E-commerce flower company planting roots for their team's future with a 401(k)
How a 401(k) from Guideline helps first-time savers at Farmgirl Flowers command their own financial future
| Payroll | Plan Type | Guideline plan tier |
|---|---|---|
| Gusto | Traditional 401(k) | Core |
| Motivations | Why Guideline | Results |
|---|---|---|
| • Care for the people that care for the business. | • Mobile-friendly retirement plans powered by helpful humans you can actually call. | • 90% of employees saving for retirement one month after rollout.1 |
| • Provide benefits that last a lot longer than free lunches. | • 24/7 compliance monitoring that helps catch potential test failures, and coaching on how to fix. | • Thousands of dollars saved in estimated fines thanks to a proactive compliance call from Guideline. |
| • Economically empower the next generation of employees. | • Guided onboarding that made saving simple for everyone on the team. | • An affordable, monthly price point that brought 401(k) costs way below company budget. |
Challenge:
With a 600 square foot apartment and less than $50K in capital, Christina Stembel, the CEO of Farmgirl Flowers, gave herself just two years to make her flower business bloom.
“My professional path was pretty untraditional. I grew up on a farm in Indiana. I didn’t go to college or work at a major tech company.” But what Christina did have was an innate eye for business opportunities...and beautiful bouquets.
“I’d send flowers to my mom back home in Indiana, but the whole process was painful. Rural folks get stuck with national flower suppliers that overcharge, create flower waste, and frankly—underdeliver.” Christina took her disappointment and did something with it, founding Farmgirl Flowers out of the dining room of her rented San Francisco apartment.
A lot has changed about the business since its inception in 2010. For starters, Farmgirl Flowers outgrew its dining room bouquets, quickly paying up to 300 employees across North and South America at the peak of the pandemic. But like so many other businesses, COVID forced Farmgirl Flowers to pivot.
Today’s distribution model might look different, but Christina proudly kept one critical thing the same. “The way we operate changed, but the commitments we made to our employees did not.”
For Christina, that commitment to her team included not taking a salary before she could offer a 401(k). Now that her team does have a retirement benefit, it’s the last thing she’d ever cut.
“If we’re still in business? I’m not cutting anyone’s 401(k) and replacing it with a ping pong table or free lunch. Chopping real, long-term benefits during stormy financial seasons tells employees you care about you, not them. And that’s not true at Farmgirl Flowers. Our employees put their whole heart into what they do every single day, and they alone are our competitive advantage.”
Christina says Farmgirl customers can feel the passion her team brings to their work with every order of fresh flowers. So naturally, when it came to crafting a benefits package to take care of her team, Christina wanted the best.
"Our employees love Guideline so much that I think we’d have a coup on our hands if we ever tried to change 401(k) providers."Christina StembelFarmgirl Flowers
Client of Guideline. Views may not be representative of other clients
Solution:
“When I originally researched 401(k)s, I came across a lot of ancient retirement companies. We passed on all of them. We wanted to work with a market disruptor like us. We wanted a 401(k) provider constantly evolving and trying to do things better. That’s what we found in Guideline.” The Farmgirl Flowers team also found must-have Guideline 401(k) features like:
- Feature rich, high tech 401(K) designed with a human touch that made financial concepts feel accessible for all employees
- An award-winning mobile app that guides non-techies and non-desk employees alike through 401(k) enrollment, contribution strategy, and more2
- Proactive compliance alerts built to catch issues year-round, plus the step-by-step coaching her company needed to make swift corrections
- Quality customer support that actually cares enough to call out
- Saver onboarding and financial guidance that empowers all types of employees to participate in saving for retirement
One of Christina’s favorite features though? “Onboarding with Guideline is seriously easy. It doesn’t matter which job you do at Farmgirl Flowers, Guideline makes starting to save with a 401(K) simple and accessible for everyone.”
Within a month of hosting a company-wide financial education training, 90% of Farmgirl Flowers employees were saving for retirement. It’s a massive point of pride for Christina, but she humbly maintains that it’s not as hard as it looks — and she wishes she’d done it sooner.
“Guideline costs about half as much as I had budgeted for. As a small business owner, there are so many things that are not affordable, but a 401(k) from Guideline isn’t one of them. There’s no reason not to get started.”
But the real cherry on top for woman-owned Farmgirl Flowers?
As a female founder in an industry where women make up 89% of the work force, it’s been rewarding for her to be in a position to pay it forward. “It’s incredibly important to help women command their own financial futures—and Guideline is a critical part of that effort.”
"It doesn’t matter which job you do at Farmgirl Flowers. Guideline makes starting to save with a 401(K) simple and accessible for everyone."Christina StembelFarmgirl Flowers
Client of Guideline. Views may not be representative of other clients
Result:
“Our employees love Guideline so much that I think we might have a coup on our hands if we ever tried to change providers.” Thankfully, Farmgirl Flowers won’t have to worry about that.
“We’ve been Guideline customers since 2017 and I’ve never thought about leaving—not once.”
It’s a position Christina reaffirmed after a large employee roster change in 2021 unexpectedly pushed the company’s 401(K) plan out of compliance.
“We got a call from Guideline letting us know certain members of our team were contributing too much due to the change in employee makeup, and our company 401(k) plan was failing IRS compliance tests. We would not have known until we got the bill from the IRS. But because Guideline cared enough to call, and cared enough to walk us through corrections step-by-step, our business saved thousands of dollars in fines.”
With a serious compliance crisis averted, Guideline love remains at an all time high for Christina and her crew at Farmgirl Flowers. Her advice for other founders taking care of their teams?
“Every time I face a challenge as a CEO, I'm reminded how important it is to partner with a company like Guideline that helps you get it right each step of the way.”
"Guideline costs half as much as I had budgeted for a retirement benefit. There are many expensive things about being a business owner, but a 401(k) from Guideline isn’t one of them."Christina StembelFarmgirl Flowers
Client of Guideline. Views may not be representative of other clients