This floral company CEO is keeping tabs on the 3 Fs: flowers, fuel, and fertilizer

These days, being a small business owner may come with a little bit of whiplash.

“2019, that seemed like a hard year,” said Christina Stembel, founder and CEO of Farmgirl Flowers. “And it's nothing compared to now. Now, I feel like you have to make the same amount of decisions in a month that we used to have to make in a year, because there's so many out, you know, external circumstances.”

After a year of dealing with tariffs and the continued impact of rising prices, Stembel is now moving from one problem to another: rising oil prices and supply chain hangups.

“Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal, who last spoke to Stembel in April of 2025, caught up with her to hear how the year of tariffs ended, and her worries about how the U.S. conflict with Iran will impact her business.

Below is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Kai Ryssdal: I went back and I looked it up. We had you on April the 28 of last year, which was just counting here, 26 days since President Trump's tariff palooza. And obviously we talked a lot about tariffs. How was the rest of 2025 for you?

Christina Stembel: 2025 went well. Tariffs were tough, but just like everybody, we paid more. We had to pass them on. We absorbed some. But because of how we're running, just really focused on profitability, we were able to get through.

Ryssdal: How are you running? How's business? Sort of writ large.

Stembel: Business is OK.

Ryssdal: OK is not great. Usually you say, “It's really good. My company's great. I love my company.” And now you're like, “Oh, it's fine.”

Stembel: I love my company. Of course, I'm sorry. Yes, I do. I think everything just seems to be like, people know 10% about what the full picture is, which is totally understandable. This year, I would say the biggest risk isn't tariffs. It's not trying to get tariff money back. I think most companies won't ever see that, even though the general population thinks you will, but we'll see what happens. I'm not going to waste time on something that is really outside of my control. So the biggest fear I have this year, or the reason I'm kind of like, “business is OK,” I'm kind of tentative about it, is because of the impending fuel surcharges that might come into fruition right before Mother's Day. So, I’m waiting to see what happens.

Ryssdal: Let's talk about that for a second, because not only are there transportation costs for you, just straight up oil, but fertilizer is a huge issue with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, or the partial closure, or however you want to sort of negotiate that. And flowers need fertilizer.

Stembel: Yeah, there's kind of like two things with that. So, the biggest risk is outbound transportation. So, in 2020 we saw our outbound transportation rise from 26% of revenue to 41% and it almost put us out of business this year. You know, we were at sub-20, which was great last year, and now we're already back up to about 25%, 26% and if we go up to like 35% (I just ran that scenario this morning) we would actually lose a million dollars. So, we'd be in business to lose money again. So that's the number one risk. I think the second risk is fertilizers, and it's more the ripple effect that you don't think about until you run through the scenarios. If we can't afford fertilizers, or farms can't afford fertilizers, the prices will go up because the yield will be less on the flowers. We raised our prices as high as we possibly could last year without losing a tremendous amount of sales. There's not much more bandwidth we can do raising prices, and I think most small businesses are in the same place.

Ryssdal: How much running room do you have here before Mother's Day? You don't have a lot of time is my point.

Stembel: We do not. We're already in Mother's Day planning. We've been in it for months, so I just want the fuel surcharge charges to stay at bay until after Mother's Day, and then I can sleep better.

Ryssdal: You know, it's funny. You, we've been talking a while now, you and I, and you are, and I'm sure somebody's probably told you this, you're a fast talker, and it sort of seems like you're going faster today. It's just like, that's the way your life is now.

Stembel: I feel like there's whiplash constantly, and so, I'm trying to do everything I possibly can for what I can control. But when I think back to like, 2019, that seemed like a hard year, like everything seemed hard. We'd been in business almost 10 years at that point, and everything seemed hard, and it's nothing compared to now. Now, I feel like you have to make the same amount of decisions in a month that we used to have to make in a year, because there's so many out external circumstances. You just have to adapt and pivot and make decisions on the fly without any stability.

Ryssdal: This is none of my business, but are you sleeping all right?

Stembel: I mean, I think if this had happened when I was in my first five years of the company, I wouldn't be sleeping at all. But right now, it's like, “OK, well I’ll be very tired if I don’t.”