“I have always been an artist” – Rob Gooljar, founder IRIS flower, says. “I have always been a creative person. I did a lot of mixed media, painting, drawing, music and photography, but my medium switched to flowers.”
In 2020, Gooljar struggled with depression while working on his Ph.D. in urban, social and economic geography, and credits his then-roommate Becca Whittier as the “catalyst” for his recent creative outlet. Whittier would bring home flowers from Trader Joe’s and Gooljar would arrange them.
Photo credit: Courtesy of IRIS flower
Flower arranging became a passion, so Gooljar decided to start out Instagram to bring others on his artistic journey, especially those that might feel excluded from an industry known for its lack of diversity. According to data from the USA, the average florist is 47 years old, and the majority of them are women (77.2%) and white (77.3%). ZIP.
On his social media platform, Gooljar outlined the image he desired to see: “Hi, I’m a queer black florist. In a sense, no. I’m just playing with flowers, but look at me and we’ll see. What’s going on.”
What happened was that the IRIS flower, named after Gooljar’s rescue pitbull Iris, turned into a successful business.
People saw Gooljar’s posts on the Instagram account, which grew from zero followers to over 40,000, and began asking about purchasing it. Over the past three and a half years, the self-funded company has filled 1000’s of orders and made over $500,000 in revenue — but that is just the starting.
Photo credit: Courtesy of IRIS flower
Gooljar is expanding IRIS’s operations to South Florida, where he moved last 12 months, while Whittier and two employees proceed to guide the company’s operations in Greater Charlotte. Meanwhile, he is working with one other business partner, Jihann Hanchell, to launch IRIS flower’s sister company, IRIS Island, in the Turks and Caicos Islands. The idea is to supply “full-scale design” for luxury events.
“He was really nice, but he looked at me and said, ‘Well, you’re not going to get a business loan.’”
Gooljar does not engage in these floral ventures “blindly”, he notes. He also runs a holding company and a consulting company. Still, despite Gooljar’s entrepreneurial background and IRIS’s track record of success and growth, his journey has not been without significant challenges. According to Gooljar, the two biggest barriers? Funds and space. And in the flower industry, these aspects normally go hand in hand.
“It’s very difficult for small businesses to exist in Charlotte without being pre-existing,” Gooljar says. “It means A, you come from money or B, you have someone to help you. So we worked in our two-bedroom apartment [when] we hosted $15,000-$16,000 events and did it on our six-and-a-half-foot kitchen island. We had buckets all over the house.”
IRIS flower has been “100% self-funded” since its inception and has been in a position to achieve all the pieces because of supportive customers, says Gooljar. The revenue generated goes towards growing the company, and this strategy has helped it reach the milestone of $500,000 in revenue in just a few years. However, Gooljar initially tried to secure a business loan – but was rejected.
“I had a white banker in Charlotte, he was really nice, but he looked at me and said, ‘Well, you can’t get a business loan because you have to be in business for a few years,’” Gooljar recalled. “And then I asked, ‘Well, how do individuals who are just starting a business get a loan?’ “Oh, they probably have an online presence or they probably just put money into it and then they can put up their own money.” This type of quasi-unlikely explanation for financing and gatekeeper financing.”
Space availability in Charlotte remained a significant obstacle. Eventually, Gooljar and Whittier moved into a three-bedroom apartment. However, there was still not enough space for the rapidly growing business, and Gooljar didn’t wish to spend all the money he earned on rent. At one point, while they were looking for a reliable place to store expensive, perishable materials, someone offered to rent them an Airstream travel trailer for 1000’s of dollars a month with no air con or running water.
Now Gooljar lives and works from home in Florida.
Photo credit: Courtesy of IRIS flower
“It’s cool when people look at me and wonder if my business is doing well. All I can do is smile and say, ‘You know, it is what it is.’
Gooljar claims that throughout his time working on the IRIS flower, he “took a few toes” in the guarded industry and had to answer a few pointed questions: “Well, who are you?” “Will your business last?” – How’s your little business going? – How’s your flower business going?
But none of this deterred Gooljar, who comes from “a very long line of hard-working people.”
“My grandmother cut sugar cane in Trinidad for 40 years,” Gooljar says. “My parents got here here with nothing, they worked and they did their best. And I’m trying to alter this example. So yeah, it’s cool when people look at me and wonder if my business is doing well: Anything I can Just smile and say, “You know, it is what it is and I’m going to put in the work.”
Gooljar acknowledges that “we still have a long way to go” in transforming the industry into a more inclusive space, but is completely satisfied to report that other diverse floral businesses have emerged in Charlotte after his own because “there is room for everyone “.
“I see the landscape change, especially when I go into the flower cooler and see someone else who is black, or I go into the flower cooler and see someone young, or I go in there and see someone with pink hair or something,” Gooljar says.
“You have to face these obstacles and keep pushing because there will always be people who will prey on your downfall.”
Next, Gooljar plans to roll out a national IRIS subscription program, a sort of color-by-numbers approach. He will send flowers all over the country, and customers will be able to follow his arrangements via video. “I want people who don’t feel creative in their current job or current life to have a creative outlet in the same way I needed it,” he says.
In the longer term, Gooljar’s goal is to partner with a tech company to allow people to order IRIS flowers via the app “like Uber does.” Even though Gooljar sees IRIS as a large-scale service that enables employees to grow “little IRIS flowers in their own homes,” quality stays a top priority.
Photo credit: Courtesy of IRIS flower
Gooljar is committed to training its team members to keep up the brand’s high standards because it continues its expansion into other U.S. cities. It’s not at all times easy, and Gooljar admits there have been “many times” he felt like giving up, but he at all times persevered and never wavered in his belief that there have been great things on the other side.
“You can ask anyone I know and they will tell you they don’t know anyone who works as hard as I do,” Gooljar says. “And I’m not saying you just have to be involved in everything all the time. But I think a big part of it is that you have to face the obstacles and keep pushing because there will always be people who prey on you. There will always be obstacles. There will always be something to climb, but you just have to keep going.”