Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Canada’s women’s soccer strikes, Rihanna plays the Super Bowl, and a startup prepares for its biggest day of the year. Have a productive Monday.
– Floral arrangements. The NFL’s Super Bowl is now over—but a Super Bowl of another kind for Seema Bansal Chada, the founder of Venus et Fleur, is one day away. The 8-year-old brand sells flowers that last for up to one year, and Valentine’s Day is its biggest holiday. Over 30% of the brand’s expected annual revenue for 2023 will be through this week’s sales.
Bansal Chadha has been preparing for this year’s Valentine’s since, well, last year’s. A year out, she and her cofounder husband, Sunny Chadha, start planning what to offer for next year’s holiday; this year they introduced chocolates. Eight months out, they begin to get the operational pieces in place with their 100 employees and 10 retail stores, plotting supply chain and fulfillment, the physical setup at the company’s two warehouses, and staffing. Three weeks out is when orders start to roll in.
The flowers those customers will receive are mainly coming from South America, most from a farm in Ecuador. Venus et Fleur removes the color from the flowers and treats them with wax and natural oils, dehydrating the roses in the process. The company then dyes the flowers back to their colors; the process allows the flowers to last for up to a year.
The Venus et Fleur Valentine’s customer is usually male; during the rest of the year, women shop from the brand for gifts or for themselves. The brand is best known for its “eternity roses” but has added other flowers like orchids and gardenias to its assortment, helping to reach more customers who are buying for themselves at other times of the year.
The married cofounders bootstrapped the business together in the early days of their relationship—and were inspired by their own Valentine’s Day story to found the brand.
The brand’s second-biggest holiday is around the corner after Valentine’s: Mother’s Day. “I am always super prepared for the first quarter of the year,” Bansal Chada says. “Other times, I really try to stay inspired so we can keep creating new collections.”
Already, Bansal Chadha is thinking ahead to Valentine’s 2024. The creator of the eternity rose is eager to add more variety to the holiday. “It would be nice to introduce something new—a new flower, a new point of view—into the world of Valentine’s Day and the world of love,” she says.
Running such a seasonal business has its challenges—as Bansal Chadha knows as she approaches Venus et Fleur’s eighth go-round with this particular holiday— but she appreciates the enthusiasm the brand receives from customers every year. “I would love for every month to feel like Valentine’s Day,” she says.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
@_emmahinchliffe
The Broadsheet is Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. Today’s edition was curated by Kinsey Crowley. Subscribe here.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Work, work, work. Rihanna returned to the stage at the Super Bowl halftime show last night with her first live performance in four years. The singer/mogul plugged her cosmetics brand Fenty Beauty with a quick makeup touchup onstage and confirmed her second pregnancy after the performance. New York Times
- Team effort. Canada's women's national soccer team took part in a two-day strike this weekend over pay inequity. The players cited a lack of resources provided to the team ahead of the 2023 World Cup. But the strike came to an end when Canada Soccer said it considered the work stoppage unlawful and threatened legal action. CBS Sports
- Next up. Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou will serve a six-month term as the Chinese telecommunications company's rotating chair, setting her up to succeed her father as the company's leader. Meng spent three years under house arrest in Canada over a U.S. bank fraud case; the charges were dismissed in December. South China Morning Post
- Cost analysis. Many women are opting to leave the workforce to take care of their children as the cost of childcare climbs. Mothers tell Fortune's Megan Leonhardt how they made the call to quit, whether they wanted to or not. Fortune
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Blue Bottle Coffee named Simone Hodges head of global brand creative.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- Unintended consequences. Last year, Spain passed a law affirming the need for consent in sexual intercourse known as the "only yes means yes" bill. But the legislation widened the definition of assault and reduced minimum prison sentences; it has led to the reduction of sentences for convicted sex offenders. Spain's government is now backtracking on the law. Bloomberg
- Aid efforts. After the earthquake that killed more than 30,000 people in Turkey and Syria last week, Turkish-American women are leading the U.S. effort to send aid to families. They're running GoFundMe pages and collecting donations of clothes, blankets, and baby formula. Wall Street Journal
- Mr. Popular. Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff is popular in Washington—even as Vice President Kamala Harris sometimes seems to struggle in her role. His ability to break through, with efforts like a recent visit to Auschwitz amid rising anti-Semitism in the U.S., is unusual for a historically overlooked position. Politico
ON MY RADAR
Nia Long is doing just fine The Cut
Phoebe Philo will debut new brand in September Harper's Bazaar
In post-Roe world, these conservatives embrace a new kind of welfare New York Times
PARTING WORDS
"I’m supposed to be promoting self-love, but I’m just not going to pretend I love my body all the time, which is what I’m expected to do. I don’t like being called body positive."
—TikTok influencer Remi Bader, who gained a following posting "realistic clothing hauls"
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