When a farmer friend was about to lose her livelihood two weeks into the pandemic, Richard Christiansen and Aaron Harvey started boxing up her produce in the parking lot of a Los Angeles bookstore. They sold 25 boxes the first weekend. Then 100. Then 300. That momentum eventually became Flamingo Estate, a now eight-figure hospitality brand selling candles, soaps, olive oils, and, yes, still produce boxes.
Rapid growth brought pressure from investors and advisers to rationalize the business: Become a supplements company, kill the money-losing produce program, build product lines around “need states.” Harvey and Richard said no to almost all of it. Ahead, Harvey breaks down how they evaluate outside advice, why they refuse to outsource fulfillment, and the packaging details most brands would never think to obsess over.
On how a pandemic favor became an 8-figure brand:
Richard grew up on his family’s farm, only for them to lose the farm when he was in high school. So when a woman who was a farmer and a friend of someone who worked at the house was about to go into financial ruin because restaurants had shut down for two weeks, that resonated with him. Margins in produce are super small, and two weeks of no business can destroy you.
He was like, “Bring the vegetables to the parking lot of the bookstore. We’ll make some cute boxes. This can be something we do to help.” That first weekend, his friend thought maybe we could sell 25. We sold 100. And then the week after it was 200, then 300. We started hiring delivery drivers, making deliveries across Los Angeles.
People ask sometimes, “If you were going to start this from scratch, how would you do it?” I don’t know that we could start this thing again. It was really a unique set of circumstances and a momentum and a pull, for sure.
On being creative-led instead of marketing-led:
I hate marketing. A lot of businesses are marketing-driven, which is amazing—you see an opportunity strategically, you position yourself at a certain place in the market, then you build creative around that positioning. That’s a way to go forward, and it can be super successful. It’s just not what we’re doing.
I like to think of Flamingo Estate as running more similar to the way a fashion brand does. Creative leads everything. We make what we want to make and we try to make it super beautiful; the driver is the creativity, the story, the inspiration. It’s not marketing.
On the investor who said they should become a supplements company:
As businesses grow and you need capital and you start having conversations about investment and boards, people have lots of thoughts. They love to have thoughts about things they’ve personally never done before. You get advice from people who just don’t know your business that well. They understand from a top level: “Oh, you guys make candles and hand soap and sell these vegetables—cool.” Early in our trajectory, people were like, “You should be a supplements business. You put a powder in a drink and that’s a ritual, and this is self-care.” I was like, We’ve got to stop talking to these people. This is absolutely not what we’re doing.
We had conversations about “need states,” and people told us we should have a collection for people who are tired, one for people who are depressed. We’re not doctors. We make nice things like candles and beautiful scents—it’s about the art of a life well-lived. We’re trying to be additive to someone’s life, not solve someone’s problems. That’s not the job of a candle; that’s not the job of an olive oil—it’s just to make the experience better.
I want to hear everyone’s opinion, though, because you have an objectivity about what I’m doing that I don’t. I’m so in it sometimes I can’t see the forest for the trees. But then I have to sit with myself and find out whether or not your perspective feels like something that resonates with me deeply. Was this something that opened my eyes, or was this something where I was like, No, that’s very clearly not what we need to be doing?
On why the produce boxes everyone told them to kill became their defining product:
The vegetable box is part of how this business started; it’s our genesis story. Especially in the beginning, this was not a profitable endeavor. They had a negative margin.
As the business grew, people were like, “You got to cut this thing.” We’re like, No, we can make it at least break even. Then it was still, “This is too much time for you to be spending on this. The boxes need to stop.” And we’re like, No—this is part of what we do. People need to taste real food. They need to understand that it comes from a person, that someone grew this with their hands. Our perspective is that Mother Nature is the last great luxury house, and we are purveyors of her finest goods; some of those goods are vegetables!
So we operationalize, but we operationalize without losing the thing. The boxes have become a really big piece of our puzzle. We’ve brought in chefs who are curating every month, going to the market; we’re including recipes and we’ve changed the program to be something that can now be profitable. We still sell out every week. It wasn’t about ditching the thing or making it easier, but we had to polish it and do it in a way that’s smarter and more efficient.
On the packaging details customers feel but can’t name:
Details are where we can differentiate. We make something and then someone else makes something that looks pretty similar. I know that ours has two different plates of embossing and that there are details to what we’re doing that people might not clock individually, but in a tactile way, they feel.
I like to check whether things line up. On a box, the end of the ingredients panel should match the same line as the descriptor on the front, which should match the info on the back. When I turn something around, if text is in the same place, it makes it easier as a viewer to read what’s happening. It’s maybe the thing I’m proudest of: my ability to make things look finished. They look complete.
I think details are the kind of thing where, when they’re right, you don’t notice them. When they’re wrong or missing, you notice. It’s like having an amazing meal at a fab restaurant that’s super well decorated, but there’s a lipstick stain on your wine glass. That’s a very small piece of the puzzle, but it can ruin everything.
On keeping fulfillment in-house at tens of thousands of square feet:
We don’t have a third-party logistics (3PL) provider; we pick and pack our own orders in a warehouse. We have tens of thousands of square feet of warehouse space and there are employees handwriting notes and tying ribbons.
This is our business, because it makes a difference. There are a lot of people who make very nice things; if we’re not doing it differently, then there’s kind of no purpose for us to be here. Maintaining that richness of experience is part of why this thing works.
Putting all our product at a 3PL in the center of the country and removing the personalization and not doing handwritten notes … then we’re something entirely different. Which is fine, someone else can make that business—it’s just not something we want to do.
Watch the full Shopify Masters interview with Harvey to hear the story behind the Times Square billboard where they ran Richard’s childhood Super 8 home movies instead of polished creative, and why he thinks “community” and “authenticity” have lost all meaning. Plus, hear how working with your life partner means the mirror is always crystal clear.
This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.
