Organic Entrepreneur Takes on $20 Billion Annual Cut Flower Industry

From Grist Magazine <www.grist.org> 8/30/05

Petal Pusher

Entrepreneur sees vast potential for organic flower industry
Gerald Prolman is a man with an organic-flower plan. The California
entrepreneur is not only after a significant chunk of the $20 billion-a-year
cut-flower industry in the U.S. -- he's hopeful that cultivating demand for
organic bouquets will transform grower practices in Latin America and
Africa, where pesticide use in flower agribusiness has long poisoned workers
and harmed the environment. Organic Bouquet, Prolman's company, is tracking
to earn about $3.5 million this year -- much of it from organic long-stemmed
roses. He envisions notching that up to $100 million within the next five
years. Some fellow floral merchants are skeptical that Americans will care
about going organic with a product they don't eat. But Prolman's optimistic,
and has over a decade of entrepreneurial successes to back up his instincts.
"I believe, within [about five years] ... you won't be able to sell a flower
in America unless it's been deemed sustainable," he says
__________________________________________________________________________
From: San Francisco Chronicle

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Marin entrepreneur trying to cultivate demand for organic flowers
Nurseries without fertilizers burgeoning into a new industry
- Dan Fost, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, August 28, 2005

Of all the quixotic businesses Gerald Prolman could start, it had to be
organic flowers.

The Marin County entrepreneur has plenty of windmills to tilt at. He's
trying to spur demand for an organic product that people aren't actually
eating. And he's also hoping to create supply, convincing growers that they
should stop using unhealthy pesticides and fertilizers on products that
people buy simply for their beautiful looks.

To some degree, the challenges are being met. Prolman, 45, the proprietor of
Organic Bouquet, is on track to ring up $3.5 million in sales this year, the
firm's fourth.

Whether he's truly successful is a debatable point, given his ambition to
alter the $20 billion-a-year cut-flower industry in a fundamental way. But
none of that really fazes Prolman, a born maverick who has been down similar
paths before.

He dropped out of high school and bounced around the country, working
restaurant jobs and earning his equivalency diploma, before he wound up in
San Francisco in the 1970s selling wild meat to fancy French restaurants.
He started a mass market organic produce business, Made in Nature, in 1989,
finally selling it to Dole Food Co. in 1994 in a deal that helped signify
the maturation of the organic market.

He even had a brief career change at age 40, when he became a music
producer, managing the singing career of his wife, French jazz chanteuse
Raquel Bitton, landing her a recording contract and three sold-out gigs at
Carnegie Hall.

And now, in a small, cluttered office he rents from his longtime friend,
produce pioneer Todd Koons, in a building near the Mill Valley waterfront
that once housed the Grateful Dead's rehearsal space, Prolman is back in the
role of eco-entrepreneur, building a new business the way he knows best --
passionately.

"I'm just taking a movement that's been happening and taking it to a higher
level," he says. "The industry is ready for a change. We're the spark that's
changing it. I'm ready. I believe Organic Bouquet is a $100 million
opportunity within the next five years. And I believe, within the same time
... you won't be able to sell a flower in America unless it's been deemed
sustainable."

To promote his vision, Prolman travels tirelessly, constantly proselytizing,
scrambling to raise enough money to keep operating while adding a grower
here and a customer there.

"He's really relentless," said Linda Brown, vice president of Scientific
Certification Systems in Emeryville, who has worked with Prolman on
developing a standard for sustainably grown flowers. "When he gets on
something, he's not going to let go of it. He will not let go. That's the
kind of personality an industry like this needs to help it get off the
ground."

Early ties to Chez Panisse

Koons, the founder of Epic Roots, a company with its own broad ambitions to
change American salads, first met Prolman nearly 30 years ago, when Koons
was a young chef at Chez Panisse and Prolman supplied owner Alice Waters
with exotic meats and vegetables. Koons is now Organic Bouquet's key angel
investor. "I invested in Organic Bouquet and continue to support its growth
because organic flowers are better for the earth, and Gerald is the one
person that is tenacious enough to make this a reality," Koons said in an
e-mail.

Florists aren't so sure. "I never once had a customer ask for organic
flowers," said Harold Hoogasian, who runs one of San Francisco's most well-
established florist shops. He does not know Prolman. "I mean, there is zero
demand for organic flowers."

Win Winogrond, a consultant from Washington, D.C., with 35 years' experience
in the international floral industry, is another skeptic. "To expect that
people will place the same value on a decorative item as they do on
something they ingest is doubtful to me," he said.

But Winogrond won't bet against the idea. "I was highly skeptical of organic
fruits and vegetables, and that has grown far beyond anyone's imagination,"
he said. "To say there's no market is foolish. That would be ignoring
history."

It would also be ignoring what Prolman and other environmentalists see as a
pressing need. According to the Pesticide Action Network, "the rapidly
growing floriculture industry is a heavy user of pesticides and is poisoning
its workers and the environment in a number of Latin American and African
nations."

To Prolman, "the need was clear, and the opportunity was very obvious."
"I was always very curious why organic flowers were not as available as
organic fruits and vegetables," Prolman said. "Horticulture had been
completely overlooked by the natural products industry. ... More chemicals
are used to grow flowers than food. Organic floral production is safe for
farmworkers and good for the environment. It encourages healthy stewardship
of the earth."

But don't get him started.

During a long interview, Prolman proves himself adept at discussing in
detail even parts of his past that he'd prefer not to publicize.
Quite often, he said, "I would find myself in unusual positions I hadn't
planned on, and that steered me to what I would do next."

He's had epiphanies in slaughterhouses and restaurants, on rural farms in
poverty-stricken Latin America and in the halls of big agribusiness. One
came while reading a children's story when his son was young.

Organic farming campaign

He boasts that he has had a hand in converting 20,000 acres of farmland in
five countries to organic production, that he has helped eliminate millions
of pounds of chemicals from use, and that he has brought many of the world's
top gospel singers together to record a song, "Together We Can," for World
Environment Day in San Francisco in June.

His story begins as a child in Boston, where his grandfather ran a large
downtown meatpacking operation. "All we ate was meat," Prolman said.
He left school at age 15 and hitchhiked south. He wound up in the restaurant
business. He became a classically trained chef de cuisine, apprenticing in
top kitchens around the country, learning what he could and switching jobs
every four months. He served as a sous-chef at the Museum of Fine Arts in
Boston and a cook at Chasen's in Beverly Hills, "the restaurant to the
stars." In 1978, still shy of his 19th birthday, he took a job at Cafe
Mozart, "the tiniest restaurant in San Francisco."

It had six tables and haute cuisine. All ingredients had to be fresh that
day, and it became Prolman's job to procure them. He began learning his way
around the markets of Chinatown.

"Other chefs came in, asking where I got this or where I got that," he said.
"I realized no one was supplying the chefs with fresh ingredients."
Imported game

The next year, he started his own business, Night Bird. "At the time, it was
forbidden to sell game," he said. So he negotiated with the Department of
Fish and Game, and, making sure to obtain the tags used in the hunting of
any animals he sold, began traveling around the world, importing game meats.
There was salmon caught by fly fishermen on Scotland's River Spey and smoked
in oak whiskey casks. There were eel, quail, grouse, red deer, roebuck.
Prolman branched out into other wild products. There were fresh truffles
from Paraguay, cloudberries from Sweden. He learned about morels and
chanterelles from his study of Native American eating habits. He started
shipping his food to top chefs all over the country.

Although he reached several million dollars in annual sales, his expenses
were high, and competition caught up to him. In 1986, he sold Night Bird to
Durham Meat Co., which raised buffalo. He got "just enough to pay my bills."
At one point, after he had sold the business but while still working for it,
he was among 52 people ensnared in "Operation Ursus," in which the
Department of Fish and Game sought to bust poachers. Prolman ultimately
cleared his name.

"There was a particular market in the Asian community for certain animal
parts," he said, such as bear gall bladders, tiger penises, or "the horns of
a deer with a little fur on it. That is like Chinese Viagra."
"We never sold any endangered species or illegally obtained animals," he
said, but other people did. The department no longer has a record of the
case, but a Chronicle story from 1988 was corrected to say that Prolman had
not been charged.

"The things we did helped stop the poaching of animals," he said. "We did it
legally and with a paper trail. We had a major hand in closing the market
for people poaching animals."

Around this time, Prolman became a vegetarian. It was the culmination of
three events, the first dating to the day he started Night Bird.
"I had to go into a very large cage and catch quail with a net," he said.
"I'm a nice Jewish kid from Boston. I'm a city guy. I'm afraid they're going
to bite me. I caught one and had it in my hand, and it just put its head
down. The bird died. It had a heart attack. I felt its life energy go
through my hands.

"Later that evening, I had to work in a processing facility, processing
birds. I had blood and guts all over me. I was traumatized. I had to kill
them, cut their heads off, eviscerate them, take their feathers off. The
experience was horrifying. I said, 'I hate this business.' I quit after my
first set of deliveries."

But, "A few days later, the phones were ringing. The chefs wanted their
food."

He justified it to himself by reasoning that the animals were raised
humanely and that humans had been eating animals for millennia.
Not long after, in 1990, he was reading a story to his 3-year-old son. He
saw the animals in the picture book and blurted, "I used to sell animals for
food." Little Julian burst into tears. "Papa, never read me that story
again," he said.

Converted vegetarian

They both became vegetarians. Although Julian hasn't stuck with the regimen,
Prolman has. At the Buckeye, he ordered only salad and side dishes.
By 1989, Prolman had left Night Bird and started his next venture, Made in
Nature. He intended the company to sell wilderness produce -- he started
with fiddlehead ferns -- but a business partner had a financial interest in
a pioneering organic apple and pear orchard in Oregon's Hood River valley.
"I was amazed," he said. "I wondered, why aren't all apples and pears grown
this way? I agreed to take on their marketing."

Once again, he began his tireless evangelism. Like an organic Johnny
Appleseed, he covered the globe, buying and selling produce. He exported to
Holland, Germany, France, Scandinavia and Japan, and imported from Mexico,
Honduras, Costa Rica and other Caribbean nations.

"I would go to large agribusinesses, and I would persuade them to start
testing a block of organics," he said. "I'd tell a big grower, 'Take 100
acres of apples and do an experiment that could lower the chemical usage on
your 5, 000 acres, and I'll sell your apples and get you a higher price.'
"I got them to try it. ...They said, 'Wait. These are good yields and good
prices. Let's do another 100 acres.' I did that over and over and over
again."

He also went to undeveloped areas of Latin America, bringing his vision of
how organics could help rural farmers make more money. He tells of a trip to
Chiapas, Mexico, where impoverished people would lug enormous bags of coffee
beans up and down hills, just to afford a meager portion of rice and beans.
Among the coffee bushes, however, he saw banana trees providing shade. They
were organic by default or neglect, so he agreed to buy the bananas.
"For us, it was a bargain," he said. "For them, it was like they won the
lottery."

But Prolman's business also needed money. "It was always Band-Aid capital, "
he said. "That seems to be a pattern."

In 1994, Prolman sold the company to Dole Food Co. -- he won't say for how
much -- and went to work for it. In Prolman's view, Dole worked hard to farm
responsibly and professionally, eliminating chemicals and building schools
for workers.

But the arrangement was short-lived. Made in Nature was the last of a string
of companies Dole had acquired, and it began shedding them within months to
focus on its core business. After 17 months with Dole, Prolman bought the
company back, again for an undisclosed sum.

He moved into dried fruits and juice drinks and in 1997 sold it again, this
time to Vacu-Dry, a public company in Sebastopol. Vacu-Dry soon sold off its
food businesses. Made in Nature is now based in Fowler (Fresno County).
Prolman took a hiatus to help his wife, whom Prolman calls, with his typical
promoter's flair, "the French jazz superstar." Whatever superlatives Prolman
attributes to his own business ventures pale in comparison with those he
lavishes on her career.

But once that career was established and Bitton had an organization behind
her, Prolman returned to his zeal for bringing business concerns in line
with the environment.

"I believe in the basic goodness of people," Prolman said. "If presented
with the facts, people will make the right decisions."

The Prolman file
Born: Boston, 1959
Home: Novato
Family: Wife, Raquel Bitton; two teenage children
Business: Organic Bouquet, www.organicbouquet.com, purveyor of organic and
sustainably grown flowers.
E-mail Dan Fost at dfost at sfchronicle.com.
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