In September 2015, I took over as president of Greenleaf Wholesale. Greenleaf was struggling financially and operationally and because I had spent most of my career at Greenleaf before becoming president at Kitayama Bros., I believed I could hit the ground running and help quickly correct its course. In hindsight, it probably was best that I didn’t know how bad of shape Greenleaf was in.

There were those who believed that Greenleaf couldn’t be saved. I won’t say we are completely out of the woods, but we are in much better shape and we can now start planning for the future rather than living day-to-day.

In the recent past if you had looked up “traditional wholesale florist” you would have seen a picture of a dingy warehouse in a bad part of town with a Greenleaf sign out front. The staff would have been loyal, long-serving and doing business just like they did 25 years ago.

If the customers hadn’t disappeared, we probably would have been fine. The problem was, the industry had changed drastically and we had not. So we had to change course, we had to do what owners won’t do.

In the summer of 2015, Rob Spikol was hired as the chief operating officer of Greenleaf. He had come from the McCarthy Group, which is a company that buys distressed floral companies and turns them around quite successfully. Rob told me the key to McCarthy’s success was doing what owners think is unthinkable — closing stores, laying off staff, reducing pay, cutting off vendors and doing everything it takes to be profitable.

The Kitayamas are a family with a lot of pride, but pride is a luxury for those on top. I was not going to let the company my father started fail.

With Rob and our people, we swallowed our pride and did the difficult tasks to save Greenleaf. We closed five small or unprofitable stores, sold properties, laid off a third of our staff, cut benefits, hired and fired quickly, and expected better from our people. We doubled down on the big stores, pledged to do better and aimed to be No. 1 or No. 2 in our markets. That is the message to our customers and it is slowly working.

In Maui this past September, I listened to Peter Moran tell us again that there will only be half of us left in four years. I am not sure that is the best promotion strategy for the Society of American Florists’ membership, but I believe him.

Also, I believe that there are three options for wholesale florists — acquiring, being acquired, or liquidating. The three companies you always hear about — Delaware Valley, Kennicott and Mayesh — are all acquiring. I admire all of those companies and our goal is for Greenleaf to emulate that group.

Robert Kitayama is president at Greenleaf and Kitayama Bros. in Watsonville, CA. He can be contacted at [email protected].