From Hospitality to Hawaiian Entrepreneurship | Matt Smith of Puuwai Flowers

Transcript note: This transcript was generated from the episode audio and lightly formatted for readability. Speakers are Jet Bunditwong and Matt Smith.

Welcome to The Personal Side of Business, where you hear real stories from real entrepreneurs. Hey guys, thank you so much for listening to this episode. When you get a chance, also check out the YouTube video that accompanies this podcast.

Wanted to get some of the visuals of the flowers they grow in their backyards. You can see, I think a lot of them are beautiful, and you get a real sense of the work and the beauty that goes behind what they do. Thanks for listening.

Hi, and welcome to The Personal Side of Business, where every business has a story. I'm your host, Jet Bunditwong. Today, my guest is Matt Smith.

He and his wife, Rosana, own Puuwai Flowers here in Kauai. We're going to hear their story and how they got here. Matt, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.

Welcome. So let's start. How did you get here with all of this? So a long story, but I'll try and condense it a little bit.

I was a executive chef for a hotel company for many, many years. That's where I met Rosana. It was actually on Maui back in 2005, and we were both in the hotel business.

We got married. She decided to stay home and be a stay-at-home mom, and I worked. The whole time that we've been together, Rosana's always been into flowers.

So she makes incredible arrangements. People would ask her to make arrangements for their kids' parties or for weddings, small events. I think it was about a few years after we moved to Kauai, she started Puuwai Flowers, but it was really unofficial.

We didn't have a website. There was no permits. We didn't have taxes or anything like that.

It was just word of mouth, and it actually started to gain some momentum. Okay, so you guys are both in hospitality, trying to transition to your own business. What were some of the things that you brought in from hospitality into this flower business? So that's a great question.

When we actually said, okay, we're going to launch this business, move back to Kauai, we found that everything we learned in the hospitality business completely parlayed right into owning a flower business. So it's customer service is number one. So really being reactive to your clients and what do they want, listening to them, working with them, being very responsive.

We both had a lot of training with working with guests, and I had a lot of Forbes training. So we used all of that when we interact with clients. As a chef, I learned a lot about concepting restaurants and branding, so we used a lot of branding and concept knowledge that we learned from the hospitality industry.

And then also it's really funny because as a chef, I was always dealing with perishable products, right? You're bringing in products, you're processing it, and you're serving it to your guests. And we're doing the same thing, but Rosana is the star now. Rosana is bringing in flowers from all over the world, making arrangements, and we're providing those for our clients.

So there's just a ton of similarities and a lot of knowledge, just business acumen that we learned in the hotel industry that we were able to parlay into our own business. That's great. And here, to have a business in Kauai, do you think there are limitations or it actually is easier, say, than California? That's a good question, and I don't know if I'm the right person to ask.

When we opened it up, I made a business plan, and we really started with a shoestring budget and it's a home studio, so we were rubbing two nickels together to make a quarter and just kind of building it up. But a lot of the things we learned about getting our license, our permits, our tax IDs, and going through all that, it really wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be. The process didn't take us very long, and there wasn't a lot of red tape that we had to go through, so it was fairly easy.

I think it was more just learning, growing the business was the more challenging part. Yeah, and you had mentioned that you grew your business from word of mouth. Have you changed any of that to marketing, growing it out in, I guess, networking throughout the island? So Kauai is a very small community, and it's all word of mouth in the Coconut Wireless, and we learned that in the very beginning that, you know, we went out and we hit the pavement and we handed out flyers and business cards.

But what we really, where we started to get traction was we provided really great flower arrangements at a very fair price to some people on the island. And that grew, and that's what helped us grow our business, was, I would say, 95% word of mouth. Yeah, and what has changed since that, let's say that first year until now? What adjustments have you made that have made the business even better, or you've had to adjust in order to make the business function better? So we learned a lot in the first year, like I'm sure all business owners do.

We went through a ton of challenges and learning opportunities. The biggest thing that we experienced was, well, the very first thing that we learned was as a husband and wife team, we had to define our roles, because if not, we were just going to, you know, Rosana's a very stubborn, strong-minded person, and as I am. And we collided a little bit in the beginning.

Once we defined our roles, and Rosana is completely in charge of the studio, ordering the flowers, arranging them and all that, and I do all the administrative, sales, marketing, accounting, we found a wonderful rhythm, and we were great as a team now. So that was our first learning experience. The second one is we were really starting with scratch, and a floral company is based off of a portfolio and pictures of work that you've done.

One of the stories I like to share is there's a mortuary very close by, and so we were knocking on the doors of the churches and the mortuaries for weddings and funerals, and the owner of the local mortuary finally accepted an invitation to see us, and I really had just a flyer with a few pictures on it, and he's a local guy, older local guy, and he chewed us out. He just completely said, we don't know what we're doing, and he listed all these things that we're doing wrong. We got back into my car, Rosana was in tears, and I said, he actually just gave us a gift.

He told us everything that we need to do. So we completely turned that into a learning experience. We spent, I think, about $1,000 on flowers.

We brought them in. Rosana went to work in the studio, and for about three days, she made celebration of life arrangements, and we shot them, and I put together a brochure with pricing, and we corrected everything that he yelled at us about. We went back to him with our hat in hand and the brochure, and he was really impressed that we listened, and we created the brochure, and gave us an order right there on the spot.

And since then, he's become a very strong client for us. We were building up our brochure and our portfolio, and we were learning a lot. Now it's a matter of organizing.

We do so many events and so many arrangements, it's selecting the right pictures to put onto our website or into our brochure. It's amazing. I think that taking those moments that make you feel like you shouldn't be doing it anymore, and switching it over to a power, a strength of the business, that's a really rare thing to find.

Was there a moment after that happened that you re-thunk the whole entire thing? You were like, maybe we're not cut out for this. Maybe we picked the wrong... There was a few moments. I think she put up her hand and said, I quit, and I did too a few times.

But we have a really strong marriage and a very strong relationship, and we were committed to doing it for a year, and seeing if we could make it successful within a year. I think it was right about the end of the year where we started to build up our clientele base and we started to receive really positive feedback. We could see our client base was sharing our information with other people throughout the island, and so we started to pick up more regular clients.

That's when we said, okay, we're on to something. This is working. We started working with a lot of wedding planners, concierge, people in the resorts, and they would tell us the quality of your flowers is exceeding the other florists, and you have really fair pricing, and you provide great service.

That's where we said, okay, we've found our niche in the market, and we can start working on that. Was that a part of your business plan to go after those event planners and wedding planners, or were you just, in the beginning, just really focusing on the mortuary type of businesses? No, the celebration of life we didn't think about, and so that was sort of an afterthought. That's actually become a fairly good percentage of our market now.

What we found is you have celebrations of life, you have weddings, you have corporate events, then you have special just one-offs, anniversary special dinners. Maybe it's a community event. What we learned is each one of those markets requires a different approach.

When you're working with a bride, for example, it's generally a younger woman who has a vision of a Cinderella wedding. They don't really realize how much it's going to cost, and they've never really planned anything. We started to put together checklists so that when we sit down and we're doing a consultation with a bride, we can kind of walk her through that and help her figure out what she wants to order and meet her budget.

That's turned out to be really helpful. We're at a corporate event you're doing with a seasoned meeting planner, and they're like, I need 20 arrangements for 20 tables, I need it on this day, give me your best price, sign the contract, and it's real easy. I guess because of the structure of the island, right, so you're getting tours coming in for events, weddings that they're planning, and then you have locals who are either having their events.

You get this really interesting mix of, I like to think it's almost like a trapped set of people that you can go back to because you know where else, it's probably limited. That's Kauai. I mean, Kauai is, I think there's 60, 70,000 residents on the island, and there's about 60 or 70,000 visitors on the island, and that's every day, so that is your market.

We've learned how to navigate that. One of the things that Rosana did that I thought was really great was she developed a wonderful relationship with another florist who wasn't far from here. She was retiring and shutting down her business, and Rosana and her became friends, so all of her old clients, she would start to refer to us.

So we have a lot of locals that have been referred to us by that florist, and that helped out a lot, but I think that speaks to the island of Kauai, and it is a lot of networking and who do you know and building relationships. Yeah, it's like just driving around, it feels like it's big enough to be, I mean, just getting from Princeville where I'm staying to you is a little over an hour, which on a map, it doesn't look that big, but to drive an hour and then be able to almost, I guess, technically drive an hour round back, it feels like it's bigger. It's a big city, but- It's a small island.

Yeah, but it's a small island. Yeah, it's a small island. The mixture of both.

Yeah. If you can go back to that younger couple business self and maybe give some advice that could have expedited this journey to be able to make money, what do you think you would have changed in the beginning first year or so? For us, I think it always came down to, and I have some really close friends who are successful business owners, it's just a matter of making that decision and committing to it. And I think if you're really fully committed to running your own business and you look at challenges as learning opportunities, you're going to be successful, but you have to be committed to it.

And I think that's what Roseanne and I always talked about owning our own restaurant or starting our own business, but there's the security of the corporate life. And at some point you go, okay, I want to do this. And that's when I think it starts to work.

Having a business plan, I think helped a lot, but we've only looked back at it a couple of times because immediately you start to realize that the market and your business is going to pull you in a different direction. Yeah. You have brought up about some of it, you're shipping some flowers in, you're growing your own, that shipping aspect of it, I'm assuming in the past couple of years between COVID to now, it's just been fluctuating.

How do you keep up with that? That's the hard part. So if you want to know what the most challenging part about running a floral business on Kauai is, it's shipping flowers. And we have learned a lot and a lot of credit goes towards Roseanne because that's what she does.

She orders the flowers and surprisingly, and this is something that I had to learn and Roseanne had to teach me was all the different types of flowers, where they come from. But surprisingly, a lot of the flowers that you think of every day, like roses and ranunculus, those all come from Ecuador and Columbia. So we buy from a very large wholesaler in Miami that's buying it direct from the farm.

It goes to Louisville, Kentucky, then it goes to Honolulu and then to Luluhui and then to our studio and we're tracking it every single day. Because when you have a huge event and the event's on Saturday and you need the flowers by Tuesday or Wednesday, and there's a delay of any type along that process, it really becomes very challenging. So that's a great question.

One of the biggest learning curves for us is to have backup purveyors and learn how to navigate. And I give Roseanne a lot of credit on that because she's the one who's worked really hard at that. That sounds like just a stressful three or four days.

It is. Well, and especially if it's a wedding, because the bride has expectations on what her wedding is going to look like. And if you're bringing in specialty flowers from Ecuador and Columbia, and we've experienced it where there's just a little bit of a delay, it can put a lot of extra pressure on you.

How many backup plans are there for a wedding that's coming up? So what we've done and what Roseanne has worked on, again, because she's in charge of all the ordering, is we have found some great companies in Oahu in California that are doing the same thing we're doing. They're bringing it from Ecuador and Columbia, but they have a warehouse on the West Coast and they can fly it overnight to us. So if we can see that that order is not going to make it, we'll order direct from a wholesaler out of California and they FedEx it overnight.

But that changes the profit margin, I'm assuming. Totally changes it. But that's the other thing that we've learned is in the little over three years we've been open, we have always delivered exactly what we promised or more.

And we've never not provided what we guaranteed to a client. So I would rather make no money at all on an event and provide great quality and service and make sure that that customer is happy versus, okay, the shipment didn't make it, so now you're going to get a different flower that's not as nice. And have you seen over the last three years a change in the number of events and weddings and such on the island? It hasn't gone up or down over three years or is it usually pretty stable? I think there was a ton of compression for the wedding market on the island after COVID.

And in the last year, you can see that that compressions kind of eased a little bit. I think even the airline lift to the island has softened a little bit in the last year. I know, for example, this year's not as big of a convention season as it typically has been in the past, which I don't see as a bad thing.

And we haven't really experienced a downturn. Our revenue is still growing, but it is a small destination island. And if the airline tickets go up or hotel fares go up, it can make it really difficult for people to come out here.

But we do local weddings and we do celebrations of life and we do other events. So I think we've diversified our market enough that we can weather that. Yeah, I would think, I mean, just for me, working with different types of businesses, I'm always watching the news just to understand what could change, right? Just for you, yeah, Terrace, what do you think? We got hit on that, you know, so our costs went up and we watch TV constantly on that.

And we saw a blimp, we saw a price increase, but it didn't become radical and it wasn't super volatile. So we've been able to manage that and we didn't really increase our pricing. We've kind of, well, we've increased our pricing a little bit to compensate for that, but we didn't turn it into a drastic change.

I would guess clients start to understand that after a while. Like, I think one of the great things, you know, in 2026 and beyond is that we all have access to information so quickly. And I think it helps the customer base.

Like, oh, I understand why it's going up, right? Where, you know, back 80s, 90s, we were like, we don't understand, why are we getting charged more for something we shouldn't do? Now we're all, everyone's chit-chatting about it online and we get what's going on with the tariffs and what we have to pay extra. What do you think is the next growth stage for you guys? Is there something in the foreshoot? No, it's a great question. So we didn't have a, the plan was get it up and running and see if we can make it successful in a year.

And now we're at the three-year mark and I think we're having fun. Like, I wouldn't trade what we're doing for anything right now. And I think Rosana feels the same way.

We're really enjoying what we're doing. The revenue is growing. Our client base is growing.

A lot of the tough learning curves are over and behind us. I think we'd like to be able to sustain this for a little while, continue to grow it. And we're a little bit older in age right now, but we'd love to hand it off to the next generation.

If we can pass it down to our kids and let them continue to grow the business. Has there been any interest? No, zero interest. So they don't want to be florists and run a business out of mom and dad's house.

But it's, I think we could get it to a point where we might be able to entice them to look at it. Yeah. Yeah.

Are they interested in just their own businesses in general after seeing you guys? Our oldest son grew up literally in hotels. So he studied business and hotel business, and he is a director for a hotel company in Denver now. And, you know, at 26 is very successful and has his career launch.

Our youngest son is leaving the home in four months and going to college in the Bay Area. So, yeah, I don't think either one of them tomorrow are coming home to pick up the business. But down the road, it might be something that we could talk to him about.

I think our oldest son is more entrepreneurial and might consider walking away from the hotel business to own his own business. Yeah. Have you ever thought about expanding it to the other islands? Is that a possibility? It's just too chaotic to do.

It could, you know, right now it's Rosana and I. So we're a two man show. We do have some people that help us out like this next week. We have a really large corporate event on the North Shore for five days.

So we're bringing in a little bit of extra help. One of the things we enjoy right now is we don't have employees and it's a blessing, right? But to grow it and get it to that next stage, I think we'd have to bring on employees and probably go to brick and mortar, which is certainly a possibility. But I don't think we're ready to cross that bridge yet.

Has that ever been in discussion for you guys? Yes, absolutely. Yeah. No, we definitely talk about like, you know, there's so much potential to grow this and make it generational and expand to other islands and go to brick and mortar.

But I think we'd have to wait to see how that plays out. Yeah. You know, just kind of before we start to wrap up, I wanted to talk about this.

When you mentioned the relationship that you have to have in working together as a business. And I think that's one of the hardest things is just defined roles. And I've had couples come in for business advising.

And that's that's literally the first thing I talk about is, hey, after this meeting, go have a conversation, go, you're responsible for this. I'm responsible for this. And no one gets involved unless it's this dire straits type of situation.

Because it allows people, I think, to to grow in that position. And also it doesn't. I think when your relationship working together, there's a lot of you get comfortable saying things really easy.

Yes. Right. Yeah.

And when you when you have defined positions, it's more like, OK, I shouldn't say this in the workplace. You wouldn't just go up to your boss and be like, you should do this. You should do this.

Right. Right. What were some of the rules that you guys had that really helped make this work? That's a great question.

And that is one of the big things that we had to learn was how are we going to work together? How are we going to define our roles? One of the things that we established right off the bat was mistakes are OK. So if Rosana makes a mistake or I make a mistake, we don't beat each other up about it. We don't belabor it.

We just say, recognize it. What did we learn? And we move on. Defining the roles really was kind of a role reversal for me because I was always the chef in the kitchens running operations.

And now my role is completely different. I'm in the office. I'm doing sales, marketing, accounting.

Rosana runs the shop. And once we define that separation and we respected each other's roles, that made a tremendous difference for us to be able to move forward. And we still, you know, talk and compare notes or she may ask a question or I ask a question and we help each other.

But at the end of the day, she runs the operation. I run everything else that helped out a lot. And again, you wouldn't talk to your boss or a co-worker a certain way.

So we had to learn we can't do that with each other even, you know. And once the shop is closed, we keep working like we work seven days a week. But we've also learned there's a cutoff time.

And now it's time to be with family, watch a movie, cook a dinner, relax. Yeah, that's another important thing that I have seen that needs to happen with couples that are in business together is to have that sort of if once we get home, start to have dinner time with the family or friends, it can't just keep rolling into those moments. There has to be a cutoff.

Yeah, because then it just becomes this blended personal life and business life. And I think trying to separate it makes it work. You know, I feel like your business is going to in a couple of years, we're going to have a different type of conversation with this and probably going to come back here and there's going to be a brick and mortar.

There could be, you know, we're getting a little older. So, you know, how much energy do we have to do it? But there's certainly I think both of us in the back of our heads see a tremendous amount of potential to grow the business. And that is exciting.

But we would have to get up, you know, we'd have to level up and take some steps to get there. But yeah, we would be excited to do that. All right.

Awesome. So Matt, if people are looking to find you guys, how can they get in touch with you? Where can they find you? Real easy, Puuwai Flowers. Pu'uvai means the heart in Hawaiian.

And we are located off of Pu'uvai Road in the heart of Kalaheo. Our website is real easy. It's puuwaiflowers.com. We also have Puuwai Flowers Kauai is our Instagram handle.

But if you go to our website, we have all the information there and you can look at a lot of our work that Rosana has done. And we're real easy to get hold of. And we're very responsive.

All right. Awesome. Thank you, Matt.

If you guys are coming to the island for an event, wedding, whatever it is, please reach out to them for your next event. Thank you, Matt, for coming on. Thank you.

Thank you, it's a pleasure.