One friend saw himself becoming a CIA agent. He thought, perhaps he’d be in the FBI or a diplomat in the Middle East.
The other friend was almost certain that he would be involved in the business side of professional sports.
Both ended up working — and thriving — in the flower industry.
Steven Dyme , 31, and Joseph Dickstein, 32, have an online flower delivery startup. Over the past 10 years, their Flowers for Dreams has given more than $990,000 in donations to organizations that address housing and homelessness, mental health, BIPOC communities and gender equality in education, nonprofit funding and the arts. Dyme and Dickstein hope to reach their $1 million milestone during Valentine’s Day.
“Our college hustle at 19 that was just intended to make a little summer cash has really made a difference for 175 organizations,” Dyme said. “It’s the little flower company that could.”
Dyme and Dickstein befriended each other when they were in high school in Winnetka . Though they went to different colleges, the two stayed connected. During summer break in their freshman year of college, Dyme and Dickstein were looking for ways to make money. That’s when they happened upon flowers.
“A good buddy of mine in college was from the floral industry,” Dyme said. “His dad was a huge wholesale florist in Boston, so when he was a kid, he would work with his dad with boxes, ringing up at the register.”
His friend explained that at the end of the week, a florist has to get rid of excess flowers. Instead of tossing them in the trash, the friend and his brother would bundle the flowers up as bouquets, and sell them outside schools whenever there was a football game or graduation.
Hearing about the hustle was a light bulb moment.
“I wasn’t a business student,” Dyme said. “Jo wasn’t a business student, but we knew that buying something for $0 and selling it for $20 or $30 was decent business model and might actually help us make our money for school.”
Dyme and Dickstein pedaled the streets of Chicago, peddling flowers. They would mostly stop by schools, where parents would buy a bouquet of mixed flowers for graduates.
“And for every bouquet we sold, we would buy a small backpack with school supplies for a student in need,” Dickstein said. “We created this one-for-one type model.”
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A quarter of the profit made from selling these bouquets also went to local organizations, mostly toward neighborhood nonprofits.
Dyme and Dickstein continued working during their summer breaks, each year learning more about the flower industry, wholesale, design and distribution. Selling flowers became more than just a way to make money.
“We saw the impact we were making in the city of Chicago in that one-for-one model being able to donate thousands of backpacks just on the sale of flowers,” he said. “We made a commitment to really double down more than just helping out with education and going to the delivery side of the flower industry that created the model that is similar to what we do that’s a quarter of our profit.”
In 2021, Flowers for Dreams donated to six organizations. Digs with Dignity, a nonprofit that helps people transition out of homelessness, was among them.
Kim Hannay, co-founder of Digs with Dignity, said the organization at that time had only been open for a year-and-a-half and the “substantial” funding helped them to expand.
“Their grant donation which ended up being over $33,000 really catapulted us to the next level at DIGS,” Hannay said. “We were able to continue our growth to hire on five staff members and increase our impact by upping the frequency of our work to service one family a week totaling 38 on the year in 2021.”
Now, the partners are nearing a million dollars in donations, a path that “all started with a simple backpack,” Dyme said.
For next steps, Dyme and Dickstein decided to plant roots outside of Chicagoland.
“We decided to give Milwaukee a shot because of its proximity to Chicago,” Dickstein said.
Then, they branched out to Detroit.
But, it was not all roses, as business slowed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Certainly our business struggled from a financial perspective mightily,” Dickstein said. “We’re not deemed an essential business, (so) we had to close our doors for a month and not deliver anything.”
Instead, Dyme and Dickstein focused on their mission of service. Among these efforts was encouraging people, primarily those who live in swing states, to vote in the 2020 presidential election. They also handed out bouquets to front-line workers as a way to say thank you.
When more events and weddings were being booked and their services were once again in high demand, their online flower startup was able to blossom anew.
As of 2022, Flowers for Dreams has a team of 100 employees in three cities. Overnight shipping will be available in eight states in the Midwest including Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Iowa, Missouri, Minnesota and Indiana.
And as of Wednesday, Flowers for Dreams raised $993,007, moving closer to the $1 million goal.
“It’s not about the deliveries or the designs but making a difference that drives us,” Dyme said. “If we ever lost that, we’re not going to be who we are.”
Dyme and Dickstein encourage organizations and charities to go to their website and apply for funds.
“Now we want to do another million in a much shorter time, that’s the goal,” Dyme said.