learn more about the New York Launch Pod, you can follow us on social media @ NYLaunchPod or visit us on nylaunchpod.com for transcripts of every episode, including this one. And if you are a super fan, Christina and Caroline, are you super fans of the podcast?
Caroline: Oh my God, totally. Every time.
NYLP: If you’re super fans like Christina and Caroline, please leave a review on iTunes and Apple podcasts and subscribe. It does help people discover the show and is greatly appreciate it.
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