The numbers
As stated by the listing on September 3, 2026.
- Asking price
- $500,000
- SDE
- $400,000
- Gross revenue
- $500,000
- Multiple
- 1.25x
- Established
- 2001
- Employees
- 210
Why we like it
Flowers sell against dates nobody controls: Valentine's Day and Mother's Day fall exactly where the calendar puts them, a wedding date is set months out and does not move, and a funeral order has to be filled the day it's called in. That clustering is the defining fact of the trade, and it means the business runs less like a steady retail counter and more like a string of deadlines the shop cannot renegotiate. Stock is perishable on top of that: cut flowers bought at wholesale have to move within days, so a shop is always buying against orders that haven't sold yet. In Los Angeles that buying happens through the downtown flower district, one of the country's larger wholesale flower markets, and a shop's relationship to it matters as much as its storefront frontage does. This one has been trading since 2001, long enough to have built the referrals, wedding planners, funeral homes, repeat corporate accounts, that a walk-in customer alone never generates. The number to press on first is the split between walk-in and wire-service revenue against booked weddings and standing event accounts, because wire services such as FTD and Teleflora pay the filling florist only a cut of the ticket, while an event book with deposits already collected is worth more to a buyer than the same dollars spread across one-off arrangements. The real growth lever in a shop like this is usually not more foot traffic but how many weddings the design side can book a year out.
No personal licence needed
Running a retail flower shop in California does not require the owner to hold a specific trade license or credential. A buyer needs the ordinary business license, seller's permit for sales tax, and possibly a fictitious business name filing, none of which are personal credentials tied to floral design skill. If the shop does its own floral delivery in a company vehicle, ordinary vehicle insurance and a standard driver's license cover it. Floral design ability itself is not licensed, so a buyer without design skill could hire designers, but should weigh how much of the wedding and event revenue is tied to a specific designer's reputation rather than the shop's name.
What worries us
- Design talent may be the real assetWedding and event referrals in floristry often follow a specific designer's style and reputation rather than the shop's name, so if the owner is the lead designer, that book of business can walk out the door with them unless there is a trained team behind them.
- Revenue concentrated in a handful of calendar weeksValentine's Day, Mother's Day, and the spring wedding season carry a disproportionate share of a florist's year, which makes cash flow lumpy and puts a lot of weight on execution during a small number of dates that cannot be rescheduled if something goes wrong.
- The seller's numbers do not add up as presentedAn SDE of $400,000 on $500,000 of revenue is an 80 percent margin, far above what a retail florist typically clears after flower cost, labor, and rent, and a listed headcount of 210 employees is wildly out of scale for a shop this size. Both figures need to be verified against the shop's actual books before relying on them.
The callSuits a buyer with real floral design skill and an interest in building the wedding and event side, not a passive investor, and only once the seller's figures check out.
Our calculations
Our standard SBA 7(a) acquisition structure applied to the asking price. Assumptions below.
Sources
| SBA 7(a) loan | $473,080 |
| Seller standby note | $26,282 |
| Buyer cash at close | $26,282 |
| Total sources | $525,644 |
Uses
| Purchase price | $500,000 |
| Closing costs (est.) | $15,000 |
| SBA guaranty fee | $10,644 |
| Total project | $525,644 |
- Monthly payment
- $6,057
- Annual debt service
- $72,684
- DSCR
- 3.65xSTRONG
- Injection check
- Meets 10% ($52,564 against $52,564 required)
- Closing costs estimated at 3% of asking price
- Owner salary of $120,000, loaded
- Rate of Prime + 2.25% = 9.25%
- 10-year term, fully amortizing
- Injection split half cash, half seller standby note
How we would go about buying it
The order matters. Every step below is free until the last one, and each is a chance to walk away before it costs you anything.
- 1
Call the broker, not the bank
The listing is brokered, so the broker is the gate. Ask for the CIM and the last three years of tax returns, and expect to sign an NDA first. Do this before you talk to a lender: no lender will size a loan without the numbers, and the broker will not release them to a lender you have not engaged.
Open the listing - 2
Ask these before you spend anything
Specific to this business, from our read of the listing. The answers decide whether the numbers above survive contact.
- What share of revenue comes from wedding and event design with deposits already on the books, versus daily walk-in and wire-service orders relayed through FTD or Teleflora, and what fee do those services take off the top?
- The employee count listed for this shop appears out of scale for its revenue: can the seller confirm actual current headcount, payroll cost, and how many are full-time versus event-day casual staff?
- What is the shop's standing arrangement with wholesalers at the LA flower market: credit terms, delivery frequency, and how shrinkage on unsold perishable stock is tracked and written off?
- How many weddings or events are already booked for the next six to twelve months, and do deposits and vendor contracts transfer to a new owner?
- What is the remaining term on the storefront lease, and does it include the walk-in cooler and any build-out the shop depends on?
- 3
Take it to lenders who do this size
Talk to more than one. Rate is the least of it: the lender who has done fifty of these in California will close, and the one who has done two will waste your quarter. Below are the lenders whose typical deal size actually fits this one.
- 4
Structure the offer around the coverage
Our structure clears the floor at 3.65x, and a lender will run its own version with its own add-backs. If the earnings come back lower than stated, the price has to come down or the seller note has to grow. Model both before you make an offer.
Model it yourself
Who we would call
Active California acquisition lenders whose typical deal size fits this one.
- Live Oak Banking Company
158 loans in CAmedian $760,000median rate 9.00%~20 days to first disbursement
- Huntington National Bank
85 loans in CAmedian $346,000median rate 9.25%~32 days to first disbursement
- Open Bank
64 loans in CAmedian $902,500median rate 8.75%~33 days to first disbursement
Loan counts and medians are that lender’s change-of-ownership loans in California, FY2025 to FY2026 Q3. Funding speed is the lender’s national median from approval to first disbursement. Names link to our data profile for each lender.
The fine print
The statements this write-up makes about the trade and its rules, as opposed to the figures, were checked against public sources on September 1, 2026. 5 claims were checked.
Run your own numbers
The deal analyzer models price, seller note, equity injection, and DSCR under current SBA terms, with every assumption adjustable.
Open the deal analyzerListing facts as stated by the listing on September 3, 2026, not independently verified. Structure, payment, DSCR, and injection figures are our own computation under the assumptions above, using the Prime rate as of September 28, 2026. Lender shortlist from the SBA 7(a) FOIA file, FY2025 to FY2026 Q3, as of June 30, 2026. Methodology. See an error? Email us and we will correct it.