On this episode of Executive Exchange, Founder and CEO of 1-800-Flowers.com Jim McCann joins senior editor and host Ruth Umoh in our Fortune studios to discuss how he turned one flower shop in Manhattan into a $3 billion company with worldwide recognition.

Jim details how he started his career in social services, working at a non-profit organization in Queens, NY and bartending in Manhattan on weekends to supplement his income. One day, a customer came into the bar where he was working and told him that he was going to sell his flower shop. Jim, eager to learn about the business, asked the customer if he could come in on Saturday afternoons to work for him. Eventually, the customer sold the shop to Jim for $10,000, which started his journey in the flower business in 1976.

Jim would buy more flower shops until he hit a crossroads. He wanted to expand his businesses, but wanted to extend further than just the New York City area. So, he wound up buying 1-800-Flowers from original founder Carl Westcott, and surprisingly took on $7 million of debt once he acquired the company. But that didn't stop Jim from disrupting the flower space, selling the stores he owned to regain capital and even changing the name to 800-Flowers. He also became a franchisor, which allowed him to sell stores off to franchisees to make more money and get out of the hole he acquired.

A major turning point for the company came from a phone call from AT&T. They asked Jim if he would appear in a commercial for them to promote 1-800-Flowers, a name he had to go back to so people knew that it was a phone number. The commercial was only supposed to run for a week, but the spot tested so well that they continued to run it and was even featured during the broadcasts of the 1992 Summer Olympics. That exposure brought in not only sales, but new ideas for Jim and his brother Chris to keep up with current technology and grow the business to new heights.

They then created their website in 1991, hiring engineers to build out the website, and was the first company on AOL to make a sale online in 1994. They launched the website in 1995 and continued to develop their technologies to keep up with the times. That innovation helped the company become a household name around the world in the years to follow.

Today, Jim oversees a sprawling $3 billion multi-platform e-commerce site that sells much more than just flowers, including The Popcorn Factory, Cheryl's Cookies, Harry & David, and Wolferman's Bakery.

00:00 - Intro
00:50 - Starting In Social Services
03:26 - Balancing Social Work With The Flower Shop
04:03 - Valuable Lessons As A Social Worker
06:05 - First Flower Shop
07:23 - Looking Beyond The First Shop
08:24 - Making Millions
11:39 - Expanding Storefronts
12:58 - Legacy Brand
14:03 - Making The First Billion Dollars
15:01 - Attracting Younger People To 1-800-Flowers
17:01 - Waves Of Growth
20:22 - Diversifying Its Portfolio
21:38 - 1-800-Flowers Demographic
22:22 - Busiest Season
22:49 - Boomerang CEO
24:10 - Flower Stats
27:02 - Owning A 4% Stake In The New York Mets
27:42 - Biggest Revenue Stream
29:02 - Deciding On Acquisitions
30:09 - The Future Of 1-800-Flowers
31:22 - Best Business Advice Jim's Received
32:40 - Favorite Flower
33:30 - Outro

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